Marco Arment, the indie developer who created popular apps like Overcast and Instapaper, and who previously served as Tumblr’s chief technology officer, is out today with his latest creation — an alternative to Apple’s Reminders designed for procrastinators, called Unforgetful.
The new iOS and Mac app works with your current Reminders database, but it’s designed for people who find Apple’s system doesn’t work for them.
As Arment explains in his announcement on Friday, “Siri, for all of its faults, has always been very good at creating tasks in Apple’s Reminders app… The Reminders app, though, doesn’t fit me at all. I don’t like how it looks, how it works, or how it’s organized. Hell, I don’t even like its icon. There’s nothing about it I like. So I never open it.”
The developer pointed to specific issues where he felt Reminders fell short, like how its snooze feature worked, or those times when he accidentally dismissed a reminder instead of snoozing it, losing the reminder altogether. Arment also noted that if he forgot to include a time when setting a reminder, he’d miss getting a notification, so the task never got done.
Unforgetful is meant to address these issues and make it impossible to lose your tasks. For some, the solution could be overkill, but for those who are addicted to snoozing reminders or need more regular nudges, it could help keep them on track.
For starters, notifications will always repeat — even if you miss them or dismiss them — until the task is actually done and deleted. This makes it harder to lose reminders, especially if you’re guilty of dismissing them before completing the task.
Snoozing has also been revamped so that the intervals scale as you continue to snooze your tasks. However, it won’t overwhelm you with multiple tasks at the same time, which could lead you to freeze and do nothing at all.
The app keeps things fairly simple, too, as there are no tags, different views or modes, or other organization tools to learn. (For more advanced features like this, Apple’s Reminders app would still be a better choice.)
In short, Unforgetful becomes the tool that makes sure you stay on top of your reminders, no matter whether you prefer to enter them by hand or tell Siri, and no matter whether they have a deadline or not. Because the app works with your existing Apple Reminders, you can continue using reminders as you always have — you just turn off the Apple Reminders notifications and replace them with Unforgetful notifications instead.
While there are other well-designed, third-party reminders apps on the market, the best thing about Unforgetful’s setup is this Reminders integration. This means you don’t have to explicitly tell Siri to use Unforgetful when you’re adding reminders. And if you find you don’t like the app, you won’t need to export your reminders back to Apple’s database. (Because they’re already there!)
Unforgetful also ships with its own in-app microphone for voice reminders and a full suite of widgets for the Lock Screen and Control Center.
The app is $19.99 per year and works across both Mac and iOS.
