Q: Reminder Sync Problem in IOS 7

Apple is just killing me with this current joke revision of reminders.

I have an iPhone, Macbook pro, and iPad. I use reminders synced across all of them, and they are vital to my daily workflow (I work as a project manager, and in real estate). I have so many things going on at any given time, I have to have a reliable assistant. Reminders in iOS6 was a rocksolid one. Since iOS7, its become a total joke.

Since iOS7, reminders regularly faily to sync properly. Oh, they may sync..but it may be after i deleted that reminder on a different device (IE, I delete it on my phone, later it shows up on my laptop). Then sometimes that will re-sync it to my phone.

Regularly, I have a whole days worth of completed reminders that i have deleted suddenly come back. Just as regularly, I have reminders not ever pop up on my lock screen (though they do appear as incomplete within the reminders app).

Just as regularly, I have to actually open the app and wait for reminders I put in on other devices to actually appear. I could put 10 things in on my computer at the start of the day, and by 1-2PM I realize im not getting anything popping up, so I open reminders on my phone and wait until they arrive. Sometimes they do, sometimes they dont (and yes, i have app refresh and everything else on).

This is just issues with the functionality of reminders..the new interface is a whole new set of problems.

1 - When reminders pop up on my lockscreen, I need 4 options: Delete, Snooze, Mark Complete, and Dismiss. Those are the 4 things I am likely to do with any given reminder, and having to go INTO the app to mark them as complete is really annoying. This is simple UI here.

2 - When I go into the app I have a list of 10 reminders that need to be marked complete (because ive been dismissing them by closing my phone). I mark one complete and when I start to mark another, the whole list re-organizes to slide the completed one up, causing me to incorrectly mark complete a different reminder. Also, sometimes the reminders I mark off disappear and then come right back and then disappear again while im trying to mark them off. THIS IS AWFUL AND NEVER HAPPENED IN iOS6.

3 - There is no distinction between reminders that will go off later that day and reminders that have already gone off. They are just lower or higher in the list. I NEED TO KNOW WHAT REMINDERS I NEED TO CLEAR..and I need to see them quickly. Again, this is UI 101 Apple. You are SO much better than this. This also constantly makes me clear out incompleted reminders when I click one that ive done and it reshuffles them all ALA complaint #2 above.

My Reminders only began going haywire with 7.04 on my iPhone 4.  And my iPad.  Some work.  Some don't.  I wound up with unremovable blank lines when I tried to delete old completed. 

Some of the "completed" tasks stay on the list until . . .  it just decides to move them.  I do wish Apple would go back to the old version of the app.  It always worked perfectly.  The new version is just frustration, and it is quite irritating as I had come to rely on it.

I'm having the exact same issues since iOS 7. Reminders just never pop up for me. They seem to sync relatively reliably, though sometimes not unless I actually open the app on my iPhone. But that said, I can be assured they won't actually alert on my phone. I've set Reminders to pop up as an alert (not a banner) and to show five reminders on the lock screen but neither works. But I've gone entire days with no alerts and I was late on a business call because I was relying on the app to remind me beforehand.

Useless.

The only things that works for me (sync Reminder Mac <-> iOS) is to open the calendar first. Once it syncs the Reminders are up to date. Hope Apple gets it fixed.

Thanks a lot amaninspired , your solution solved my problem too. Thanks a lot

I fixed my problem, but not the way anyone suggested here. My problem was basic.

New items on a list would not show up on the device unless I created an item in the list on the device. Then it wuold 'sync'.

This has nothing to do with Background Refreshes in iOS 7 (Reminders - on my devices - isn't even listed there). If you are using an iCloud account for your reminders, this is totally related to:

Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > Fetch New Data > Push

AND

Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > Fetch New Data > iCloud (your specific account) Push must be enabled

If you have the master push button on and you have push setup for the account it works fine.

Give it a try.

Go to Reminders on Mac. Locate completed list. Shift select all, delete > Go to icloud prefrences > uncheck reminders > recheck reminders

Hi Amaninspired, you're absolutely right. Going into Calendar does make Reminders update - weird!

Hi Manchot, you solved my problem. Push seemed to be it for me.

On my iPad Air, Push was enabled at overall level AND was enabled on iCloud account, however I went into the option and ticked it "again" and it worked flawlessly after that. It ironically, needed a reminder!

On iPhone, Push was turned off overall however enabled for iCloud but I believe you need the overall setting to generally enable push. So I switched it On and Reminders flew in.

Sync time for all reminders is now about 2 to 4 seconds and that means I now know that if I add a reminder on iCloud Web that my devices should have it for the day I want it to remind me on!

That's great. Yes, once I figured it out, it's worked perfectly on all my devices.

apple's produts are soooo complicated I wish I chose samsung

I have to second these remarks because, with iOS 9.3.2 on the iPhone, I still have to do the same thing. iPad and laptop are fine; just the iPhone is the problem. Refresh somehow and then it works.

This is not a direct response to the previous post, but a reference guide that may be of some use to some of you looking to this thread:

Get help using Outlook with iCloud for Windows - Apple Support

Outlook sometimes, for whatever reason, disables the necessary Add-on that allows it to keep in sync with iCloud. In working with people having sync issues between the two, I often found myself correcting the add-on to active to fix this.