1st May, 2024
Here's our list of the eight best reminder apps for daily reminders, calendar reminders, desktop reminders and much more. Reminder apps helps you stay on top of tasks and to never forget a thing again.
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Need a better way to reminder things, important birthdays, even recycling days?
You might not need a to-do list application, but a reminders app to help you organize what things you need a light nudge on. Amazingly, the human brain can only remember 50% of the information you receive is forgotten within an hour.
So capturing a reminder, fast and easily is the key ingredient to remembering things.
Reminder apps come in all kinds of shapes and sizes.
You can use a super simple task reminder app on your mobile, or you can create a more in-depth workspace for organising lists and to-dos with desktop reminders that sync to your mobile. All reminder apps do the same thing, they want to remind you of the things you need to get done each day.
Some reminder apps might integrate with your calendar to automatically add events, you may also want to collaborate with task apps and send reminders to teams and set up repeating notifications throughout the day to further remind you to complete a task.
Here's our top picks for what a reminder app needs & how we picked these tools:
What's important? | Why? |
---|---|
Quick and speedy capture | This is great for quickly capturing new reminders very fast and easy |
Good notification & nudges | Light but important reminders aren't missed via the notifications |
Works on mobile & syncs devices | Reminder apps need to be mobile-friendly and accessible across devices |
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Due is a really great reminders app for both mobile, desktop and syncing with Apple Watch. You can also use Due if you have a SetApp subscription.
The thing about Due is its ease of use and persistent reminders. You can quickly add tasks and time frames to Due then set reminders to keep coming until you have done the task.
Due also allows you to run multiple timers at once for your daily routine. For example, you could create an entire morning routine with exact timers to go through, both optimising your time and getting everything done.
Another great feature of the Due reminder app is the ability to sync between your Mac, iPhone and Apple Watch to stay on top of tasks all day. You can use iCloud or Dropbox to sync to different devices.
Overall Due presents a nice minimal and intuitive interface that helps you manage all your daily tasks in one place, the use of continuous reminders means you are less likely to forget and more likely to complete the task, even if it's to just stop the reminders coming in.
Any.DO isn't just a reminders app, it spans into project management for teams, planning your family and a calendar and tasks app for just yourself.
At the heart, Any.DO does offer reminders, location-based reminders and recurring items so that you can get into a health routine, whether that be your reminders, or the whole families focuses for the week, or even a small team project management.
For reminders, Any.DO is one of the best out there. Despite the features being locked under the premium for reminders, the abilities are very good for managing your day ahead, using calendar and tasks.
It has a good series of reminder features like on mobile the ability to add location based ones and even use WhatsApp to capture tasks, which makes the experience even closer when you don't open Any.DO in a long time.
Used by over 10,000 highly productive people. Try with 7-day free trial
Try Akiflow now for a 10x productivity boost
Things 3 is a very well-loved productivity app for following the GTD method, remembering tasks and organising time efficiently. With Things 3 you can plan your entire day and set helpful reminders to push you along your tasks, you can also manage larger projects.
Create separate places for types of tasks, such as work, family and personal. Inside here you can have notes and a list of tasks. You can add things such as location, priorities and dates to further organize. Set reminders to pop up when you need to complete a task or to remind you of anything coming up.
You can also add tasks that pop into your head straight into the inbox space to sort out later, making Things 3 a really quick way to jot down information and not forget a thing. Just drag and drop tasks around to rearrange and craft your daily plan.
Overall, Things 3 is a very popular GTD app for those who need a streamlined place to organize all the things they need to get done.
Microsoft To-Do is one the best reminder apps because it is just so simple and easy to use. If you are looking for a reminder app for desktop or mobile to just get through daily tasks, Microsoft To-Do is a great option. It's also a no-brainer if you're already within the Microsoft Ecosystem.
Use the My Day feature to have personalized and intelligent tasks come up for you, you can then choose which tasks you want to have in your daily plan and set reminders to alert you to complete certain tasks.
The Microsoft To-Do app can be accessed online so you can use and see your list anywhere, on desktop and mobile. Share lists with family and friends to organise events or even send lists to team members to remind them of daily tasks. Here's a beginners guide for managing your Microsoft To-Do.
Overall, Microsoft To-Do is perfect for someone who wants a simple list of to-dos, organised well into separate folders and spaces, with added reminders to get things done.
Used by over 10,000 highly productive people. Try with 7-day free trial
Try Akiflow now for a 10x productivity boost
Todoist is a great task reminder app for both personal use and use with teams.
You can set priority levels, add tags and organise tasks by project, with labels and set favourites. Keep in mind though, that you can only set reminders if you have upgraded to the PRO plan of Todoist.
With the PRO plan you can unlock the use of reminders, a really helpful tool for increasing productivity a little bit further and ensuring you get things done. You can receive reminders on other apps without having to upgrade, but the PRO plan of Todoist also unlocks the ability to use AI assistant, automatic backups and create up to 300 personal projects.
Overall, Todoist is probably a more advanced to-do list app that is great for using with teams or if you have multiple projects on the go, as we said, you will have to upgrade to unlock the ability to set reminders and notifications for tasks.
TickTick is another great app for following the GTD method, it has tons of features and abilities to help organise your life and your time through task management. You can integrate your calendar with TickTick to combine tasks and events already existing elsewhere.
TickTick also has a feature for habit tracking, a Pomodoro timer and priority lists. Anyway, this is all great as part of the app but what about being a daily task reminder app? With TickTick you can quickly add tasks with natural language to automatically add dates and times to tasks, this then prompts reminders to show up on your device to alert you of upcoming events or something you need to do.
When using TickTick on iOS or Android you can even receive location-based reminders, this works by popping up once you arrive or leave specific destinations linked to your tasks. The benefit of this is to further remind you of what needs to be done, and where you now need to go.
Overall, TickTick is a more in-depth app with added reminders for getting things done and organising your life. Recently they changed their pricing to be slightly more expensive.
Google Keep is a good option for managing tasks and to-dos in a very simple setting. The app is fun and quirky with sticky notes for tasks, audio notes, images and more. You can see all your notes in one place and set reminders for each of them.
With Google Keep your reminders can be time-based to help you complete a task within a certain period, and location-based to alert you of things you need to get done when in a certain location. This isn't a full to-do list application, but works well as light notes & tasks.
Users enjoy Google Keep because it still gives you the feeling of writing down notes on sticky notes, but with Google Keep, notes are digitized and you won't lose them, or forget what you need to get done.
Overall, Google Keep is a handy little tool for setting reminders and remembering the tasks that pop into your mind throughout the day. You can then organise your tasks to complete each day.
Used by over 10,000 highly productive people. Try with 7-day free trial
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Google Tasks is an ideal task reminder app because it's so simple and easy to use. Also great for anyone already within the Google Workspace as you can link with emails, tasks and calendars and utilise Google AI assistance.
Organise tasks with priorities and due dates and set reminders to pop up when you need to complete a task or you have an upcoming event. Create tasks directly from emails to speed up time and set due dates right away.
With Google Tasks you can also break down larger tasks into smaller more manageable tasks, a great GTD method for working towards achieving goals and making sure things get done properly within a certain time frame. Set due dates and reminders for each of these tasks too.
Overall, Google Tasks is great if you are already within the Google Workspace, it's also a nice and easy app to begin using to set reminders and get things done.
Here's the recommendations we'd go for to save you time:
The one that does a solid job at reminders.
These two help to take notes and reminders in one location, perfect for all round use:
Used by over 10,000 highly productive people. Try with 7-day free trial
Try Akiflow now for a 10x productivity boost
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