
Show HN: Fed up with Apple's Reminders app? I've built a better replacement - mpdifranco
https://www.betterremindersapp.com
======
mpdifranco
Hey guys, I've been working on this app for a year now. Let me know what you
think!

Here's some promo codes: FHFHKLLENM9A TTRJEE4E9NNK Y3PPNFNY4PFY MWX7LE37WN7K
44PPTRLH6ETX YPLYXEMTF3N6 4TY3RLAKHFMH RKKY3YHHWNKN 49JR3TWLJPPF L3TY7MAXEEMX
E7WJMML93RJR XAXWKA99YKFW RXFYRA4YP9HJ AFJHWJLPFNPM FYMTKWW7PYRY KJH4MAEKFL9Y
HEFR7N6T66F7 3A9YPW3MRLH7 96M3EP4HKXLJ 9RRTREPF9FJP K6RRJKK3E7HP PH4X67YXXA96
M6J4JWWKY3T3 WYJM6A9WRXKP NTJ74ERM4MFW FYATENNPKX3W PJWKNLWYTMWA H7AFJM7X9H9F
NF6WEJPXPJPJ 9TJ6HPMJEK9T 73XRLRYAMN9E KFYTELXEMLHR KHEYRPYN3EMK 63E64LLYHXXM
HHWMJAHRYMY6 NELTKWF7XRK6 9WXKJAH3PJNR 4Y93YKFEMTWT E9MJT7T63H3T LFEJ3TJFHMPE
NFHHELWNKHRT 6J3KW69MMWNA 64KYPTWHRRKJ 7AL99X6M6YM6 9KJX7AXM4RYN E96RYEEJPA4M
7WE6463AEFPY 3NATM69N7R9R EX9EPF9YWRHY JJ3KY3EEARFT E4W9EPM9A9PY NW746XYHKAP3
9A9JRYEYL6X7 HXH7P3A3YHKN 4XE99MK937RL KEAW9LW9WHLN WR7ELKEMYRM3 ERMFPH6LY43H
NA4LKKTXHJT4 FTLXRJE6JHTM ELHFPFJ4WR7Y EHF6KRR9WXYN XPLMRFTWYR6F 99ETX6P97Y69
EHET643HH7TK XLX4M6HHWJKH PRTPEH93HNM7 47LTYH64EFT9 P6A6EM3H49T7 6HMWT999E63F
L3W3EHAFW6Y9 TTAKPJXP4HYN 9PFLFPNWAFKN K64H69KX4W4A A6XWM9KKE4WT JAW9LXW9LM94
3XRW6T7WXMYR F6WJR6Y4XELJ 6RWKXN4KYHNP AM7KPEH9FN7W

~~~
jannes
Thanks, I just downloaded it and will let you know what I think!

Note to others: I used FHFHKLLENM9A

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jannes
Here are a few things that I love:

\- The app icon changes based on the theme. I didn't know that was possible!

\- Very clean visual design and UI. Really nice!

What I would improve:

\- Some of my reminders from the Apple Reminders app have URLs attached to
them, but there doesn't seem to be a way to click on them in your app. (I have
to go to "View Note" and copy & paste into Safari). This happens for notes
that were shared from Safari to the Reminders app.

\- That permission screen in the beginning is really weird. I just skipped it.
I prefer to grant app permissions when I actually need them, not when I just
downloaded the app and launch it for the first time.

\- The delete button is not really self-explanatory. I have never seen that
specific icon in any iOS app, so I was surprised that it deleted my reminder
when I clicked it out of curiosity.

~~~
mpdifranco
Thanks for the great feedback!

Re: urls, there's a property on each reminder for URLs, but Apple's Reminders
app actually doesn't use it. I talked to the engineers behind EventKit, and
they recommended I use it for my app (there may be an update where it gets set
properly). This means a slight incompatibility between Apple's and my Reminder
app. If you create a reminder using the Share action for my app (by clicking
the box with the arrow pointing up while in Safari, for example), it should
set that property properly, and you should be able to view the website in the
app directly.

Re: permissions, I totally agree with you, but for this app, a lot of the
permissions are required right at the launch of the app (access to reminders,
notifications, and location are required for the app to be useful). I have
built in some logic to prompt you when the permission is needed, but I figured
giving the description of how each was going to be used would mitigate the up
front prompting.

Re: delete button, the red circle icon was actually taken from iOS directly
(Go to Music > Playlists > Select a playlist > Edit to see an example in an
Apple app). But I'll give some thought on updating the icon to be more
explicit!

~~~
jannes
Thanks for the answers!

That's a bummer about the URLs. Unfortunately, the URL property set by your
app doesn't display at all in the OSX version of Apple's reminders app. I
can't imagine using it without sync to all my other devices.

~~~
mpdifranco
I am planning on releasing a macOS app in the near future.

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kumpelblase2
I've been trying this for the last few days so here are my thoughts.

Let me preface that I just came back to iOS after two years android, used iOS
10 for a couple of weeks and now iOS 11. I like the design a lot and
specifically the dark theme (as well as the dark icon). The creation process
was something that was a little weird on my first try but works pretty good
now and I like the presets for time based reminders.

What I would've liked would be some alert or note that told me what would
happen with the stock reminders once I allow the required permissions. Because
once I allowed access to my reminders from this app I would obviously like for
the stock reminders app to no longer notify me since this app now does it. So
maybe some heads up for the user once he enabled both access to reminders and
notifications to disable the notifications of the stock app to avoid duplicate
notificaitions. Nothing big, but something that I had to figure out myself
that would've been nice to just be told in the app.

What seemed to be possible in iOS 10 was that you could mark a reminder as
done from the notification, which doesn't seem to be possible here. Not sure
if that's a limitation of iOS 11 or I've set up something wrong but it's
rather annoying to go into the app to mark something as done. At least for how
I use the reminders, I just want a quick notification to tell me that I need
to go into my standup meeting or that I don't forget to order lunch. Right now
I only have the option of "Open" (swipe to right), "View" & "Clear" (swipe to
left) while all of them leave the reminder untouched. I would just want the
notification to be shown, mark it off from the lockscreen and then go to the
meeting or whatever. Again, as far as I can tell, the stock reminders behave
the same in iOS11, but would be nice if this could be improved upon somehow.

An idea that I had in my head that I would like to have would be to combine
time based and location based reminders into one. For example: "Remind me
every weekday at 1PM if I'm at work to grab lunch". It's mostly just a quality
of life improvement for me, I don't think it'd be that useful apart from these
narrow scenarios so I'll probably just stick with time based for now and just
tick them off even I'm not at the location.

Thank you for sharing!

P.S.: Used EX9EPF9YWRHY

~~~
mpdifranco
Thanks for all the feedback! That’s a good point about turning off the stock
Reminders app notifications, I’ll see what I can do.

As for iOS 11 Notifications, you can actually complete reminders from the
notification. You can either force touch the notification (on an iPhone 6s or
newer), or click View to see the actions for the notification. Complete is one
of them, as well as “remind me in 15 minutes”.

That’s an interesting idea about filtering time alerts by location, but as of
right now, iOS does not allow that granular of triggers. It’s only location or
time for now, but maybe iOS 12 will be different.

I hope you continue to enjoy the app, and please let me know if you have any
other suggestions!

~~~
kumpelblase2
Thanks for coming back to me!

> You can [...] force touch the notification or click View

I was not aware that you could force touch notifications at all and I feel
kinda dumb that I never tried it. But thanks for the heads up!

> That’s an interesting idea about filtering time alerts by location, but as
> of right now, iOS does not allow that granular of triggers.

I figured this was the case. Not a huge issue, would've just been a neat
addition.

~~~
mpdifranco
Haha glad I was able to teach you something new! Yeah, hopefully iOS 12 has
more complex notification triggers.

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c1yd3i
I downloaded the app and went past the permissions screen. I was greeted with
a blank page, list button grayed out, all I could do was open settings. I had
to quit the app and reopen it.

~~~
mpdifranco
Hmm that's weird. That means that the EventKit API was unable to fetch your
reminders on that particular launch. It should be an anomaly though.

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stephenr
Besides “night mode” I don’t see how this is different than the built in
reminders app?

~~~
mpdifranco
You are right, the apps have the same feature set (although my app has
slightly more modern UI). In the next few releases I plan on adding some
features that Apple's app doesn't have, so keep an eye out for that!

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WhiteOwlLion
Requires iOS 11.0 or later.

