iOS 5: deleting Completed Reminders list

I just finished talking to the Editor-In-Chief of AppAdvice, Jamie Young. Sadly, she confirms that there is NO bulk deleting of Reminders from WITHIN an iDevice.

But, based on our conversation I think I have come up with a workaround. It is by no means perfect, but for some it could do the trick.

Pretend, for example, that you had a million completed Reminders. Right now the only way to delete them is to ONE BY ONE use the swipe-delete gesture on your iDevice. Hello arthritis!

But, you could do this...

You CAN delete that entire list in your Reminders app.

Go to the list you want to remove ALL the entries (let's stay with the Reminders list) click on that list-->edit-->delete list. The only problem with this is that it not only removes all those completed reminders. It also deletes THE REMINDERS LIST!

But, you can very easily create a new REMINDERS list on an iDevice. It will be fresh, clean, and empty.

You're back in business and you never had to go to your computer and iCloud.

Admittedly, not perfect because it requires one extra step...creating a new Reminders list.

But, if you have a lot of completed reminders this will certainly take less time and effort than deleting each of those completed reminders...one by painful one.

Cheers, Mr. Luigi

Oh my... ooh my! Don't tell me I read that. 😢

Why do almost all Apple users seem to have this sense of "workaround" much more than others?

Let's say I have 30-40 recurring tasks and a s**t load of completed (or even missed) ones. The pain in the *** for creating those 30-40 tasks can't be on the the users' side! Apple should take care of it, not us, users, who pay some serious price for an iDevice expecting a minimum of respect!

We need to stop finding workarounds as if we were totally dumb users swallowing every sh**t Apple tries to "force" us to use. Instead, we should fight and push hard for something better!

Hi zenluiz!

I have a workaround for that. 😁

Create separate lists for recurring tasks and one time tasks.

That way you can delete the one time task list while leaving the recurring task list intact...safe and sound.

I LIVE FOR WORKAROUNDS!

WORKAROUNDS ARE MY LIFE!

😀 👿

Mr. Luigi - do you have a work around for Reminders being all wierd after Mavericks upgrade? They keep duplicating themselves, they randomly change thier dates and you can't do repeating reminders. Anyone else having these major issues since Mavericks upgrade?

Hi ctojaga,

Right now, I don't seem to be having the same problem. Let me create some phoney, test Reminders and see if I can duplicate your problem. I'll respond if I find that I can create the same situation you describe. If I don't respond, assume I couldn't replicate your issue.

I wonder if you got a bad download of Mavericks? I know it takes a long time, but have you tried reinstalling Mavericks?

Or, you could try this...fix a couple of those evil duplicated, wrong date reminders. Then sign out of iCloud and sign back in? Do the changes persist? If so, and you don't have a ton of bad Reminders you could do this for the rest of them and hope the Dark Side doesn't return.

Again, I'll be back if I can duplicate your problem.

Happy Thanksgiving (If you are from the US or Canada!),

Mr. Luigi

Thank you so much!

Yes. I have tried changing dates on my phone; changing dates on my mac; and changing dates on the cloud.

Its very odd. I am a TASK kind of girl, so this is throwing me all off and I have to carefully go through my reminders each day and update (several times).

I was waiting for a fix -but I am not seeing anyone really complaining, so I sound like an isolated case.

Thanks! Great tip! I just did this, only I went to my reminders and there is an option to delete all completed items. Works like a charm!

Thanks!

To me this is a design omission by Apple. Even though I have only two repeating reminders, so deleting everything and recreating them is not a big problem, it is still a workaround. Good software design does not need workarounds.

We need a straightforward way to remove old, completed reminders, available on both IOS and OS X, within the Reminders app.

I also get reminders on my iPhone of reminder items from 12 and 15 days ago that have not been marked 'Completed'. I went through my past reminders and all appear completed. Another minor pain, but still a pain.

Please fix this, Mr or Ms Apple.

Won't that remove Reminders that aren't complete?

Best answer out there for this issue. Apple reminders is crazy.