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Reminder App (Inconsistencies)

Is there any way to enter a due date and time on the reminder app for iOS5 without having a reminder?


The inconsistencies in the reminder app across iOS, web and iCal are driving me nuts.


  • I can enter a reminder date and time on the iOS app without a due date and time.
  • I can enter a due date and not time on iCal with an alert using date and time.
  • I can enter a due date and not time on iCloud with an alert using date (limited) but not time
  • If I enter a due date using the above two methods, it is now visible on iOS where I can then adjust the due time.
  • There is no obvious time zone support for entering reminders in iCal.


To confuse things more, the alert (iCloud/iCal) is called remind me on the iOS app, when it should be called alert.

Posted on Oct 16, 2011 9:07 PM

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23 replies

Oct 25, 2011 8:22 PM in response to Apple Iceman

Finally! this was also driving me nuts! I was wondering why we could set a "due date" on the web, but not on the Reminders app. This behavior is completly stupid...


Also, what is strange is the seemingly random behaviour of reminders showing up (or not) in the notification center. For example, a task that I had DUE for the 26th appeared in the notification center the 23 and disapeared the day after. (note that it did not appear because of an alert)


In an ideal world, we could choose both due dates and alerts dates, and we could also choose which tasks appear in the notification center (for example, tasks due for the next 7 days), that way we wouldnt need to open the app to see what is due soon.


I hope this will be fixed very soon. I will send feedback too.

Nov 6, 2011 9:37 AM in response to Steven Massey

Having the above problem and it makes this application virtually unusable. Increasingly Apple seems to be putting out releases with bugs big and small that dramatically affect the usability of their offerings. The frustrating part is that these aren't add-on features or "nice to have items" but things that impact the basic functionality of their products. We made a major investment in setting our whole organization up on Macs/iPhones but based on the the rapidly expanding list of problems and Apple's unwillingness to fix much less address them we're having to evaluate going back.

Nov 9, 2011 8:22 AM in response to Apple Iceman

It's SO **** close to being useable and awesome but these little inconsistanies will keep me in omnifocus until then. Omnifocus is great but a bit more complicated than I need. Reminders is probably a little too simple for me but I could adjust for the awesome sync'ing (background sync'ing!) if these weird issues could be fixed.

Jan 30, 2012 6:22 PM in response to Apple Iceman

I'm glad I finally found this thread. I'm having the same problems and inconsistencies reported by others here and have been tearing my hair out trying to figure out what I was doing wrong.


If someone has found a workaround for these problems, I would sure like to know about it. For what it's worth, I get reasonably consistent reminders if I only create them and modify them from iOS; never touching them from iCloud. The inconsistencies between iOS and iCloud reminders are mind boggling. And, to think I gave up Palm Desktop for this. UGH!

Mar 14, 2012 2:37 AM in response to eversin

actually i think they need to implement reminders fully into ical...for as it is now, we can't even insert a new reminderitem in ical...(except maybe by dublicating and changing an existing one)...

also nesting todo's would be a very usefull option - so u can list different parts of one task inside a reminder.

-> on the iphone creating tons of lists would be a mess...for example i have my 2 lists for my subjects of study.

when i need to do a paper in one of them i want that paper as a reminder, with its partial tasks, like "reading texts", "mail to prof", "correcting" and so on...

Jun 19, 2012 11:06 AM in response to Apple Iceman

Add me to the list..


except I never added due dates to my reminders (created only in IOS, so i never knew there was a 'due' option), but then the 'due' field started showing up on some of my weekly reminders.. and the 'remind me' setting got disabled somehow. Not sure how this happened, but I was screwing around with the remiders quite a bit (on iOS) to try and figure out the bug.


Perhaps it will be fixed with the new 'Reminders' app in Mountain Lion?

Jul 31, 2012 12:59 PM in response to hunterdg

It looks like the problem is worse with Mountain Lion. There's no way to add due dates from within the Reminders app in either OS X or iOS. But I have discovered a workaround. The key is to create your reminders with a due date from within the calendar on iCloud.com. Once you do that, they should then appear in your Reminders apps with the due date option available alongside of the option to set an alert. I have detailed the process with screenshots on my blog:


http://blog.truthdialogue.com/2012/07/setting-due-dates-in-the-os-x-mountain-lio n-reminders-app.html


I sure hope Apple makes an easier way to do this. I'm pretty disappointed in the Reminders app as it stands right now. Anyway, enjoy.

Jul 31, 2012 8:37 PM in response to scribsac

Hi scribsac,


i see your point, but unless i'm mistaken, if you create a new reminder entry and set an alert, it automatically sets a due date for that day (if you open the reminder in iCloud.com it shows the due date as the same day that the alert is set for). it's a redundancy that i think "apple" has taken into consideration. or is there some other reason you would only want to set a due date without an alert?


as for my issues reported to apple, i am satisfied so far.

Reminder App (Inconsistencies)

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