Apple Reminders Has a Hidden Kanban Feature
Kanban boards help you find flow in your work: instead of just a list of tasks, your big tasks can be broken down into different stages (in columns), and as you move from one stage to the next, you can drag a task to the next section. Kanban boards are useful when you are collaborating with team members or when dealing with tasks that require two or more steps before they are actually completed. Until now, Kanban boards could only be found in the most boring productivity software ( Trello being a famous example).
But Kanban boards are gradually making their way into many consumer products. They’re a staple of the Todoist app, and even Google has added a Kanban view to Google Tasks. However, the most surprising place you’ll find them is in the Reminders app on your iPhone, iPad, or Mac.
How Apple’s Reminders App Works with Kanban
Apple Reminders takes a simplified approach to Kanban, as you would expect from an Apple product. Apple doesn’t even call them Kanban boards, and there’s no dedicated place to create one. Instead, you create a reminder list with multiple sections and switch to column view. And suddenly a Kanban board appears. Your tasks are now divided into different columns that are visually distinct from each other.
Apple’s system works similarly to Todoist , where it creates a custom view of an existing list. Instead of a list broken down into sections, you now see them in columns, making it visually easy to drag and drop tasks as you move forward. This is better than what Google Tasks recently implemented , where each column shows tasks from a specific list. To make Google Tasks work like a real Kanban board, you’ll have to create different lists for each column, which can be quite tedious. Apple’s process is much simpler and, unlike Google Tasks, is available on all platforms (running macOS Sonoma, iOS 17, iPadOS 17 or later).
How to Create a Kanban Board in Apple Reminders
I’ll introduce you to the Mac app first—I think this is where the Kanban feature really shines (though it’s just as useful on the iPhone). In the sidebar, click the Add New List button to create a new list. Give it a name, a smiley icon, a color, and stick to the Standard List option. Then click OK .
Your list is ready. On the top toolbar, click the Add New Section button and give the section a name.
This will become the column heading. Repeat this until all the column headers are ready.
Then, from the menu bar, choose View > As Columns .
Your list will instantly turn into a Kanban board. You can now add tasks as usual (with due dates, notes, images, and attachments). And you can easily move tasks from one column to another using drag and drop.
On iPhone, click the Add List button to create a new list. In the new list, go to the top menu button and select the Add Section button. Add new sections as you wish. Then click the Menu button again and select the View as Columns option to switch to Kanban view.
On iPhone, you’ll see one list at a time, but you can scroll horizontally to see all the columns. Here you can also drag and drop tasks between lists.