Using Mac Reminders List Templates

A new feature in macOS Ventura is that you can now create list templates in Reminders. You can use these to easily recreate lists with some default items instead of starting from scratch.
Check out Using Mac Reminders List Templates at YouTube for closed captioning and more options.
Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let me show you how to use List Templates in Reminders.
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Now a new feature in macOS Ventura and also in iOS 16 and iPad OS16 is that you can now create List Templates in Reminders. So you don't have to start each Reminders List from scratch. Let's start with this simple example. Say you have a grocery shopping list like this. Now you could go grocery shopping and maybe on your iPhone you're checking off different items as you get them and then it removes them from the list. The next time you want to go grocery shopping you could go and scroll to the top of this list, click Show, and then Uncheck those items to add them back. Or you could simply Select All of those and then go to Edit and mark it Incomplete. 
But another way to do this now is to create a list template. So you start off with a regular list like this. Then you go to File and then Save As Template. Now you're going to give it a name. It's going to start, by default, with the name you already have for the list. In this case that works. So let's create it. It's going to take the icon and the color you're using for that template list as well. So if you wanted that to be something different you may want to have gone to Show List Info first and changed the icon and color there. 
Now let's say you go shopping and you complete all the the items on this list like that. They are all done. You're finished with shopping. You can Delete this list. Then next week rolls along and it's time to go shopping again. Now you can go to File and New List. Notice that you have the option here to create a new list, name it, give it a color and icon and all of that. But you could also go to Template and then select that grocery shopping list and Create List. You can also just double-click on this. It will take all the items that were stored in that template and create a new list from it. It uses the Title, the Icon, everything. So in this example with grocery shopping the ideal would be to put all the items that you regularly pickup when shopping on this list. Then when you create a new list from this template you can go in and Edit it so you can get rid of an item that you don't need and then maybe add a new item to the list. It's a lot better than starting off from scratch. 
Here's another example. Here's a list that you may start off with when you want to pack for a trip. You've got your basic items here. You can create a template from this as well and now you've got two templates. If you want to go and create a new list you can select Templates and select from the list. But you could also go to View Templates. Then you see all your templates here. Now you could double-click on anyone of these to create a new list from the template. You could also select it and click Create List. There's also a variety of options you can choose here. So you could Show Template Info and this is where you could change the template name, which will be used as the default when you create a new list from this template. You could change the color and you could change the icon, if you want, to something else. Like that. You could also go in and edit the template. This will open up this list in its own window. Now you can go in here. You can't checkoff items because this isn't really an active list. You're just editing the template. But you can go in and you can change the name for each of these items. You can add new items to it. You also have buttons here at the bottom for deleting this template or creating a new list from it. You could also go here and delete the template or rename it right from this list.
Now another thing you can do is you can Share a template. So as soon as you hit Share there it's going to now be a Shared List. You can decide to send an invite via email or messages or you can just Copy the Link to send it to somebody else like that. They would get the template and be able to create their own list from this template but not Edit it. Once you have it Shared you can go back here, go to Manage Link. You could send the link again or you can Stop Sharing. 
Now each reminder in a list can have other properties, such as a Tag like that or perhaps maybe a Time, like that. In that case when you go to Share the template you're going to be asked whether or not to include these times and tags in the Shared version. Now you would think that if you use a Time here and you create a new list from a Template that the time would adjust. So if this is today at 11:00 then if I were to use it three weeks from now I would still get today at 11:00. But, at least, in my tests it actually uses the original date instead. So you have to adjust that. So using Time with Reminders real doesn't work very well for a template. 
So here's another example of how to use this. So let's say you have a list to Tasks that you need to get through everyday. So you can create a list like this. I'm going to go in and save this as a template. Once I have it as a template, let's say starting off fresh here, and I want to view my templates, create a new one for today and then I'll give it a date like that. Then I can go through and mark off the items as I've completed them. Then the next day I can create a new version of it and give it a new date like that. I can even go in and archive this by creating a new group and call it Past Days like that. Then close it there. So then all of my lists move into here once I've moved on to the next day. But if I wanted to go back and review the day and see what I didn't get done I can. Notice since I used the Tag here for this one it will be the same tag for every list. So if I did a Search here for all of those I could see them and you could see how I haven't completed these. If I go back here and say okay I did complete it on that day and I look at the Tags I could see only the days that I haven't completed it and show the days where I have. 
So that's just one example how you can combine features in Reminders to do different things. So, of course, these lists here could actually be things like Training Lists of Exercises, Lists of Medications you need to take everyday, that kind of thing. I hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.
Using Mac Reminders List Templates

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