Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
I read elsewhere that deleting all reminders and then reentering them works. I haven't yet tried it myself, but will do so and feedback to you guys.
 
I'm so sorry all of you have had this issue so long but I'm REALLY glad to know I'm not alone. Same issues here altho I never really used Reminders before and just decided to give it another chance since I got an iPad and all my syncs on other Apple products are working so well (Notes, Contacts, etc. all syncing marvelously) between it and my MBP and my iPhone. Have been fighting with Reminders about 2 weeks now is all - tried almost all the stuff you guys had mentioned above.

So no answers - just chiming in and sharing the pain.

:(
 
  • Like
Reactions: scouser75
And it's working again this morning! I'm sure it's down to the time of day. Reminders ALWAYS sync for me first thing in the morning.

Anytime after 10, FORGET it!!!
 
And shock horror! For the first time in years Calendar Snooze is also syncing across Mac and iPhone!!!
 
I don't use reminders, but I do use the calendar (it's also where I put things I want to be reminded about!).

I create an event on my laptop and I can immediately see it in icloud.com. However, it doesn't push to my phone (latest IOS beta) until I open the Calendar app and wait. Well, sometimes it does, but usually it doesn't. This is an iOS 13 problem as it never happened until last summer when I installed the first iOS 13 beta.
 
  • Like
Reactions: scouser75
Hi,

I've noticed that since around 29th Jan my Reminders no longer sync from my iPhone 11 Pro to/from iCloud and therefore to my iMac.

I upgraded my Reminders on my iPhone when iOS 13 was released in September and iMac when Catalina was released.

I've tried all the usual things Apple would typically recommend (I await a reply to this with their standard response directing me to their standard template article on these kind of issues, but I've already been through them all!)

This issue persists with the following troubleshooting I've tried.
  • Signed out of iCloud and back in on my iPhone 11 Pro
  • Signed in to another device (iPhone 6s) as a new iPhone (NOT restored from a backup)
  • Signed in to another device (iPad Air 2) as a new device (NOT restored from a backup)
  • Signed in to another device (iPhone 8) as a new iPhone (NOT restored from a backup)

  • Tried turning Reminders off under the iCloud settings on all of those devices (waited approx 30 mins, turned phone off/on). Then turned back on again and waited DAYS (even tried not allowing the device to auto-lock the screen after a minute to give it full focus/priority on the device).
  • Tried uninstalling the Reminders app and reinstalling (waited approx 30 mins, turned phone off/on in between).
  • Tried creating new lists and reminders across various devices but that still doesn't help trigger anything positive. Any reminders and/or lists I create or updated between my iMac and iCloud.com are fine and sync within seconds.
A few of the times some Reminders do initially come back down in the scenarios above but not recent ones. Most of the Reminder lists do not show with their correct names either, they just appear as 'New List'.

This issue also persists regardless of me being on my wi-fi connection at home or 4G on EE.

I have been using Reminders for years and had therefore accumulated many 'completed' reminders, which as advised by Apple, I have now deleted.

Apparently, this has become an issue that engineers are aware of and I am to wait for them to provide a fix, but I am not convinced that is the case, given that I can not find anyone on this forum or anywhere else I've looked, with the same issue.

This issue persisted across iOS 13.3 & 13.3.1.

I first noticed this when my Apple Watch Series 4 battery was draining rapidly all of a sudden for about a week since that 27th Jan. That seemed to have settled down, but this sync issue still remains. Apple Watch shows a different number of Reminders to my iPhone too, and they both show a different number to my iMac/iCloud.com.

Anyone else with this specific issue, especially in the last month or so?

Cheers
How did you delete your completed reminders? I’ve never checked that before and I have hundreds, maybe thousands. So far I can only delete them one at a time.
 
How did you delete your completed reminders? I’ve never checked that before and I have hundreds, maybe thousands. So far I can only delete them one at a time.
I have exactly the same problem of iCloud Reminders not syncing at all across my iPad, iPhone, and Mac computers, and I have taken all the same steps, including removing all completed reminders (via icloud.com). When I sign into icloud.com, there is a currently a single Reminders list (which is impossible to remove via the web interface) that appears to be empty.

I then decided to “request a copy of my data.” To do so, you go to https://privacy.apple.com/, sign in, and click on “Request a copy of my data.” Then select (only) “iCloud Calendars and Reminders”. For some obscure reason, it can take a few days until your data is ready for download.

The download that was generated by Apple for my account contains several .ics files for my calendars and reminders.

I opened the .ics file for the reminders with a text editor. It turns out that this .ics file still contains several “completed” reminders (from as far back as 2013) that I actually erased several weeks ago via icloud.com and that currently do not show up on icloud.com! Consequently, I suspect these “hidden” reminders to be the culprit.

Update: I just installed iCloud on a Windows machine to check how my (supposedly empty) Reminders list would show up in Outlook—and Outlook showed all those “hidden” reminders as completed reminders.

Update 2: (a) Installing iCloud on a second Windows machine revealed that syncing between Windows computers via iCloud also fails. I was, however, able to remove the “hidden” reminders via Outlook. (b) My iPad is suddenly listing a 2-month-old (long completed and deleted) reminder that is displayed neither on icloud.com nor on my iPhone nor on my MacBook …
 
Last edited:
All the same exact issues here fellas. Mine started pretty much as soon as I updated to iOS 13. I have tried pretty much everything and I mean everything. I’ve even talked with Apple support 3 times and had to talk with their level 2 peeps. None of them helped. They literally have never seen or heard of this problem before so they say :rolleyes: My opinion is it’s a 100% iCloud issue not devise. I’ve had this iOS 13 issue on an iPhone Xs max, then iPhone 11 Pro Max and now I’m using an iPhone 8. in the same time frame I’ve also been using 2019 iPad Pro and now I use an iPad Air 2. No change what so ever. Also logged on to my old iCloud acct on my current devices and the reminders app synced perfectly. Don’t take this wrong but I’m glad there are others that have this issue too.until today I really thought I was the only one. I have resorted to you a thirdpart app in the meantime. I hope this issued is fixed with iOS 14
 
  • Like
Reactions: Jason_G
I am having the exact same problem. Was told by a senior advisor at Apple that it is a known issue. Super super frustrating. OP, how did you delete completed reminders? I have thousands of them. I manually deleted them from Reminders app of MacOS. I ran shortcuts to delete them from iOS devices. But when I log into iCloud on web they all still seem to be there.
 
Anyone with any updates on this please? I'm just on the phone with Apple support again to find out what's happening since my case with them in February.

Maybe someone on iOS 14 beta? Not that I think it's OS related anyway, has to be iCloud side as far as I can tell.
 
Last edited:
I am on the iOS 14 betas and the reminders on my iPhone SE 2020 finally synced with iCloud (not sure if that was because of the beta or not, but I doubt it). Running the first beta of Watch OS 7 and reminders are still NOT syncing to the watch (and just unpaired and re-paired the watch (series 4) last night). Super frustrating as I prefer to add reminders via the watch but for now cannot do so.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Jason_G
How did you delete your completed reminders? I’ve never checked that before and I have hundreds, maybe thousands. So far I can only delete them one at a time.

I used the Reminders app on my Mac to show ‘completed’. Highlighted them and deleted.
[automerge]1593990369[/automerge]
I am having the exact same problem. Was told by a senior advisor at Apple that it is a known issue. Super super frustrating. OP, how did you delete completed reminders? I have thousands of them. I manually deleted them from Reminders app of MacOS. I ran shortcuts to delete them from iOS devices. But when I log into iCloud on web they all still seem to be there.

Yep I used my Mac to delete them too
[automerge]1593990428[/automerge]
I am on the iOS 14 betas and the reminders on my iPhone SE 2020 finally synced with iCloud (not sure if that was because of the beta or not, but I doubt it). Running the first beta of Watch OS 7 and reminders are still NOT syncing to the watch (and just unpaired and re-paired the watch (series 4) last night). Super frustrating as I prefer to add reminders via the watch but for now cannot do so.

Do you still have any devices on iOS 13 where the reminders now sync?
 
  • Like
Reactions: Alhagar
I used the Reminders app on my Mac to show ‘completed’. Highlighted them and deleted.
[automerge]1593990369[/automerge]


Yep I used my Mac to delete them too
[automerge]1593990428[/automerge]


Do you still have any devices on iOS 13 where the reminders now sync?
My completed reminders did finally delete from everywhere. No, all my devices are running beta now, but I believe that Reminders on my SE 2020 finally synced up BEFORE I installed iOS 14. I’ll experiment with an old SE running iOS 13 and see if they sync. Reminders on watch still not syncing.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Jason_G
So I thought I'd give it another go just in case iOS 14 resulted in some back-end changes. I'm still on iOS 13 but tried turning my iPhone 11 Pro off and back on, disabled Reminders and deleted the app itself. Left for about an hour. Powered phone off and back on again and left it over night. Today, I reinstalled the Reminders app, powered off and on again, left it an hour or so, then enabled Reminders again. This was early afternoon and approx 3 hours later, it still hasn't synced a single item!

Haha as it stands, it's actually worse than before! 🤪
[automerge]1594051246[/automerge]
Look forward to an iOS14 public beta (hopefully tomorrow if that's not too soon) and will try as a new phone on an iPhone 8.
 
So I thought I'd give it another go just in case iOS 14 resulted in some back-end changes. I'm still on iOS 13 but tried turning my iPhone 11 Pro off and back on, disabled Reminders and deleted the app itself. Left for about an hour. Powered phone off and back on again and left it over night. Today, I reinstalled the Reminders app, powered off and on again, left it an hour or so, then enabled Reminders again. This was early afternoon and approx 3 hours later, it still hasn't synced a single item!

Haha as it stands, it's actually worse than before! 🤪
[automerge]1594051246[/automerge]
Look forward to an iOS14 public beta (hopefully tomorrow if that's not too soon) and will try as a new phone on an iPhone 8.
When I tried all of that, including deleting the Reminders App, it would take days and sometimes if I’m not mistaken over a week for Reminders to sync up on the phone. Hang in there! :)
 
Everything that’s been mentioned here has been tried multiple times with no luck but about 2 weeks ago my reminder started syncing between my iPad and iPhone. Sometimes I feel it’s still struggling but their syncing and working and now obviously their all showing on my icloud. Still no reminders though on my Apple Watch. This is improvement at least
 
  • Like
Reactions: Alhagar
When I tried all of that, including deleting the Reminders App, it would take days and sometimes if I’m not mistaken over a week for Reminders to sync up on the phone. Hang in there! :)

Something definitely happens over night, some sort of back-end process must run as my Reminders app was empty last night and first thing this morning I opened it to see 258 items under the 'All" category (I have 419 showing on my Mac and iCloud). The little progress wheel is showing now so it thinks it's doing something. Unfortunately, so far all my lists are just appearing as 'New List' for now..
 
  • Like
Reactions: Alhagar
Something definitely happens over night, some sort of back-end process must run as my Reminders app was empty last night and first thing this morning I opened it to see 258 items under the 'All" category (I have 419 showing on my Mac and iCloud). The little progress wheel is showing now so it thinks it's doing something. Unfortunately, so far all my lists are just appearing as 'New List' for now..

Just had a theory, been watching this spinning progress wheel today, jumped up by 3 more items but no progress other than that. All of a sudden, despite me generally keeping approx 2-3Gb free space on my phone, it popped up talking about not having enough storage, so I've now removed all of my music which gives it approx. 25Gb free, should be plenty to do whatever it needs to do! Will see if there is any further progress over night/tomorrow morning...I think I'm going mad just writing these updates here.
 
So I downloaded iOS 14 beta on my iPad and all my syncing issues with reminders is gone. My watch, iPhone and iPad work as they should

I’m so tempted to go for the beta now that it’s public, but seen that some banking apps don’t work yet! ☹

I think I’ll go for it on a spare device though as that should confirm it for me hopefully
[automerge]1594365411[/automerge]
So I downloaded iOS 14 beta on my iPad and all my syncing issues with reminders is gone. My watch, iPhone and iPad work as they should

Is your watch on the beta too?
 
I’m so tempted to go for the beta now that it’s public, but seen that some banking apps don’t work yet! ☹

I think I’ll go for it on a spare device though as that should confirm it for me hopefully
[automerge]1594365411[/automerge]


Is your watch on the beta too?
Yeah I only did it on my iPad since it’s my “spare devise”. iPhone and watch are on latest non beta software
 
  • Like
Reactions: Jason_G
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.