6/15/22
9:00 am

New macOS Ventura Notes and Reminders Features

There will be lots of new features in the Notes and Reminders apps in macOS Venture this fall. See how you'll be able to filter and use Smart Folders in Notes, create and reuse templates in Reminders and more.

You can also watch this video at YouTube (but with ads).

Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let's take a look at what's new in the Notes and Reminders apps in macOS Ventura. 
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So macOS Ventura will bring a lot of changes to some of the built-in apps on your Mac including Notes and Reminders. So the first thing you may notice in Notes is that if you are in List View here and you see a list of all your notes they are grouped according to date. For instance here I've got Today, Previous 30 Days, April, March and so on. So you can see different groups there depending. Like you might see Yesterday if I had one I created just yesterday. Now you have these folders here on the left and you can create your own folders and move notes into them. But you also have Smart Folders. 
So you can either do New and then New Smart Folder or click the Plus button down here and then create a new folder but you can make it into a Smart Folder with that check box there. Now this is far more complex than in macOS Monterey. Because now you can define all sorts of things about the Smart Folder, not just the Tags to include. Before if you included two tags it would basically only include notes that had both of those tags in them. But now you can do Tags and then  have a list of tags here but do All Selected, Any Selected, and then Any Tag which removes this field here. Or Untagged Notes Only. So I can do Any Selected and then list a couple of tags there and any notes that have any of those tags, not all of them, will be listed in that Smart Folder. Then you could click this Plus button here and do even more. 
So you could do things like Date Created, Date Edited, whether the note is Shared, Mentions in notes, whether it has checklist attachment, and so on. So you can put a really complex definition of a Smart Folder in here. So say anything that has certain tags and was created, say, in the last 30 days and make that into a Smart Folder. 
Now instead of using Smart Folders one thing you can do is just use Tags down here to filter things. So you can see I have All iCloud selected here and if I just want to see the ones that had the Alpha 1 tag applied I can select it. I would get just those notes. Now if I select a second one then it is going to show me notes that have both of those tags, which there is nothing there. But I could change it right here to Any Selected instead. So now these are all the notes that either have Alpha 1 or the Beta tag applied.  Now let me go back to All Selected and click on this again. Now what I'm getting is anything that has Beta but not Alpha 1. You can see how there is a line through it there.  So you can do that with as many tags as you want. Either have them On, have them Excluded, or Not take that tag into account with filtering here. They do pretty complex filtering of your notes to see which ones match which tags and which don't. 
Finally you've got the ability now to lock Notes in a different way. If I lock this note here you could see now I could do it one of two ways. I can use a separate Password which is the way we did it before creating a special password just for use in Notes. But I could also use the Login Password. So the same Password I use to log into my Mac will protect Notes. So the separate password is useful if somebody else has access to your Mac and knows the password but you want to have a separate password so they can't get into your locked Notes. The first one is useful if basically nobody has got the password to your Mac but occasionally you leave it unlocked and you want to make sure that you're prompted for that password again before Notes are unlocked. 
Now let's take a look at the Reminders app which also has some changes in macOS Ventura. So you're going to see Groupings here as well. If you go to the Today view you're going to see everything grouped into Morning, Afternoon, and Tonight depending upon the time that the Reminder is for. Also, on the left here there's a completed list so you can see all your completed tasks in one spot. If you have a list that you use all the time and it is much more important than the rest of these you could always select it and then go to File, Pin List and it will actually add itself up here to the top. So to get to that particular list you've got this nice button now instead of having to search for it below. 
Now we had the ability before to create Groups so let's create a group here. I'll just call it Test. You can see its got this list in it. If I were to drop another list in there I've got two lists. If I select the Group notice I see both lists now at the same time. So you can group together lists that have something in common, select the group and see everything.  Now you can also create a Template List. So let's create a New List here and I'm going to call it Packing List. I'll select an icon and a color for it as well. Okay. I'm going to add some things to this Packing List. So now I've got this Packing List here. What I'm going to do is go to File and then Save it as a template. I'll call the template Packing List. So now I can go through and, say, check each one of these off as I pack for a trip. Then I'm done with this list. I could always create a new list here and I can go to Template and there is Packing List. I can click here and this is where I can Edit the template. I can Show Template Info, like that. I can Rename it. I can Delete it. But Select It and create a list. You can see it creates a new Packing List from the original template. I can easily go in here and Rename this something else and reuse that over and over again.
Filters in Reminder also works  a little better just like they do in Notes. Here I've got different Tags. I could select, say, this tag and see the list that match it. I could select this tag and I'll see lists that match both of those. All Selected. But I could change it Any Selected and I'll see lists that have either this tag, this tag, or both. I could also click again and now I'm seeing lists that have this tag but not this tag. Another new feature is that the notes for each Reminder inside of each list can use Rich Text. So let me select this one here. I'll get Info on it. You could see there is Notes. Now I can type something here and normally this would just be Plain Text in here. But now I actually can Control click it, two finger click on a trackpad or right click on a mouse, and notice how the Context Menu has things like Font Styles and Bullets & Numbering. So you can create a little bulleted list inside of a note inside of a Reminder inside a Reminders List. 
So it looks like macOS Ventura takes another big step forward in making the Notes and Reminders apps even more robust. Any of this could change, of course, during the Beta but hopefully we'll get all of these new features in the Fall with the release of macOS Ventura. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 26 Responses to “New macOS Ventura Notes and Reminders Features”

Dara Hogan

3 years ago

Any sign of Apple re-instating the Reminders share from Contacts. If I needed to call a Contact I could set up a reminder to do so with one click but some years ago Apple removed that very useful feature! Indeed, some of my older recurring Reminders still have my link to the relevant Contact active in Reminders - and they still work!

Jonathan Bernstein

3 years ago

Gary, any way to use Mac OS Finder tags in Notes?

Gary Rosenzweig

3 years ago

Dara: I don't think so.

Gary Rosenzweig

3 years ago

Jonathan: There is no cross-over with the tags. But you can just use the same text for the same tags if it helps you organize.

Hank Chiuppi

3 years ago

Can notes be on icloud?

Gary Rosenzweig

3 years ago

Hank: By default they should be. If not, check your iCloud settings.

Adrian

2 years ago

Do you know if indented reminders will show up indented in the Today/Scheduled views, or does everything still show up at the same level?

Gary Rosenzweig

2 years ago

Adrian: I think the same level. But why not just try it and see. What I would do would be to create a sample reminder and see what it does. Try it and report back.

Adrian

2 years ago

Thanks for the quick response. Unfortunately I don't have a spare system to try Ventura on right now.

Christine

2 years ago

Thank you for the super helpful video! On Ventura, where will reminders without a time appear on the Today list - before or after the ones that are marked morning, afternoon, and evening?

Gary Rosenzweig

2 years ago

Christine: Reminders without a time wouldn't appear at all on the Today list.

Christine

2 years ago

Yikes. I rely heavily on reminders that are assigned a date but not a specific time of day. If those reminders don’t appear on the Today view in Ventura, I’m sunk. Thanks for answering, Gary!

Gary Rosenzweig

2 years ago

Christine: Sorry, I only tested reminders without any time at all. Sounds like you are asking for reminders with a Date, but no specific time (as a programmer, a date IS a "time"). Of course reminders with a date (but no time) that are due "today" will be shown in the Today list.

Christine

2 years ago

Thanks, Gary! Sorry I wasn’t clearer in my original question. Can you tell me…in Ventura, do the reminders with a date of today but with no specific time of day appear before or after the morning, afternoon, and evening reminders in the Today view? I’m trying to plan for how my workflow will change. Again, much thanks!

Gary Rosenzweig

2 years ago

Christine: In the current beta, they are before.

Christine

2 years ago

Thanks, Gary!

Joel

2 years ago

Gary, great set of videos, I watch daily. Quick question on Reminders.

I am using Reminders' the following Smart Lists / Smart Folders capability one of which is called Tomorrow.

The problem is every day I need to manually update the Date in the Tomorrow Smart List (i.e., there is no way I can find to automate this).

Question: is there a way to do that I am missing? Can be done though Automator, Shortcuts, or other?

Thank you.

Gary Rosenzweig

2 years ago

Joel: When you create or alter the Smart List, use "Date" and "Relative Range" and then "In the Next" and 1 Day.

Joel

2 years ago

Gary: Appreciate the response but that does not work as it captures BOTH today's and tomrrow's activities. I only want to capture tomorrow's activities.

I was thinking:

- Reminders has limited Apple Script functionality so that is a no go;

- What about using Apple Script to modify the file where the Smart List "dates" are stored / written? Do you know what / where this file is as I cannot find it?

Thanks,

Gary Rosenzweig

2 years ago

Joel: I see what you mean. No solution for that right now. I wouldn't try to mess around with user library files like that. I don't think it will work.

Joel

2 years ago

Gary, much appreciated.

Any suggestions as to a Reminders line application that can do what I am looking for.

Thanks.

Gary Rosenzweig

2 years ago

Joel: No idea. Is all you are trying to do is see a list of items due tomorrow? But not ones including today? Maybe a Shortcut can do it, but I'm not clear on the WHY here. Why would you want to see items due tomorrow but not items that you haven't completed for today yet? Maybe I'm missing something about your goal here.

Joel

2 years ago

Gary, easy answer. I have three Smart Lists; Today, Tomorrow and Two Days so I can plan the next few work days (i.e., I want to have separate lists for each of the "time lines").

The today Smart Lists "automatically" rolls forward. The Tomorrow and Two days Smart Lists do not meaning each morning I need to manually change the date. The goal is to get the Tomorrow and Two Days Star Lists automatically roll forward. Does that help?

Do you have any solutions or suggested alternative app?

Gary Rosenzweig

2 years ago

Joel: Isn't sorting by date doing what you need? If you just show all incomplete items, or just the ones due within the next 2 days, then you can see all of that and pretty easily tell what its today, tomorrow and the next day by the dates there. It may not be exactly what you are looking for, but easy to do.

Joel

2 years ago

Gary, fair enough. That said, I would prefer to have three discrete lists / Smart Lists so I can look at each day separately and automatically.

With that, my options appear to be to a) find a different application that has this capability or b) stick with Reminders and update the criteria on daily basis.

Will post this issue on teh App Support forum with the hope that someone is listening!

That you.

Joel

2 years ago

I have continue do dig into this. In my digging, I did stumble across an Application called GoodTask which is a) a Reminders overlay and b) provides a wide range of capability / functionality that is not provided in Reminders. There is a trial version which I am using and it does do what I need / want, to bad Reminders does not.

Because it is a Reminders overlay, I can revert back to Reminders if and when it becomes more feature rich.

Comments Closed.

New macOS Ventura Notes and Reminders Features

Comments: 26 Responses to “New macOS Ventura Notes and Reminders Features”

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