Reminders: so simple yet so dysfunctional

[indepthsubject]

For years, the Reminders app has performed so poorly in its loading time, especially on Apple Watch.

On iPhone, with the current chips, how can an app take so long to load.

On Apple Watch it takes forever. How can such a simple app take so much time?

Sad!

 

[Apple_Robert]

Something must be wrong with your app and or Apple account sync as Reminders is pretty instant for me.

 

[macaddiict]

My issue with Reminders is that since about iOS 7, when a notification goes off that’s on a long Reminders list and you click the alert, the app almost never opens and goes to that reminder… because by the time the app loads, it’s forgotten what it was doing.

Reminders is also the opposite of Zen of Palm.. Apple somehow added even more unnecessary taps to set a time or date in recent updates. Palm had a calendar with 3-taps to anything 3 decades ago… Apple hides everything behind 33 taps and a long load!

 

[macaddiict]

You may want to go to your Reminders lists that you use often, click”show completed” and then “clear” the hundreds (if not thousands) of completed reminders from past years still being tracked and sync’d and organized into lists every time you open the app.

 

[indepthsubject]

Something must be wrong with your app and or Apple account sync as Reminders is pretty instant for me.

Even on Apple Watch?

 

[indepthsubject]

You may want to go to your Reminders lists that you use often, click”show completed” and then “clear” the hundreds (if not thousands) of completed reminders from past years still being tracked and sync’d and organized into lists every time you open the app.

“Delete 5,893 reminders?”
YES!

 

[macaddiict]

Even on Apple Watch?

Keep in mind a LOT of people have 3 reminders in their Reminders list and 12 notes in Notes and say “works fine for me”

Open Reminders on each of your devices and give them a break as they deal with the 5,000+ completed and clear them out - but you should see a big speed up by tomorrow

I’ve got thousands of records in both Notes & Reminders and have learned to ask the people who chime in saying “works perfectly for me!” if they use that app in a serious way or just for ten things 😊

Nice eWorld avatar btw!

 

[indepthsubject]

Keep in mind a LOT of people have 3 reminders in their Reminders list and 12 notes in Notes and say “works fine for me”

Give your devices a break as they deal with the 5,000+ completed and clear them out - but you should see a big speed up by tomorrow

I’ve got thousands of records in both Notes & Reminders and have learned to ask the people who chime in saying “works perfectly for me!” if they use that app in a serious way or just for ten things 😊

I’m very Reminders dependent

 

[Apple_Robert]

Even on Apple Watch?

Even on watch. I make sure to clean out completed reminders.

 

[01cowherd]

“Delete 5,893 reminders?”
YES!

also fyi you can make a shortcut and automation to automatically clear completed reminders. I have one that runs weekly and deletes ones completed over a month ago. (Since the completed reminders are still used for autocomplete new reminder suggestions, I keep some around.) Same for old calendar events.

 

[Herr Podspro]

Settings take between 3-4 seconds to load on my AW S7, Reminders took a second. Half on my iPhone 15 Pro.
This seems to be a user specific problem you’re experiencing (if deleting all completed doesn’t work).
File a feedback report, that’s all you can realistically do, as ranting about a 1/1000 problem on a forum hardly reaches anyone who cares as well as is able to fix the issue.
But I understand your frustration. It’s very, very disheartening when „it just works“ turns into „hold the line“ or „try again later“.

 

[!!!]

You may want to go to your Reminders lists that you use often, click”show completed” and then “clear” the hundreds (if not thousands) of completed reminders from past years still being tracked and sync’d and organized into lists every time you open the app.

Would be nice if Apple had an option to automatically delete them after 30 days or so.

On a related note, does iOS 26 finally fix the bug where there's a red (1) on the reminders before there reminder actually triggers?

 

[klasma]

I tend to delete reminders right away instead of marking them as complete. Of course, that doesn’t excuse the poor performance. Even 10,000 reminders should be almost instant on current hardware, with an appropriate database and query logic.

 

[macaddiict]

indepthsubject, is it any faster now that your devices have had a day to sync with fewer completed? Or was that just a bad guess troubleshooting step in this case?

 

[Abydos]

reminders is for those who can't remember (cf Indiana jones and the last crusade)

 

[NoBoMac]

I tend to delete reminders right away instead of marking them as complete.

Ditto.

Problematic if the Reminder is a repeating Reminder (ie. deletes all future occurrences) but get around it by running a Shortcut that marks then unmarks as completed all Reminders between two dates: creates clone/child Reminders for the repeating ones that can be simply deleted, preserving the "source"/parent repeating Reminder.

 

[indepthsubject]

indepthsubject, is it any faster now that your devices have had a day to sync with fewer completed? Or was that just a bad guess troubleshooting step in this case?

Clearing completed reminders seems to have helped a lot thank you