How to add attachments and tags to reminders on iPhone and iPad

By Christine Chan
published

Reminders in iOS 13 on iPod Touch 7
Reminders in iOS 13 on iPod Touch 7 (Image credit: iMore)

If you're a faithful Reminders user, then you're in for a treat with the completely redesigned and revamped Reminders in iOS 13 on both iPhone and iPad. It's no longer just a simple list app, as Apple has added a robust Quick Toolbar for quickly adding dates, times, locations, flags, photos, and much more. That's right—you can finally add attachments to your Reminders, and there's a brand new option of tagging people in your reminders, so you get the reminder as you send them a message.

What kind of attachments are allowed in Reminders?

iOS 13 Reminders

While Reminders now allows you to add an attachment to your tasks, it is currently only limited to photos or documents.

For photos, you can take a brand new photo with your device's camera, or choose something from your Photo Library.

As far as documents are concerned, it is limited to only scanning new documents with the camera. There is no way to import an existing scan from iCloud Drive or another third-party scanning app or cloud storage service.

How to add an attachment to your reminder

Adding an attachment is easy, thanks to the new Quick Toolbar.

  1. Launch Reminders on your iPhone or iPad.
  2. Tap on the List that you want to add a new reminder in.
  3. Tap New Reminder in the bottom left.

  1. Type your reminder in the text input field.
  2. To add the attachment, tap on the Camera icon in the Quick Toolbar above the keyboard.
    • Take Photo launches the device camera for a new capture.
    • Photo Library lets you pick out an image from your device Photo Library.
    • Scan Document brings up the camera in document scanning mode. It will search for a document and highlight the scannable area in yellow. Tap on the capture button to take the picture. You can readjust the captured area of the document at any time by dragging the corners.

  1. Once you have your attachment, tap Done.
  2. The reminder is saved with your text, attachment, and other data.

How to tag someone in your reminder

  1. Launch Reminders on your iPhone or iPad.
  2. Tap on the List that you want to add a new reminder in.
  3. Tap New Reminder in the bottom left.

  1. Type your reminder in the text input field.
  2. Tap on the "i" button to bring up the Details screen.
  3. Where it says Remind me when messaging, tap the toggle to ON (green).

  1. Tap on Choose Person and select someone in your contact list (Edit appears if you have someone added and want to make changes).
  2. Tap Done once you've picked someone.

With this feature, the reminder you just made will pop up whenever you are messaging that person. It will also show up on your Lock Screen and Notification Center until you have completed it.

Questions?

This is a huge revamp for Reminders, and it definitely adds some cool new features. Have questions regarding attachments and people-tagging in Reminders? Let us know in the comments!

Update June 2020: Updating for the latest version of iOS 13.

iOS

HomeKit

○ iOS 14 Review
○ What's new in iOS 14
○ Updating your iPhone ultimate guide
○ iOS Help Guide
○ iOS Discussion

Christine Chan
Christine Chan

Christine Romero-Chan was formerly a Senior Editor for iMore. She has been writing about technology, specifically Apple, for over a decade at a variety of websites. She is currently part of the Digital Trends team, and has been using Apple’s smartphone since the original iPhone back in 2007. While her main speciality is the iPhone, she also covers Apple Watch, iPad, and Mac when needed.

When she isn’t writing about Apple, Christine can often be found at Disneyland in Anaheim, California, as she is a passholder and obsessed with all things Disney, especially Star Wars. Christine also enjoys coffee, food, photography, mechanical keyboards, and spending as much time with her new daughter as possible.

5 Comments
  • I presume the messaging notification only works in iMessage. Do you think it might arrive to third party messengers? Where I live WhatsApp and Android is dominant.
    Thanks.
  • How does the new reminders app with reminding notes? With the current notes/reminders app you have to ask siri to add a note to reminders with the clickable hyper link to the note. Kinda like how reminders acts with Podcast, safari links and news. Also can you use the share tab in photos to make a reminder for that photo?
    Thanks,
  • Really looking forward to the improvements, the reminders app is one of the most useful apps on the iPhone for me, so many times it's reminded me about something which I would've completely forgotten about otherwise
  • I'm running to 13.1.1 on my iPhone 11 (13.0 was preinstalled), but I don't really see any of the new Reminders features discussed in the article. I'm guessing that these features require us to "Upgrade" Reminders first? I'm assuming that if, like me, you're also using Macs running macOS Mojave, the Reminders upgrade will have to wait until macOS Catalina drops in October. Can anyone confirm that is the case? Would have been nice if the article was clearer about this. Seems like it was originally authored based on beta software.
  • Reminder Lists also needs to both maintain their collapsed/expanded settings and have a collapse all/expand all feature. Deleting a reminder should have the option of deleting that reminders history entires as well.