We've spoken before in the Pointers column about the usefulness of Siri, and about the Reminders app (both of which are available nearly everywhere: on the Mac, on iOS devices, on the Apple Watch, and even on PCs and such using the iCloud.com website). Oddly enough, we've not written much about how massively useful Notes is, even after it got a major upgrade in usefulness with the arrival of iOS 9 and OS X 10.11 El Capitan. In this Pointers, we'll address that, and get you to use both it and Reminders more with and without Siri, and even more so with and without an Apple Watch -- the latter of which turns out to be something of a "killer feature."
If you're not using Notes (and Reminders) regularly, you should, but we know why you're probably not -- both are most useful when they are right to hand when a thought occurs or when someone says something (or you see something) that prompts you to, literally, make a note of it. If you're one of those lucky people with an Apple Watch, or if you are at least one of those people who spend "too much" time looking at your iPhone or iPad, however -- you're running out of excuses.
Notes in particular has become superb in its latest incarnation, which now supports all the font and styling goodness of a real word processor, can automatically make to-do lists with checkboxes, lets users drag in pictures from websites, paste styled text, share map locations, and even turns dragged-in URLs into little previews of the page. On OS X, it can use the dictation function to let you dictate items, and in the upcoming updates for OS X (10.11.4) and iOS 9 (v9.3), it will even let you password-protect individual notes -- so that one where you keep your bank account numbers and ATM PIN codes and various passwords (don't deny you have one of these) will stay safe.
You probably already know, then, that you can use Siri to make a new note on iOS devices. Give it a try next time you see a cool ad or hear a great quote or something: invoke Siri on your iPhone, and say "make a note that it may have been Oscar While who said quote no good deed goes unpunished unquote," and it will (after you confirm that what you spoke was transcribed correctly). Reminders works the same way: tell Siri "remind me to go see the museum exhibit on wildlife photography next Tuesday at 6pm," and it will both create a reminder to see the exhibit, and will dutifully prompt you with a notification about it one hour before 6pm next Tuesday (this can be adjusted to a different reminder time in the Reminders app). Calendar works the same way, though you might want to say "make an appointment" to ensure it goes into Calendar rather than Reminders or Notes.
Now kick it up a notch
So now you know that it's pretty easy to make a note, reminder, or even a calendar appointment whenever a thought strikes you, either by opening the relevant app on your iOS device you're always carrying around, or on the Mac while you're using that, or by bringing up Siri on your iOS device. This still involves some minimal effort, however, and can sometimes take you (mentally or physically) out of what you were doing at the time, meaning you won't use it every time, almost unconsciously, when you should.
So let's make this
even easier.
If you're the kind of person who wants to make notes and reminders and to-dos and such to yourself fairly often, a big help in this department would be to turn on the "Hey Siri" functionality, or have an Apple Watch, or preferably both. If you're not familiar, "Hey Siri" is an optional feature that causes your iOS device or Apple Watch to "listen" for that particular phrase (and nothing else until it is active) and open itself when it "hears" its name being called in that manner.
I personally leave this function off on my iPhone, but only because I have it on on my Apple Watch. With the Watch, you have to raise the Watch to your eye level and
then use the phrase "Hey Siri" to get it to work; in the name of energy saving, it doesn't "listen" when the Watch screen isn't on. If I didn't have a Watch, I might have "Hey Siri" on for the iPhone, as it's really useful for getting information while driving (assuming your car doesn't have CarPlay yet).
What's great about the Watch having "Hey Siri" functionality is that you can actually dictate to it even
sotto voce (pretty softly), even in noisy environments, by holding it a bit closer, movie-spy style (you can also do this with the iPhone, of course, but it's not quite as "James Bond/Dick Tracy," is it?). We have mentioned before,
in a previous Pointers column, about setting location-based reminders, that you can say something like "Hey Siri, remind me to pick up a bottle of wine from the liquor store when I leave work," and that this will create a location-based reminder that kicks in moments after you leave your office (this trick is dependent on your location being listed in your contacts, though -- Siri will prompt you to add a work address if there isn't one in there, however).
Next time someone says to you "don't forget that you're bringing the bingo cards to the church social next Saturday," you can -- instead of tapping your forehead and giving a thumbs-up, only to forget it an hour later -- raise your wrist or pull out your iPhone and say "Hey Siri, remind me to bring the bingo cards for the church social next Saturday at 5PM," which is you being clever, since the social is actually at 7PM, so that gives you two hours to find them and get them there.
You will hear a business guru give some pithy advice that really rings true to you on the television, or you will catch a witty one-liner you'd like to tell your workmates tomorrow, or you will get a text you need to set up a note about, or you will see a review for a play you'd like to attend, and so on. You may have this happen to you once a day, or several times a day. Now you can instantly -- without any real effort -- do something to help you remember and thus accomplish more.
But wait, there's still more
What if the thing you want to remind yourself about is actually something you
and another person need to know about? Say, for example, you're at home and you notice There's a couple of different approaches: the common one is to text-message or iMessage the other person (roommate, spouse, sibling, whatever) is the most common, but here's another one that doubles up on the awesome: create a Shared Reminder List that is shared with the relevant person.
So you notice you need milk, and you know your spouse is at work. You have to set up the shared reminder list first, or course, and the other person has to accept it on their iPhone/Mac/Watch, but once that's done, all you have to do is say "create a reminder that we need milk when we leave work on the shared list" and
voila -- when your spouse leaves work, they will get a reminder they didn't create themselves to get milk. It's freaky at first, but amazing once you both start using it -- though remember, this trick works both ways.
If you just set a normal reminder and forget to mention that you want it on the shared list, you can fix that during the confirmation dialog. Siri will show you (or read back if you're in the car) the reminder you just created for yourself, but when it asks you to confirm that you want to create the reminder, just say "move it to the shared list" and it will get put where it belongs. There are other possibilities to explore with this, but set a reminder to try it out when you know you'll have some time to play around with it, and see where Notes, Reminders, and Calendar -- with or without Siri, with or without the Apple Watch -- can help you capture, be reminded of, and accomplish so much more.
You may even end up buying an Apple Watch or two, after all.
-- Charles Martin
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