Apple Reminders + Shortcuts for a homegrown todo workflow that beats most paid apps

You’ve tried them all by now: Things, Todoist, OmniFocus, TickTick, Notion, the to-do canvas in Reminders that you abandoned in 2018. Each one is great until it isn’t — the subscription jumps, the iOS app gets a redesign nobody wants, the natural-language parser stops understanding “tomorrow at 8 PM,” the syncing breaks. The one option that doesn’t churn: Apple Reminders + Shortcuts, free, on every Apple device, integrated everywhere, with an automation system that’s surprisingly powerful once you give it 20 minutes.

This is the workflow I’ve run for two years that beats most paid apps for the “capture, schedule, get reminded” loop, with the Shortcuts that make it stop feeling like a stripped-down toy.

Why Reminders is good enough now

The Reminders app got a quiet rewrite in iOS 13 / macOS Catalina (2019) and another in iOS 17 (2023). What’s there in 2026:

Natural-language input. “Pick up dry cleaning tomorrow at 6 PM” auto-parses the date.
Smart Lists (saved searches): Today, Scheduled, Flagged, All, plus your own custom-filter lists.
Subtasks (drag a reminder onto another).
Tags (#work, #errands) with their own filterable views.
Location reminders (“remind me when I get to the office”).
Sharing — reminders can be shared with another iCloud user, with completion synced.
Templates (build a list once, reuse it as “packing for trip” etc).

What’s still missing vs paid apps: a real review mode, repeating-task patterns more complex than “every 3 weeks,” nested project organization. If you need GTD-style weekly reviews, OmniFocus is still better. For everyone else, Reminders covers 90% of the surface area for free.

Step 1 — the list structure that actually works

Don’t make 30 lists. The trap is creating one list per project, then tabbing through them all morning. The structure I run:

Inbox — set as the default list in Settings → Reminders → Default List. Everything goes here first. You triage out of it.
Today — not a real list, but the built-in Smart List view of everything due today across all lists.
Work, Personal, Errands, Read & Watch — four lists, that’s it. Any project lives in one of these and uses tags for sub-cuts.
Waiting on — dedicated list for “sent the question, awaiting reply.” Once a week I review it; anything stuck for >5 days, I bump.
Someday — the dumping ground. No due dates. Reviewed quarterly.

This is six lists. You can hold all of them in your head and you never have to think “which list does this go in?” for more than two seconds.

Step 2 — the “quick capture” Shortcut

Reminders’ built-in Add button is fine. But adding via Shortcuts unlocks two big wins: any capture path you can imagine (selected text, share-sheet, voice, web URL with auto-summarized title), and bypassing the “which list?” question with smart routing.

Build it: open Shortcuts → New Shortcut. Add these actions:

1. Ask for Input        → "What needs doing?"
2. Add New Reminder     →
     Title: Provided Input
     List:  Inbox
     Notes: (leave blank)
3. (optional) Show Notification "Added: "

Save as “Quick Capture.” Now: Settings → Accessibility → Action Button (iPhone 15 Pro+) or Back Tap (any iPhone) → assign Quick Capture. Tap your phone twice on the back, type, done. No app launch.

Step 3 — the morning “daily plan” Shortcut

The killer Shortcut, and the reason this beats paid apps. Run this once each morning:

1. Find Reminders where  List is "Inbox"            → save as "Inbox"
2. Find Reminders where  Due Date is today          → save as "Today"
3. Find Reminders where  List is "Waiting on"
                         AND Date Modified is more than 5 days ago
                                                    → save as "Stuck"
4. Get Calendar Events    matching Today
                                                    → save as "Calendar"
5. Combine all four lists into one text body
6. Show in Quick Look      (or speak via Siri)

Output: a single screen with everything you need to triage in the morning. Items in inbox? Either schedule them or move them to Someday. Things due today? Acknowledge or reschedule. Stuck Waiting items? Send a follow-up. Today’s calendar? Plan around it.

Trigger this with an Automation: Shortcuts → Automation → Time of Day → 7:30 AM → Weekdays. Auto-run; no confirmation. The morning summary just appears.

Step 4 — the “web clip to read later” Shortcut

Add this one to your share sheet to replace Pocket / Instapaper / Reading List for short stuff:

1. Receive URLs from Share Sheet
2. Get Name of URL              → "Read: Inception (2010) review …"
3. Add New Reminder
      Title: Combined "Read: " + page title
      List:  Read & Watch
      URL:   the URL itself (Reminders has a URL field)
      Tags:  #read

Now in Safari, share button → Save to Reminders. The reminder shows up with the page title and a tappable URL. Tag #read means a Smart List filtering on that tag becomes your “weekend reading” queue.

Why this beats paid apps

Free. Forever. No subscription. Everyone in your family gets it.
Synced via iCloud. No third-party servers, no “your account expired,” no migration tool when the SaaS shuts down.
Siri integration. “Hey Siri, remind me to call Mom tomorrow at 6” just works. Third-party apps fight macOS for this and lose.
Watch / CarPlay. Reminders’ watchOS app is good. Many paid alternatives are barely-functional or charge separately.
Shortcuts everywhere. Once you build the Quick Capture and Daily Plan, you have automations that paid apps don’t expose because they’d cannibalize their power-user pricing tiers.

The downsides remain real for power users (no review mode, simpler repeats, no time-blocking). But for the cost-of-zero, the integration with everything else Apple, and the ability to bend the workflow with a few Shortcuts — Reminders is the answer most people land on after they finish the tour of paid alternatives.

Photo: Handwritten to-do and done lists with a mechanical keyboard by Jakub Żerdzicki on Pexels.