Apple Reminders sucks at subtasks

I tried to switch to Apple Reminders for all my todos, but the garbage (and downright weird) subtask support killed it.

Silly example: I do laundry for 6 people every week. So I have 6 recurring “Do [person]’s laundry” tasks, each with subtasks to wash it, dry it, and put it away. Apple Reminders laughed at me and called me a fartface for trying to make that work.

First of all, the subtasks don’t uncheck themselves the next time it recurs. So I have to uncheck all those subtasks each week before getting started. For those keeping track, that’s 18 total subtasks, and they aren’t easy to uncheck all at once because:

I can’t see the subtasks in smart lists (like “Today”). This is what shows up:

On mobile, I can tap on the reminder and then tap “Subtasks” to see them (which gets old fast). On desktop the only option is to open up the list where that specific reminder lives to see its subtasks.

And if I try to force subtasks to show up on “Today” by giving the subtasks a due date or making them recurring on the same schedule as their parent, then they show up as top level reminders rather than subtasks.

Weird, right? God help you if you try using subtasks on something like a “Morning Routine” recurring task that has more than three subtasks and pops up daily instead of weekly.

And you might (rightly) say that Reminders isn’t meant for being a full featured task manager. But it’s so good at so much other stuff! I love the new Morning/Afternoon/Evening sections. Custom smart lists that can be pinned = dope. The list templates are great. Why can’t it just have sane subtasks? Woe is me.

---

Dear Critter from a week ago,

Don’t go to the trouble of manually moving all of your todos into Apple Reminders. You’ll regret it.

Love,
Present day Critter