Recurring reminders on Mac: how to set them in Reminders

To set a recurring reminder on a Mac, open Reminders, add a reminder, click the info button beside it, give it a date and a time, and pick an option from the Repeat menu, such as Daily, Weekly or Custom. When you tick it off, Reminders moves it on to its next date.

That covers most needs. The finer control hides in places people rarely open: Custom repeats, End Repeat, early reminders and Smart Lists.

How to make a reminder repeat

1. Open Reminders and choose a list in the sidebar, or make a new one with Add List at the bottom.
2. Press Command-N, or click in the empty space below the last reminder, and type a title.
3. Hover over the reminder and click the i button that appears, to show its details.
4. Turn on a date and a time. A reminder needs a date before it can repeat.
5. Open the Repeat menu and choose how often.

The layout of the details pane shifts a little between versions of macOS, but the date, time and Repeat controls are there in every recent one. You can also ask Siri in a full sentence, such as "remind me to send my timesheet every Friday at 4 PM", which usually sets up the repeat in one go. Open the details afterwards to check it heard you correctly.

The repeat options, and what each is good for

The Repeat menu offers Hourly, Daily, Weekly, Monthly and Yearly, plus Custom. Recent versions add a few more presets, such as Weekdays, Biweekly and Every 3 Months.

Hourly needs care. It has no idea when your working day starts or ends, so it suits a few hours better than a standing habit.

Custom repeats

Choose Custom… from the Repeat menu for anything the presets don't cover. You pick a frequency and an interval, such as every 2 weeks or every 3 months, and then the details:

• Weekly: tick the days. Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday is one reminder, not three.
• Monthly: choose dates, such as the 1st and the 15th, or a pattern, such as the first Monday or the last weekday of the month.
• Yearly: choose the months, and a pattern within them if you need one.

End Repeat

Once a reminder repeats, an End Repeat option appears with it. It decides when the series stops: never, after a set number of times, or on a date. Use it for anything with a natural end, like a weekly reminder for the eight weeks of a course, so your lists don't fill with leftovers from finished projects.

Early reminders: a heads up before it's due

Some reminders need preparation. A 4 PM reminder to send a report is too late if the report isn't written. In recent versions of macOS the details include Early Reminder, which sends an extra alert ahead of the due time. Pick one of the preset lead times, from minutes to a good while before, or set a custom one.

A good pattern for weekly tasks is to set the due time for when it must be done and the early reminder for when you should start. For a Friday report, that might be due at 4 PM with an early reminder a day before. If the early time has already passed when you set it, Reminders tells you and doesn't send it.

Use Smart Lists to see your repeating reminders

A list of repeating chores is only useful if you can see what is coming up. Reminders has built-in Smart Lists at the top of the sidebar, such as Today, Scheduled, Flagged and Completed. Scheduled is the one for repeats: it shows your reminders by date, with each repeating reminder at its next due date.

You can also make your own. Choose File > New Smart List, or in some versions click Add List and make it a Smart List, then pick filters: tags, dates, times, locations, flags, priority and lists. Reminders that match the filters gather there on their own, wherever they live.

One example: tag your household reminders #home, then make a Smart List for #home with a date in the next 7 days. Every Saturday you see the week's chores in one place, whichever lists they came from.

Smart Lists you make yourself need Reminders in iCloud. Reminders says plainly that only Apple Account lists can be converted to Smart Lists, so lists in an On My Mac account are left out.

Do recurring reminders sync with iPhone?

Yes, if both devices use Reminders in iCloud with the same Apple Account. On the Mac, open System Settings, click your name, then iCloud, and make sure Reminders is on. In recent versions it may sit behind a See All button in the list of apps using iCloud. On the iPhone, the same switch is in Settings under your name, then iCloud.

Once it is on, a repeating reminder you make on the Mac appears on the iPhone with the same schedule, and ticking it off on either one moves it on everywhere. Two things to expect:

• Alerts may come on every device. The same reminder can alert your Mac and your phone at the same moment. Handy when you are away from the desk, noisy when you are at it.
• Lists stored on My Mac stay put. If you have an On My Mac account in Reminders, its lists don't sync. Move a reminder to an iCloud list if you want it on the phone.

What Reminders isn't good at

Reminders is excellent for dated jobs: rent on the 1st, the timesheet on Friday, a passport that expires next spring. It is weaker at the small, repeating care of a working day, for a few reasons.

• A missed repeat doesn't come back by itself. A repeating reminder generally moves on only when you complete it. Ignore Monday's and it sits there overdue instead of alerting you fresh on Tuesday.
• It has no sense of your day. There is no built-in way to say "every couple of hours, but only while I'm working". Hourly and Daily follow the clock.
• It fires whatever you are doing. Unless a Focus holds it back, a reminder due at 3 PM arrives at 3 PM, in the middle of a call or while you are out at lunch.
• It says the same thing every time. After a few weeks, the same banner with the same words is easy to dismiss without reading.

For habits like drinking water or getting up from the chair, those gaps matter more than they do for rent. How to set a water reminder on your Mac compares the options for that one habit, and reminders that know when not to remind you looks at why timing beats repetition.

Where Notchpals fits alongside Reminders

Notchpals takes the second kind of reminder, the ones about you rather than your tasks, and it is built around the gaps above. Its characters come out of the Mac's notch to suggest a glass of water, a posture check, an eye break or a stretch. You don't set a repeat for these. You pick a pace in Settings, Calm, Normal or Chatty, which gives your whole crew 4, 8 or 12 repeating reminders a day, spaced out and counted only while you are actually at the Mac. They hold off during calls, and the words change, because a character won't repeat a line within three days.

LoloA glass of water fixes almost everything. Even me. Drink up!

That is Lolo, an axolotl, on water duty. Press Done when you have had a glass. Press Later and Lolo tries once more in a while; put it off again and it drops the subject. A skipped reminder never sits in a list going overdue, and there is no log to keep: Notchpals trusts your Done.

One thing not to build in Reminders at all is a repeating reminder for a weekly meeting. Calendar's alerts already cover it, and if you allow calendar access, a Schedule character such as Biscuit, a hamster with very full cheeks, comes out of the notch a few minutes before each meeting starts. Press Done as you head into the call and you get the hamster's thanks.

BiscuitPhew. I can cross that off my worry list. Only 312 left!