Using Siri On Your Mac To Remind You About Email, Web Pages, Documents and More

You can quickly and easily create reminders from email messages, web pages and documents to remind you to complete a task at a later time. The notification you receive will link you directly back to the content. You can also use this for Maps locations, Messages and a variety of other items on your Mac.

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Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. MacMost is brought to you by the more than 300 people that contribute to the MacMost Patreon campaign. Find out how you can become a part of it at macmost.com/patreon.
So one of the most useful features of Siri on the Mac is its ability to set reminders. It does this contextually. So you can have it remind you of different things that you're doing at the time. I use this all the time in email. I want Siri to remind me about an email message so I can get it out of my inbox but still take action later on. Now I can ask Siri to just create a reminder to tell me to do something at any time I want. But what I want is a link back to this message so I can get it out of my inbox. It's a little tricky to do. You need to use the right language and also I find it works a lot better if you open up the email in a separate window.
So I'm going to double click here on the message and it opens it up in a separate window. Now I can ask Siri, "Remind me about this message in one minute". OK, I'll remind you. You can see it has the subject of the message here and the little mail icon there. So I can now close this. I can archive this message so it's no longer in my inbox. I can even quit Mail. Now if I look in Reminders I can see here I have a reminder to tell me, in one minute, about this message. 
So I'm going to wait for that notification to appear. So there it is. Now I can click Open in Mail. I can also do the same thing by clicking on the Mail icon there in Reminders at anytime. So if I don't want to wait I can actually just access it in Reminders. I'll click Open Mail and it will open up the Mail app and open up that message even though the email message is now archived. It's not in my inbox anymore. Now I can respond to it and take care of that message.
You can also drag and drop. So I can take an email message here and I can drag and drop it into Reminders and can kind of manually type the time I want it to remind me. You don't have to have a time either. You can just say remind me about this email and then it will add it to your default list, your Reminders list. So something that maybe you refer to every morning or something like that.
For instance I can be in Safari and say I want to be reminded of a certain webpage. "Remind me about this webpage in one hour".  OK, I'll remind you. Now I can close this window. I can Quit Safari. You can see here it has added that. It has the title of the page and it would open that webpage. This is a great alternative to Bookmarks. If you ever use a Bookmark to just remind you of something once and then, of course, your Bookmarks stays cluttered with all of this. You can use Reminders instead.
Where else can you use this? Well, you can use it in Maps. So you can search for a place like, let's see, Madison Square Garden. I find it works best if you open up the info on it completely. Then you ask Siri, "Remind me about this location in one hour". OK, I'll remind you. You can see it has Maps right there. So I will change the location. I will move around on the map. I'll Quit Maps. But if I click there and Open it will open it up back to Madison Square Garden. 
You can use it to remind you about files. So, for instance, here I'll go into the Finder. I will look for a file here. I'll select a file. "Remind me about this file in one hour". OK, I'll remind you. So now I'll close that Finder window there and I will see where that reminder takes me. Sure enough it opens it up and it has that file selected. So it works there. I've had mixed results with it working inside of apps. So in Pages saying remind me about this document sometimes it seems to work and sometimes it doesn't. So that's not perfect.
You can do it in Notes though. So I can select a note. So I have various notes here. I'll select this note here, the test one. "Remind me about this note in one hour". OK, I'll remind you. So now I'll switch to another note and Quit the Notes app and then I will use this reminder and it will take me right to the test note. So that works. It also works in Messages. So you can go in the Messages app and you can be on a specific conversation here. "Remind me about this message in one hour". OK, I'll remind you. You can then Quit the Messages app and then when the alert arrives it will take you right to that conversation here in Messages. So it's great way if you can't respond to somebody right now to get a reminder at some point in the future to continue that conversation then.
There's all sorts of cool and useful ways to use Siri and Reminders to make you work better with all the apps on your Mac.

Comments: 12 Responses to “Using Siri On Your Mac To Remind You About Email, Web Pages, Documents and More”

MURRAY G ATHERTON

2 years ago

I take it that this wonderful reminder does not work the same in iOS on an iphone.

Gary Rosenzweig

Murray: Why not just try it? I just did and it worked fine. I viewed an email in Mail for iOS, activated Siri, and asked her to “Remind me about this message in 1 hour.” The reminder was created with a link to the message. I was even able to go to Reminders on my Mac after that, see the reminder, and it linked to the message in Mac Mail.

Diane Stern

First I love macmost – thanks for doing it. I tried this feature as it seemed great but it doesn’t seem to work for me. With Mail, it just took me to my Inbox not a specific message and it doesn’t work at all with a web page – I can ask Siri but she never responds at all. I am running Mojave 10.14.3 so that isn’t the problem.

Diane: Did you open the message in its own window?

Diane

Gary – well, duh! I forgot that advisory. It worked in Mail when I did that. Web pages sometimes work but I think the problem is my laptop which needs to be replaced

Brad

Hi Mate, This was very helpful thanks

Robyn

Very helpful video. You are such a star, Gary. Thank you for sharing your amazing Mac knowledge.

Ertugrul

I do not use siri most of the time (cannot get used to use siri), but this feature works with sharing (share with reminders) in mac apps… However, in Safari, when I share an address with Reminders, it works but shows another web browser’s icon at the end of the Reminders item… How could it be..?

Ertugrul: Do you have another browser set as you default in System Preferences, General?

No not at all…
I installed Chrome, FireFox and Yandex on my Mac so as to use them when needed,
but I always use Safari and my default web browser is Safari in System Preferences, General…

Christy Hemenway

I’ve tried asking Siri to remind me about this webpage in one minute … tried it in Firefox and in Safari. Siri responds: “Sorry, I can’t remind you about the Maps app.” Closed the maps app, now Siri says “I can’t remind you about the Word app.” :-(. Am I missing something?

Christy: it sounds like Safari is not your frontmost app.

Comments Closed.

Using Siri On Your Mac To Remind You About Email, Web Pages, Documents and More

Comments: 12 Responses to “Using Siri On Your Mac To Remind You About Email, Web Pages, Documents and More”

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