Reminders app waking mac from sleep

The thing is that we know how the problem occurs. When entering sleep a wakeup call is placed for any upcoming Reminders. The real question is why Catalina is placing those wakeup calls. It obviously should not be doing any such thing and I've yet to receive a response from Apple that they even acknowledge there is a problem.

I strongly believe this is a bug, I can’t see any reason why Apple would want a Mac to wake up out of a sleep state for an active reminder. It also only has this behaviour on my iMac, not on my MacBook Pro or Mac Mini despite them running exactly the same version of Catalina.

Either way, I agree - I’m simply going to have to change the way I use reminders on my iMac either by constantly shutting it down every time I finish using it or by disabling reminders on there all together

My Mac Mini and MacBook Pro definitely do not behave in the same way as my iMac, I have tested them literally side by side which is why I have no doubt it’s a bug. At one point I thought it may be limited to iMac’s as everyone complaining online had the same model, but now it seems the model is irrelevant - it’s more Catalina

Just to update everyone, in an attempt to solve this issue I've asked Apple to completely wipe my iCloud reminders. I've been using Reminder for years and must have 10,000+ completed reminders on my account and roughly 200 active ones. I'm wondering whether it is this that is the source of my issues. To get to the bottom of it, I've asked them to wipe my account so I can start fresh and see if that solves the issue as it didn't escape my mind that these issues may have been caused by the upgrade in Reminders in Q3 of 2019. I'll keep you updated...

Thank you to @socceryo3 for the stackexchange post (a huge help) and @FUNK1196 for starting this thread.. Thanks also to others who posted various diagnostic approaches. There's a lot of helpful info, even if none of it fixes built-in Catalina bugs.

I've been working with Apple Sr Advisor and Engineering for weeks because, not only does my Mac mini wake, it unlocks via my Apple Watch when I'm in another room. Neither the advisor nor engineering replies seem aware of this issue or any of the info in this thread. They suggested unplugging external displays, drives, and devices. (So basically, NOT getting work done...) Yesterday, thanks to Stackexchange post and OSXDaily, I figured out why the Watch was unlocking my Mac and was able to recreate at will. Worse than the bug itself, is not knowing what's going on!

It seems to me very clear that this is just another significant way Catalina is broken. The new Catalina Notifications system pref clearly added another check "When screen is locked" and neither that nor "When display is sleeping" have any effect I can see -- at least for Reminders. If these worked as they seem to be intended, everyone here could be happy.

I doubt apple plans to fix this or the other problems in Catalina. Let's just hope Big Sur is the next generation of High Sierra -- a stable, well-working macOS. That seems a big ask right now.

Well jd2020, having been involved in this thread all along and indeed identified the problem even before that, I think I am well aware of what it's all about.

We have a problem with Reminders in Catalina and recently (a few weeks ago, I should have been more specific about that), after an update to iPadOS 13.6.1 (on the iPad to be clear) and trying to create a reminder, I was informed that there was now an update. I cannot now recall the exact wording, but I think the gist was Reminders.app had been updated in the new iPadOS and so the iCloud data needed to be updated to suit. Without thinking I agreed to that.

I was later (that day) informed on my Mojave Mac that the updated iCloud data required Reminders in Catalina (and probably specified a version, but I cannot now recall what that was) and could not be used in Mojave.

That IS what happened and since the raison d'être of this thread is about the Reminders app (and associated data/systems) and there has clearly some sort of update involved with Reminders, I'm not sure how you can dismiss this as being unimportant as it clearly IS relevant.

I cannot state that the update has fixed the issue and never claimed that. But it is obviously worth considering and trying to discover if it has affected this problem. However, I have not yet checked with my Catalina Mac (which is elsewhere).

Of course, if you believe that an update to the very same app/system with which we are experiencing problems is irrelevant, feel free to ignore it. But IMO it would be foolish to dismiss this and it is worth checking, even if it proves not to be the fix we require.

This is a bit of a 'me too' post. I recently upgraded a Mac Mini to Catalina and have been puzzling over why it keeps waking up when it should not. I have narrowed it down to wakeups being scheduled for reminders as set in Reminders.app. It doesn't occur on my MacBook Pro and I believe such notifications are automatically disabled when the lid is shut. But as reported here for MacBooks with external displays (mine does not) and I can corroborate that with my Mini which of course has a monitor connected and is surfing from the problem.

As per the others reporting the problem, Do Not Disturb is set appropriately, but those wakeups keep getting scheduled.

Is everyone with a desktop Mac suffering from this? If so, why not more complaints?

I too have this issue and have tried everything

I upgraded the OS to 10.15.4 this week as I saw in the release notes a number of fixes for reminders, hoping this would rectify the issue - however no luck. Can you please advise how I can stop this from happening. I currently have to shut my machine down every time I finish using it to stop it turning on. 

I have created a new user and tested the reminders to see if it was an issue with my account, it still turned on when the reminder was due. I then reinstalled Mac OS after getting advice from Apple however that has also not fixed it.

If you are saying that any set reminder should wake the Mac at that time, then I have to disagree with you. First of all it would be stupid to wake the Mac for every reminder that triggered while sleeping and second, Apple have apparently agreed with that until Catalina as no previous version of OSX/MacOS did any such thing.

There's no question that the Mac should NOT wake up from sleep just due to a reminder - the user is after all unlikely to be there to see the reminder, that's why the Mac is asleep. Most likely explanation is that this is simply poor coding in Catalina, but it would be good to know that Apple are aware of the issue.

Well it's either a bug, or it's intentional and Apple have decided this is a good thing.

Hopefully it's the former as that stands a (small) chance of being fixed, whereas the latter would mean way less interest in changing it, despite it being utterly stupid and nonsensical behaviour.

Either way, I suggest all who have noticed they are suffering from this (I suspect that in fact Catalina is doing it for everyone, just some people have not noticed), let Apple know it needs fixing/changing. Either through feedback, bug reports if you have that facility and/or generally haranguing their support lines.

I’m increasingly of the opinion this is how it’s meant to behave. It should be an option if you ask me, or at least more clearly explained.

I have stopped using timed reminders for anything which doesn’t really need it. Daily reminders with no time schedule now happen at the default time from settings, which doesn’t wake everything up.

I’m afraid I’ve changed the way I use Reminders to make this behaviour work for me. TBH I actually prefer it now, my phone dings and beeps at me enough without reminding me about emptying the bins too!!

Well done for following this up. However, worth bearing in mind that accessing the same iCloud account from 2 different Macs, one Mojave and the other Catalina, produces 100% consistent results. Catalina always causes this problem (actually on more than one Mac) and Mojave NEVER causes the problem.

So whatever the reasons behind it, the problem is with Catalina.

Are you sure you have seen this exact issue in MacOS(X) prior to Catalina? Over the years I have extensively used ALL versions of Apple's OS, since well before OSX even, on multiple Macs and since the introduction of Reminders, I have NEVER had a Reminder wake up the Mac - until Catalina. Lately, the exact same Macs have the problem in Catalina but did NOT with earlier versions of MacOS. I have also never heard of anyone else suffering from this pre Catalina either.

If true, it rather puts the problem into a different light as it then seems less likely to be a bug, more an unwanted and unreliable design feature.

I guess we need to establish if others have the same problem pre Catalina, or if, like me, the same Macs that worked correctly (NOT waking for Reminders) only started exhibiting this behaviour after the installation of Catalina.

I can’t comment on the behaviour before Catalina but the timelines certainly point to this occurring post the upgrade. One thing I will say is I’m only receiving this behaviour on one of my Macs (An iMac), my MacBook Pro and Mac Mini (both also on Catalina) do not experience this behaviour.

With that said, I have been experiencing huge issues with reminders syncing across my devices since the Reminder overhaul in September 2019 - so I’m also not ruling it out as being a ‘Reminder’ issue, not simply Catalina

Hi guys,

Nice work pursuing this so far.

First of all, after some contention around whether or not this issue is a bug or intentional, I have some thoughts and I welcome anyone who considers this NOT to be a bug to please provide a clear, logical argument to each of the following facts.

1) Reminders are silent on iOS when in Do not Disturb mode, and always have been.

2) MacOS provides check-box options in System Preferences to prevent an array of events from waking the computer from sleep, therefore:

i) Checking all of these, logically, should prevent the computer from waking in any situation. If a user wants the computer not to wake for any reason, surely they should have the option for it not to wake for all reasons.

ii) IF it is not a bug, the lack of an option for reminders (or any other event which triggers waking) not to wake the computer when sleeping is an oversight and should be added.

3) The Apple Community Specialist replied and DID NOT argue that this is not a bug, and offered a post containing SOLUTIONS to try.

4) Since this post was created, NO Apple Representative have replied that it is not a bug.

5) I personally have experimented with turning the various options on and off, and I have noticed as I am sure others can replicate, that when Do Not Disturb is turned off, reminders wake the computer and produce a banner notification. When it is turned ON, a reminder will wake the computer, turn on the screen / external display, and yet the banner notification is suppressed. In System Preferences > Notifications > Do Not Disturb, the advice is that "Banners and alerts will be hidden and notification sounds will be silenced". A reminder is a Banner / Alert, therefore, it is CLEAR that the alert is supposed to be suppressed, and that the screen turning on is a bug and an oversight that it should be suppressed.

Ultimately, Do Not Disturb, should ensure the computer remains asleep when it is asleep no matter what alert is occurring. There may well be a perfectly desirable use case for reminders or any other types of alerts to wake the computer, but that should be a selectable option, and it is not.

For now, I switch off my external display at the wall, but I really shouldn't have to just to ensure that my monitor won't be burning itself out all night long. Please offer a clear argument to ALL of the above if you think this is not a bug.

Otherwise, Apple, please fix this issue.