Apple Reminders vs TaskPocket

Reminders wins the top third of that table — everything about capture and about being on the device already. TaskPocket wins the bottom third, which is everything about what happens to a task after you have written it down. That split is the whole comparison.

It is on the phone. There is no account to make, nothing to install, and nothing to evaluate — and for a large number of people that is not a starting point to be overcome but the correct answer, permanently.

It also wins capture outright, and capture is the part that decides whether a system survives. “Hey Siri, remind me to call the dentist when I get home” is one sentence and produces a location-triggered alert. TaskPocket has no Siri integration, no location triggers, no widgets, and no notifications of any kind on any platform. If a nudge is how you remember things, that gap has no workaround here and you should stop reading.

Two more things it does that people routinely assume it does not, both worth correcting because getting them wrong is how comparison articles lose their credibility: it has a web app at iCloud.com, and it has tags, added in iOS 17.

This is the real structural difference. A reminder has one date, and that date is doing two jobs at once: it decides when the task appears in front of you, and it stands in for when the thing is actually due. For most tasks those are the same day and it works perfectly.

For the tasks that hurt, they are not. Something due on the 30th that you plan to start on the 12th has to be filed under one of those dates. Put in the 30th, it stays invisible until it is urgent; put in the 12th, it sits in Today going grey for eighteen days and the real deadline lives only in your head. This is the one app on this site where most apps make you pick one date and hope is literally true — Todoist and Things both have a second field. See start dates and deadlines.

The related gap is repeats. Reminders’ custom repeats are better than their reputation — intervals, weekday sets, and “On the” patterns like the last weekday of the month. What Apple documents nowhere is a repeat counted from the day you completed the task, which is what you want for anything with a real-world interval: change the filter, water the plants, back up the laptop. Finish it four days late in Reminders and the next one still lands on the original schedule. See repeating after completion in Reminders.

A Reminders list has no ending. It can be deleted, and deleting it takes the record of everything you finished with it. A TaskPocket project can be completed — archived with its history rather than removed — and a task can be cancelled rather than ticked, which keeps “I decided not to” distinct from “I did it”. Whether that matters depends entirely on whether you run projects or keep lists, and plenty of people genuinely only need lists.

Worth saying because it is what several people actually do, and no vendor page ever suggests it.

Reminders is the better inbox: Siri, the share sheet, the Lock Screen, a location alert when you reach the shop. TaskPocket is the better place for anything with structure — a start date separate from a deadline, a repeat anchored to completion, a project that can be finished. Capture in Reminders, move the things that turn out to be work, and let the groceries stay where the groceries are.

The cost of that arrangement is honest: two places to look, and no automatic sync between them. TaskPocket has no importer and no integration with Reminders, so anything moving across moves by hand.

There is no version of this comparison where TaskPocket wins on price. Reminders is free, it is already installed, and it will still be free in ten years. The most that can honestly be said is that TaskPocket’s free plan is also free — unlimited tasks, 5 projects, 2 areas, the whole repeat engine — and that Premium at $34.99 a year, or $59.99 once, buys the deadline field and unlimited structure.

So the question is not which is cheaper. It is whether the two-date model and the repeat engine are worth adding a second app for. For most people they are not, and this page would rather say that than pretend otherwise.