Reminders: List Sections and Column View

Starting with macOS Sonoma and iOS/iPadOS 17 you can now divide lists in Reminders into Sections. When using the new Column View, each section is in a separate column, making them similar to Kanban boards. You can easily move items from column to column and also combine this with subtasks and List Templates for more advanced uses.

Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let's take a look at using Sections and Column View in Reminders on the Mac and iPhone and iPad. 
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So in macOS Sonoma and iOS and iPad OS 17 there are some new features in Reminders. Most notably you can now have Sections in your lists. Once you have Sections you can actually switch to a very interesting Column View. Let's start with looking at Sections themselves. 
So here I am in the Reminders App. I'm going to create a New List. Now let's just call this list Test and I'll start off fresh. I can now create items by clicking the Plus button or just clicking in the middle here and add the items as normal. But, I can also click this button here up next to the Plus button. The is the Add A New Section button. You could also go to File, and then New Section. Then you can create a new section and call it whatever you want. So we'll just call this one Test A and then I'm going to create another section and I'll use the button this time and call this Test B. Now I've got, basically, two separate lists inside this list. I can add items to List A and I can add items to List B. You could see I can use the blank item at the bottom of each list to add another item to that. I also have a section at the bottom that is for all items that are not in the Sections here. So, for instance, I can add something to that. 
Now if I want to move things around I can do that by clicking and dragging to the left of the circle for the item and I can say move this item into Test A or Test B. I can move this item from Test A into Test B. You can see how I can easily move items between the different sections. 
Let's take a look at a better example. I'm going to create a new list here and I want to call this Weekend To-Do and I'll create this new list and I'm going to add some items to it. So I've got a bunch of To-Do items for this weekend, but it would be great to divide these up into Sections. So I'm going to add a section here and I'll create one called House. I'll add another one here called Yard and another one called Car. The I'll move items into each of these sections. So I can drag individual items into a section like that. I could also Shift Click to select several and then I'll drag all three of these into a section. I can do that with the other ones as well. There you go. I've now made the list a little easier to view and maybe seem like less work by dividing it into Sections like this. 
I could also have chosen a bunch of items by Shift Clicking like that and then gone to File, and then New Section with Selection. So a quick and easy way to create the sections. Notice there are keyboard shortcuts for New Section and also for New Section with Selection. 
You can also go to Edit Sections here and you could see the Sections. You could drag them around to change the order. There is the three dots button there and you could Rename a section. But you could also do that easily here. You can click right in here to Rename it and you can double click on a section like that to select it. Then you could reorder them if you like. 
As I complete items here they will, of course, disappear from the list. But keep in mind you can always bring those back to see your progress by going to View and then Show Completed. Then you can see the completed items there are well. 
So now that you know how to use Sections you can now use Column View. Column View doesn't actually change anything in the List. The List is still the same. But you're going to view it in a different way. To turn on Column View go to the View Menu and then change from As List to As Columns. When you do it will now look like this. So you can see each section is in its own column. If I had more columns than would fit here I would have to scroll left and right to see them all. You can see I have the same ability to actually Edit items, add notes, get info on the item, and add a time to it or priority, or whatever else I want. I can also rearrange items inside of a section by clicking and dragging to the left of the circle and I can drag down. Like that. I can also move to another section by dragging to the left or right very easily. If I want to add a new item to a section I just use the blank item at the bottom of each one. Note the I only created three sections but there is another section here. That's anything that is uncategorized.
Now when viewing the regular way you can create subitems. You can do the same thing here. So, for instance, I can create an item like this and I can make it a subitem of this by dragging it into it. You can see now it's a subtask. So it is grouped together kind of in one box here and there is a little line between it and you can see that there is a subtask there. So let's add another one, like that. I'll drag this one also into this. So you can see it highlights the entire thing. Now I've got these two items here and I could hide the subtask or show them. If I want to drag them out I could easily do that. I can drag it just above or below or to another section. Anywhere I want. 
Let's look at some other examples. Here I've got a To-Do List for a project. But I've divided up the To-Do List by person. So maybe I'm the team leader and I have some tasks here and I want to make sure I can check them off as everybody completes their task. So dividing it in sections is really handy. I don't have to specify in each individual item who has to do it and I can easily move an item from one person to another. This even works better if you go into Column View because now I can see each person and how well they are doing completing their tasks and I can also move an item from one person to another, create subtasks, even move an item out to the Others Section here if it hasn't been assigned to a person yet. 
Here's another example. This is a project but by stage. I have Designed, Develop, Test, and then Next Version Stage here that I've got so I can view this in Column View and it's really nice to be able to see it this way. If I show completed here then as I finish items I get a really nice overview of how the project is going. 
Now a lot of people are referring to this as a Combine Mode for Reminders. I don't use project management software but from what I can tell a true Combine Board would include things like Swim Lanes and it wouldn't move around items as you completed them and such. So this probably still isn't a substitute for professional level project management software. But it could be useful for lots of personal or small projects. 
There are plenty of things you can do in the Context Menu when working with Column View. If I Control Click, two-finger click or right click, you can see that I can create a New Column. I can create a New Column with Selection. I can Edit the column so get to that Edit View. I can move this item to a new column so I don't have to drag and drop if I don't want to. You can also find a lot of these things in the File Menu which means that you could add Keyboard Shortcuts for these specific items here if you really wanted to. So, if you're always using Design and Develop Test, Next Version, for all of your lists then you may want to add keyboard shortcuts in System Settings, Keyboard for this and be able to select the item and use the keyboard shortcut to move it to another section. 
Another thing you can do is you can use this in conjunction with Templates. So I'm going to create a New List here and I'll choose a good icon for this and since I'm going to be using it as a template I'll create it and what I'll do is I'll add Sections here without adding any items. So Design and Develop and Test and maybe some other sections. But this is what I want for the template. So I'll select File and then Save As Template. I'll call it a Work Project Template. There I go and I'll delete the original list here. So now when I create a New List then I can go to Templates. I can select the Work Project template and now I've got those sections. I can just switch that to Column View and I've got my board. 
Now I've been showing you this on the Mac in macOS Sonoma. This also works in iOS 17 and iPad OS17. Here it is in iPad OS 17. It works pretty much the same way but of course it is a touch interface so you're going to drag and drop by using your finger rather than using a pointer. But all the features are there. It also works on the iPhone. But unfortunately the Reminders App on the iPhone only works in vertical orientation. That makes using Columns a little difficult. But if you're primarily using this on your Mac or iPad and you just need to access it occasionally on your iPhone then it is probably fine. 
So I hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 3 Responses to “Reminders: List Sections and Column View”

Sheldon

6 months ago

Thanks bunches

Eric

This could be useful Gary. Is there a facility to quickly import a list of items from a simple text file in such a way that each line in the text file became a list item (and then subsequently organised within Reminders into Sections)?

Gary Rosenzweig

Eric: I don't think so, no.

Reminders: List Sections and Column View

Comments: 3 Responses to “Reminders: List Sections and Column View”

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