Setting Reminders Using Shortcuts On a Mac

You can use the Shortcuts app to make it easy to add new Reminders. This could come in handy if you often find yourself recreating the same reminders every day or week.

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

Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com.  Let me show you how to use Shortcuts to Add and Remove Reminders. 
MacMost is brought to you thanks to a great group of more than 1000 supporters. Go to MacMost.com/patreon. There you can read more about the Patreon Campaign. Join us and get exclusive content and course discounts.
So the Shortcuts App has the ability to Add and Remove Reminders. You can use this to easily setup a new reminder. For instance, let's say you have a task that you need to sometimes accomplish at the end of the day. You can have a shortcut that automatically adds that reminder at the end of the day. This is actually a really simple shortcut to add. In the Shortcuts App, I'm going to use the Plus button here to create a new shortcut. Let's call the Set Report Reminder. Now let's go in the Sidebar here to ask and search for Reminders here. This will give us all the different things you could do with Reminders. Let's choose Add New Reminder. We can look at the information on it right here and see what it does. If I double click it will just Add it. Let's create a reminder and then we'll put the title of the reminder in here. 
Now we want to set this to notify us at the end of the day. So we'll have it Add To Reminders. We can have it go to a specific list. But let's use the default Reminder's List there. Then we'll set it up with an alert and we'll do it At A Time. But we can also have it When you Arrive or Leave a Location, or When you're Messaging Somebody. Let's go and set a time here. Now you can use somewhat natural language to set the time. So I could say Today at 4:45 p.m. Like that. You could also click Show More and you could do some other things you can set including an URL. So maybe in this case generating a report means going to a specific URL on a website. You can put that right here so you can just click it to do that. You could also add some notes here as well. 
Now let's go and create an icon for this. I'm going to use this. A little report looking icon here and a very specific color and then I'm going to go to the Settings here and say I want to Pin it in the Menu Bar which will put it in this Menu right here. So you can see it right there. So now I can Close this. You could see it right there and I could get back into it if I want. I can Hide the Shortcuts App. Here's the Reminders App. Let's run this and you could see it Adds it right there for today at 4:45. So it's just a quick way to add this during the day instead of having to go into the Reminders App and type this all out. 
Let's Delete this here manually in the Reminders App. So one of the cool things you could do is you can also use this with Siri. Just use the name of the Shortcut. "Set Report Reminder". Done. Now what happens if during the day you actually do this a little early and you want to delete the report. You could just go in Reminders and select it and Delete it or click here and it will Dismiss itself because you've accomplished the task. But you could also have a shortcut to do that. Let's create a new one here. I'm going to use Plus. I'm going to call this Remove Report Reminder. Instead of using the Add Reminder Action, I'm going to use the one called Remove Reminders. But I have to actually find the reminder to remove first. So I'm going to add Find Reminder first. Then I'm going to find in All Reminders and add a filter here that the title is, this is where it's handy to have a very unique title for this. Something that won't ever be used for something else. It's going to just find that one and then pass that into Remove Reminders. So Find anything with that title and then Remove it.
Now let's go in here and let's do the same thing. Let's add the same icon here with the same color here. The reason for that is I want to be able to look here and then see these two kind of grouped together because they've got the same icon. So now when I Hide the Shortcuts App and let's say let's Add the Reminder like that. You can see it Add this. Now maybe I finish the report early or maybe I find out that I don't actually need to do it today, I can go in here and remove it. It will actually look for those reminders and you have to Confirm. There's no way around that because it's a permanent action Shortcuts wants to confirm. So it's actually showing me two here. One was the one that I checked off was complete. It's going to find that one as well. So I can delete both of them like that. 
Now if I wanted to only find the ones that were active I can add another filter to this and set Is Not Completed. Let's get a little more complex. Let's say that sometimes you want to set it for the end of the day today but sometimes you want to set it for the end of the day tomorrow. Well, you can have Shortcuts offer you a choice. We can have those as two choices and maybe the Remove Reminder as a third choice. So they would all be bundled up in one shortcut. So let's create a new Shortcut here and let's search for Choose. One of the things we can do here is Choose From a Menu. That's what we want to do. So it's going to choose from a menu with a prompt, we'll just say Report Reminders, and then we'll do the first one as Generate Report Today. The second one is Tomorrow. Then I'm going to use the Plus button here and add a third one that's Delete Reminder. You can see this automatically generates these sections here in this shortcut so I can slot in the different things I need to do. 
So, let's go to the Reminders App again and let's add that new reminder. I'm going to drag it in here, Generate TPS Report Today. So I'm going to say Add to Reminders with an Alert at the time of today at 4:45 p.m. Then the same thing for the Tomorrow reminder. This time with an Alert at time, and I could say tomorrow at 4:45 p.m. Then Delete Reminder I could put what I had before. I could do Find Reminders, put it in here. Let's add the filter of Title Is and let's add in that additional filter of Is Not Completed so it won't try to delete any old ones. Then I can drag in Remove Reminders underneath that so it removes whatever it finds. I'll call this one Report Reminders and we can set this up like before. Then I can Add it as Pin in Menu Bar. 
So here's what I get when I try it. I'll do Report Reminders. It's going to offer me these options. Let's do Today. You can see it generates it there. Let's go try it again and let's say Delete the Reminder. It's going to find that one. Then I'll Confirm it and say Delete. I can go in here and add it for tomorrow instead.  You could see it adds it for there. I can Remove it if I want just as easily.
Of course you can continue to add more things here. You could do things like Friday at 4:45 p.m. So you could use it anytime during the week. It's always going to apply to the upcoming Friday. I hope this gives you some ideas on how you can use Shortcuts and Reminders together. Keep in mind that everything that we've done here works just as well on the iPhone or iPad as it does on the Mac. So once you create this since shortcuts are synced via iCloud you could just as easily use your iPhone to setup one of these reminders using the same script. So I hope you found this useful. 
Thanks for watching.

Comments: 2 Responses to “Setting Reminders Using Shortcuts On a Mac”

3 years ago

I don't see the Shortcuts app in my Apps folder. Is that app only included with OS Monterey?

Gary Rosenzweig

nr: It is new for Monterey, yes. If you have an older version of macOS, it won't be there.

Comments Closed.

Setting Reminders Using Shortcuts On a Mac

Comments: 2 Responses to “Setting Reminders Using Shortcuts On a Mac”

Welcome to MacMost

Free Weekly Newsletter

MacMost Online Courses

Keyboard Shortcuts PDF

Connect with MacMost

MacMost Sections

Popular Tutorials

Information