--- title: "Can Apple Reminders repeat after completion?" description: "No — every repeat option Apple documents counts from the schedule. Here is what Reminders can express, the two workarounds, and what each one costs." canonical: https://taskpocket.io/guides/apple-reminders-repeat-after-completion/ lastUpdated: 2026-08-26 --- 1. [Home](https://taskpocket.io/) 2. [Guides](https://taskpocket.io/guides/) 3. Reminders repeat after completion # Can Apple Reminders repeat after completion? 1. [What Reminders can actually express](#what-reminders-can-actually-express) 2. [The one thing it cannot do](#the-one-thing-it-cannot-do) 3. [The two workarounds, and what they cost](#the-two-workarounds-and-what-they-cost) 4. [Which apps do have it](#which-apps-do-have-it) 5. [Using Reminders anyway, which is often right](#using-reminders-anyway-which-is-often-right) No. Apple Reminders has a genuinely capable custom repeat — intervals, weekday sets, and pattern rules like the last weekday of the month — but every option Apple documents counts from the schedule. None of them counts from the day you actually completed the task. That one gap is why people search for this. ## What Reminders can actually express Worth going through, because the answers you find in forums usually undersell it and that costs you the rest of the page's credibility. Open a reminder, set a date, and the repeat menu offers the usual presets. Choose Custom and you get a frequency — hourly, daily, weekly or monthly — with a numeric interval, so "every 3 days" or "every 2 weeks" are both fine. Weekly lets you pick which days. The part most people miss is the pattern rule. Apple's own documentation says you can "make the event repeat according to a pattern (for example, on the last weekday of each month in which the event occurs)" by selecting On the and choosing from the menus. So the third Thursday, the last Friday, the last weekday of the month — all expressible. If you have read that Reminders cannot do nth-weekday repeats, that is wrong, and it is one of the more common things said incorrectly about the app. ## The one thing it cannot do Every repeat above is anchored to the schedule. The next occurrence is calculated from the date the task was already due on, not from the day you ticked it off. For a lot of tasks that is correct. Rent on the 1st does not care when you paid last month, and you want the rhythm to hold. For the others it quietly goes wrong. Water the plants every two weeks, due on the 1st, and you get to it on the 5th — the next one still lands on the 15th, ten days after you actually watered them. Do that a few times and the schedule has drifted away from the thing it was tracking. Haircuts, filter changes, watering, physio exercises, deep-cleaning something: all of these count from the last time you did it, and none of them can say so in Reminders. There is more on the distinction itself in [recurrence anchor](https://taskpocket.io/glossary/recurrence-anchor/) — it is the vocabulary this whole problem lacks, which is part of why it is so badly served. ## The two workarounds, and what they cost Neither is good. Both are what people actually do. Delete and recreate. Finish the task, delete the repeat, make a new one dated two weeks from today. It is exact, and it is manual every single time — and you lose the completion history, which for a habit-shaped task is often the thing you wanted. Over-space the interval and accept drift. Set "every 3 weeks" for something you want roughly fortnightly, on the theory that you will be late anyway. It needs no maintenance and it is approximate by design. Fine for the plants, useless for anything with a real cadence. A third option people suggest is a Shortcuts automation that recreates the reminder on completion. It can be made to work, it breaks when Apple changes something, and it is a lot of machinery for one field. ## Which apps do have it If this is the thing pushing you to look elsewhere, it is worth knowing it is not rare — and it is worth being accurate about who has it, because the category is better at this than its reputation suggests. - Things 3 has it as a first-class, labelled option: repeats are either "After Completion" or "Regularly". It is genuinely well done, and 3.23 on 19 August 2026 went further — a repeat now takes a regular checkbox so you can complete it early, and moving a single occurrence offers "Make Exception" to shift just that copy or "Update Rule" to change the pattern. Apple platforms only. - Todoist has it, expressed as punctuation: every! 2 weeks counts from completion where every 2 weeks counts from the original date. Powerful, and easy to have used Todoist for years without discovering. - TaskPocket makes it a labelled choice — on a schedule, or after completion — and shows the resulting rule back as a sentence before you save it. ## Using Reminders anyway, which is often right Nothing above is an argument for leaving Reminders, and for most people it should not be. Reminders is the best capture tool on an iPhone by a distance. Siri while driving, the Lock Screen, the share sheet, location triggers, notifications that actually arrive — none of which TaskPocket has, and some of which it never will, because Apple owns the operating system and nobody else does. The arrangement that works: keep capturing in Reminders, and put the handful of things that genuinely need a completion-anchored rhythm wherever you plan. The honest cost is that there is no sync between the two, so it is a manual step — and if you will not do it, you end up with two lists you half-trust, which is worse than one. If you do move that part across, the whole repeat engine here is on the free plan: both anchors, stop-after-N, stop-on-a-date, skip one occurrence, and unchecking a completed repeat genuinely undoing it. What you would be giving up is everything in the paragraph above — no Siri, no widgets, no location reminders, and no notifications at all, on any platform. By [Bohdan Stefaniuk](https://taskpocket.io/about/) Last updated 2026-08-26 ## Sources 1. [Apple — Add dates or locations to reminders (the full custom repeat option list)](https://support.apple.com/guide/reminders/add-dates-or-locations-to-reminders-remnd4b206fb/mac) checked 2026-08-26 2. [Cultured Code — Using Repeating To-Dos (Things offers "After Completion")](https://culturedcode.com/things/support/articles/2803564/) checked 2026-08-26 3. [Todoist — Introduction to recurring dates (the "every!" prefix)](https://www.todoist.com/help/articles/introduction-to-recurring-dates-YUYVJJAV) checked 2026-08-26 Both anchors, an end condition, skip and a real undo — the whole repeat engine is on the free plan. ## Related reading - [Recurrence anchor — what a repeat counts from](https://taskpocket.io/glossary/recurrence-anchor/) — A recurrence anchor is the date a repeating task counts from: either the scheduled date, or the day you actually finished it. The difference matters. - [Apple Reminders alternative for Windows and the web](https://taskpocket.io/alternatives/apple-reminders/) — Reminders is great at capture and weak at structure. An honest comparison, including the several places where Reminders is still the better choice. - [Recurring tasks that survive real life](https://taskpocket.io/features/recurring-tasks/) — Nth weekday, the last business day, stop after ten, skip one, and repeats counted from the day you finish. What each app can express, with sources. - [Is there an Apple Reminders app for Windows?](https://taskpocket.io/answers/is-there-an-apple-reminders-app-for-windows/) — No — Apple has never shipped Reminders for Windows, and iCloud for Windows doesn't include it. Here's what actually works, and what to use instead.