How to Use Reminders with Siri

The Reminders app makes it easy to put together shopping lists or checklists for important events, such as moving home or packing for a holiday.

The truth is, entering reminders using the keyboard on your iPhone, then assigning dates and times can be a tiresome and fiddly process. So using Siri to manage your reminders verbally instead brings extra speed and convenience.

In this article, we trigger Siri using the “Hey Siri” voice command. Did you know there are other methods available, depending on your device? You can read about them all in our how to use Siri guide.

How to create a list in Reminders

If you plan on keeping your reminders organized, it’s worth creating separate lists – such as for work, home, shopping and holidays.

Hey Siri, create a new list

Siri will prompt you to say the list name.

You can also create and name the list in one phrase. In this example, we’ve used “Shopping List”.

Hey Siri, create a shopping list

After creating it, Siri will ask you if you want to add anything to the list.

How to choose a default list

If you ask Siri to create a reminder without specifying a list, it will automatically add it to your default list. To choose or change your default list:

On the iPhone and iPad

• Open Settings.
• Scroll down to Reminders.
• Tap Default List and select your preference.

On a Mac

• Open Reminders.
• Open Preferences.
• Select your preference from the dropdown list.

Adding reminders

You can easily add items to your Reminders using natural language:

Add a reminder…

Remind me…

If you don’t say anything else, Siri will ask you for further details of the reminder you want to create.

Bread and milk

Rather than taking several steps to create a reminder, you can give Siri the information it needs in one phrase, as well as specifying a preferred list.

Hey Siri, add bread and milk to my shopping list

Setting reminders using time

You can ask Siri to remind you of something at a specific time.

Remind me to wish John happy birthday on the 5th August

Remind me to book my vacation in 2 weeks

Remind me to buy coffee in two hours

Reminders and location

Reminders are also location-aware. If you have ‘home’ and ‘work’ defined in your contact card, you can say:

Remind me to check my reports when I get to work

Next time I leave home remind me to get petrol

You can specify a location name such as a supermarket if it exists in the Siri database.

Remind me to buy coffee when I arrive at Whole Foods

Use Siri to add multiple reminders at once

Before iOS 13, one drawback has been the need to add a list of several reminders separately. While hardly a huge inconvenience, it has made creating longer lists more convoluted than it needed to be. Such as ‘Hey Siri, add milk to my shopping list, Hey Siri, add bread to my shopping list’.

Thankfully, iOS 13 remedied this, with the added ability to add multiple reminders at the same time.

Hey Siri, add milk, bread, coffee, bananas and beer to my shopping list

Changing reminders

If you want to change the reminder you can say:

Change the title to…

Change the time to…

Deleting lists and reminders

To remove a reminder, say:

Hey Siri, remove my coffee reminder

Hey Siri, cancel my coffee reminder

When prompted, say ‘yes’ to confirm the deletion, or tap the screen on your device.

It’s currently not possible to delete a list using Siri. If you ask it to, it prompts you to open the Reminders app and remove it manually.

Ask Siri to read out your reminders

Siri can read your reminders out loud to you when requested. You can choose which list you want to check or search by date and time.

Hey Siri, read out my work reminders

Hey Siri, do I have any reminders this week?

Siri will prompt you to unlock your device, then read out the top five results.