Trying to get more organized with Apple Reminders, but it feels like something is missing — once I check something off, it disappears into the giant list of hidden completed tasks forever.
I’m looking for an app that can show widgets or charts of my recently completed Apple Reminders tasks, preferably something like a GitHub contribution chart. Has anyone seen anything like this? Thanks!
Based on how you described what you need, I don’t believe Reminders will do what you want. However, have you considered using the column view? This is not a chart, but it is an easy way to see what you have completed on a per-project basis. As you can see in the image below, the last column contains the completed items for this project.
I’m sure there are better apps for this sort of thing, but I thought I’d pass this along as a possibility.
That’s a neat trick. I’ve not seen column view before. Just tried it. It will definitely give me another way to solve this problem. So you have to drag the task into the Completed column as well as marking it as completed? No way to automatically have completed tasks to show up there?
From what I can determine, the process requires manual drag-and-drop operation. Reminders does not automatically generate progress reports. Applications such as Asana are designed for project tracking with built-in reporting, though they carry significant cost. Even sophisticated programs like OmniFocus do not provide native progress charts. Although creating a custom perspective in OmniFocus to display completed items may be possible, I have not tested this approach. Similarly, Smart Lists in Reminders might achieve this if tagged consistently, but doing so introduces an additional step. Maintaining consistency would prove difficult.
Obviously, everyone’s needs vary, but because I track everything by project, as long as I can view what I have completed, if and when needed, Reminders meets my needs. I don’t really need a continuous progress chart of any sort. I just need to know I did it. 
Makes sense. I actually just need one github style contribution graph of all the tasks across, or under a specific group, so I feel like I accomplished something that day or week, like having a ten thousand feet view. A column is closer to what I need but I don’t as much info in what tasks I’ve done, just tally.
If you want the 30,000-foot view, I would recommend you consider using a project list in Apple Notes with associated tasks and connect the note(s) to Reminders when there are necessary dates involved.
This works extremely well, and Apple Notes will automatically sort the tasks. I use this all the time. In fact, most of my projects have folders/notes/lists and project materials in Apple Notes, which in turn are shared in Apple Reminders. It is not a perfect system; it requires some manual maintenance, but it works for me.
Interesting. Can you share some pointers? How are Notes connected to Reminders? Is there two way sync? Or do you have to share a specific note task to Reminders?
I think using Notes as the main source to manage tasks also may sound interesting to me. I was using Notion for that. But the core of what I’m looking for, a chart of dots or squares, to know how many tasks I’ve done over the days of the week or month. Bonus if I can click into these dots and see these exact tasks, or if I can filter to a specific list or group of lists.
This is complicated to explain. 
The simple version is that I maintain a dashboard of major projects for the year in Apple Notes. I also have a running list of miscellaneous tasks/presentations I need to complete. This dashboard shows my goals for the year, what I’m focused on in a given day, and a list of priority projects with links to other notes containing details including tasks, links to Pages docs, Google docs, etc. In Reminders, if I’m managing a project in Notes, I have a link in Reminders to that Notes folder or note.
I could have all projects/tasks in Reminders and link to Notes/Pages/Numbers/Google, etc., for project notes and details. I just find AN to be a nice way to get a big overview and have easy linked access to project notes, materials (e.g., PDFs), and other details.
It is important to note that I do not track all tasks in Apple Notes–only major projects. Other lesser projects/tasks are just in Reminders, e.g., my health routines, tech routines, home chores, and the like.
Thanks for explaining that. I see the gist is using Notes as overview and control panel to link to other resources, and Reminder to point to a Notes page, kinda like the outline of these projects or a specific subproject.
Anyway, i think what I’m looking for is less of an overview in the practical day-to-day project management case, more a visual overview like the HabitKit app but for Reminders.
Thanks for giving me these other ideas though! 
Self-hosted Fizzy is free.
Happy to report, it’s easy to do this with vibe coding in a couple hours. 
Yeah big fan of 37Signals. But I feel there is some untapped potentially if one can just tap into Apple Reminder API, and i was delighted to find out it’s actually quite accessible.
Also, just like the bookmarking category, I feel some apps are better fitted to be a binary than self-hosted server app, as we don’t really need collaboration or extra dependencies.
Why the devotion to Apple reminders? It is a great basic tool, but like many Apple main-stream productivity apps, if you want power user features, you are better off switching to a more task-appropriate 3rd party app.
Whenever force-fitting Apple standard apps to their boundry/edge conditions, IMHO, one is asking for a world of hurt and contortions for the illusory benefit of not having to use non-Apple app?
Few reasons I can think of:
I think todo lists are a red ocean market extremely hard to wedge into, one has to innovate in many foundational dimensions with the constrains of not having OS level integration. I’d rather just use a mature tool like Apple Reminders. But anyway, it’s just a small personal issue, I’m not invested or creative enough to invent another todo list app.
Hey!
If you want to stay within the Apple ecosystem and only need basic stats on completed tasks, you can log your completed reminders (like push-ups or other actions) directly in the Health app.
Here’s how:
Log completed tasks in the Reminders app as usual.
Use a simple Shortcut to pull your Reminders history and automatically log them in Health. You can even adapt and automate it for new completed tasks.
I’ve attached a screenshot of the workflow, feel free to tweak it to fit your needs. It’s not a perfect progress tracker, but if it helps keep you motivated, why not give it a try?
It sounds like you’ve had some success, or at least made some progress, in solving this issue through your own code, is that right? Please keep us posted.
Thanks for the kind encouragement! Yes I am quite delighted and surprised to have unlocked two additional levels after posting here and realizing it’s quite easy to pull down data from Reminders as there is an official API.
Level 2: What if we display created reminders as blue squares?
Level 3: What if we also add widgets?
Level 4: Will people want to use this on their phones as well?
I don’t really feel strongly about it and haven’t explored this yet.
Purely vibe coded (sorry for those against it), I truly didn’t read the code, just given it general high level instructions and being the human in the loop when compiling and adjusting the UI.
Again, the intention was to scratch my own itch, but if people here are interested, I can read the code a bit closer and ship this eventually.
That is impressive! TIL. Thank you!
Will do after the holidays! Any feature you’d want before I pack it up for App Store? You’ll be the first to know.
