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Not related to google but for my personal workflow i like to manage my tasks in Apple Reminders apps and see them in one unified view in my Apple Calendar apps.

by xiwenc 3y ago

Not related to google but for my personal workflow i like to manage my tasks in Apple Reminders apps and see them in one unified view in my Apple Calendar apps. Details can be read and implemented following: https://cinaq.com/blog/2022/11/22/the-missing-link-between-reminders-and-calendar-app-on-ios/ https://cinaq.com/blog/2022/11/22/the-missing-link-between-r... Just yesterday someone out of nowhere contacted me while he was trying out my setup. He loved it. Hope this helps others here on HN.

submeta 3y ago
BusyCal shows both calendars and Apple Reminders items, and it’s way more sophisticated (different calendar views and filters, for work and private, for projects, etc). Love the app, on iOS and Mac. Because it’s got a more sophisticated view on my Reminders. In today‘s view it‘ll group the reminders based on the list or other aspects.
- greggsy 3y ago
  I’m still a bit salty that BusyCal and Fantastical moved to subscription, models, and failed to do any further innovation.
  - submeta 3y ago
    BusyCal is a one time payment. No subscription there.
criddell 3y ago
Your article is good but the callouts are barely readable on my iPad which is in dark mode and fairly dim because I’m reading in a dark room. A little more contrast would help a lot. At the end you mention the lack of timer based triggers. You can do this with Shortcut personal automations. For example, I have a WFH focus mode. I run an automation at 8am on weekdays that checks if I’m at home and if I am, it turns on WFH mode until late afternoon. My problem with your setup is that it doesn’t update the events when I modify or complete the reminders.
- xiwenc 3y ago
  Thanks for pointing out the dark mode issue. Hope to address it soon. Regarding trigger i meant there is no standard scheduled system like a cronjob. The article is meant to inspire others. It solves a very specific problem i have. It’s far from perfect but does the job. Will take a look at your WFH mode suggestion. Timer/alarm based triggers require manual run confirmation. Allowing non-interactive run is a must in my case to avoid distractions.
  - criddell 3y ago
    > no standard scheduled system like a cronjob Personal automations are pretty close. I use them to run shortcuts at specific times. If you wanted to run a Shortcut hourly from, say, 7 am to 7 pm, you could manually create those 13 automations or maybe you could use Jellycuts to create one and then cut-and-paste it to make the other 12. Edit: I just searched for it and here’s an article that talks about a cron-like Shortcut: https://www.joshholtz.com/blog/2021/06/23/automating-ios-shortcuts-the-cron-job-way.html https://www.joshholtz.com/blog/2021/06/23/automating-ios-sho... I haven’t looked at it so I have no way of knowing if it works or if there’s an easier way to do it now (that article is two years old).
  - tzs 3y ago
    > Regarding trigger i meant there is no standard scheduled system like a cronjob Do you have a Mac? If so maybe you could run your shortcut periodically from cron on the Mac. I just tested and shortcuts can be run from cron (once you get cron working...[1]). For example I have a bunch of shortcuts that do things to my Denon A/V receiver, and added a crontab entry to run the one that mutes the receiver, and it worked. You can invoke shortcuts with the "shortcuts" command. E.g., here was my mute test's crontab line: */1 * * * * shortcuts "Denon Mute On" That doesn't involve interacting with any GUI apps (it just uses the "Run script over SSH" shortcut action to run a script that is on my RPi that does the actual work of dealing with the Denon receiver's network API). To check that dealing with GUI apps was OK from cron I tried another shortcut I have, "SaveInnerHTML" that saves document.documentElement.innerHTML from the active Safari tab into a file. That worked too. [1] Apparently sometime around Catalina, when they were beefing up the permissions system and privacy protection cron stopped working unless you gave it permissions. You apparently now have to go into the "Privacy & Security" settings and /usr/sbin/cron full disk access.
raybb 3y ago
I use the apple reminders on Mac and tasks.org on Android synced with nextcloud. I don't love the apple reminders app but until nextcloud tasks supports recurring tasks I'm kinda stuck with it. I took a look at implementing it a year or so ago and it's a decent amount of work even to just have the non UI parts working (so that checking a task doesn't delete it if recurrence was set elsewhere) https://github.com/nextcloud/tasks/issues/34 https://github.com/nextcloud/tasks/issues/34
smallpipe 3y ago
That's really cool! One thing I can think of, instead of setting the shortcut to run when your phone is plugged in, you can make an automation start when an app is opened/closed, so if you use this on the Reminders app, it should do the sync automatically.
- xiwenc 3y ago
  Thanks a lot for the suggestion! Not sure if this was a recent feature/trigger in shortcut automations. Will update the article soon with this addition.
speg 3y ago
> One of the issues I got with Apple Shortcuts is the lack of timer based triggers. That’s odd, I have (just double checked) an automation to run a shortcut every day at 0030 on my iPad. Maybe it’s just disabled on iOS?
- xiwenc 3y ago
  Ah if i recall, in the past timer based triggers cannot be run automatically. It required manual confirmation. That has changed it seems. Thanks for pointing out.

by xiwenc 3y ago

submeta 3y ago

BusyCal shows both calendars and Apple Reminders items, and it’s way more sophisticated (different calendar views and filters, for work and private, for projects, etc). Love the app, on iOS and Mac. Because it’s got a more sophisticated view on my Reminders. In today‘s view it‘ll group the reminders based on the list or other aspects.

greggsy 3y ago
I’m still a bit salty that BusyCal and Fantastical moved to subscription, models, and failed to do any further innovation.
- submeta 3y ago
  BusyCal is a one time payment. No subscription there.

criddell 3y ago

Your article is good but the callouts are barely readable on my iPad which is in dark mode and fairly dim because I’m reading in a dark room. A little more contrast would help a lot. At the end you mention the lack of timer based triggers. You can do this with Shortcut personal automations. For example, I have a WFH focus mode. I run an automation at 8am on weekdays that checks if I’m at home and if I am, it turns on WFH mode until late afternoon. My problem with your setup is that it doesn’t update the events when I modify or complete the reminders.

xiwenc 3y ago
Thanks for pointing out the dark mode issue. Hope to address it soon. Regarding trigger i meant there is no standard scheduled system like a cronjob. The article is meant to inspire others. It solves a very specific problem i have. It’s far from perfect but does the job. Will take a look at your WFH mode suggestion. Timer/alarm based triggers require manual run confirmation. Allowing non-interactive run is a must in my case to avoid distractions.
- criddell 3y ago
  > no standard scheduled system like a cronjob Personal automations are pretty close. I use them to run shortcuts at specific times. If you wanted to run a Shortcut hourly from, say, 7 am to 7 pm, you could manually create those 13 automations or maybe you could use Jellycuts to create one and then cut-and-paste it to make the other 12. Edit: I just searched for it and here’s an article that talks about a cron-like Shortcut: https://www.joshholtz.com/blog/2021/06/23/automating-ios-shortcuts-the-cron-job-way.html https://www.joshholtz.com/blog/2021/06/23/automating-ios-sho... I haven’t looked at it so I have no way of knowing if it works or if there’s an easier way to do it now (that article is two years old).
- tzs 3y ago
  > Regarding trigger i meant there is no standard scheduled system like a cronjob Do you have a Mac? If so maybe you could run your shortcut periodically from cron on the Mac. I just tested and shortcuts can be run from cron (once you get cron working...[1]). For example I have a bunch of shortcuts that do things to my Denon A/V receiver, and added a crontab entry to run the one that mutes the receiver, and it worked. You can invoke shortcuts with the "shortcuts" command. E.g., here was my mute test's crontab line: */1 * * * * shortcuts "Denon Mute On" That doesn't involve interacting with any GUI apps (it just uses the "Run script over SSH" shortcut action to run a script that is on my RPi that does the actual work of dealing with the Denon receiver's network API). To check that dealing with GUI apps was OK from cron I tried another shortcut I have, "SaveInnerHTML" that saves document.documentElement.innerHTML from the active Safari tab into a file. That worked too. [1] Apparently sometime around Catalina, when they were beefing up the permissions system and privacy protection cron stopped working unless you gave it permissions. You apparently now have to go into the "Privacy & Security" settings and /usr/sbin/cron full disk access.

raybb 3y ago

I use the apple reminders on Mac and tasks.org on Android synced with nextcloud. I don't love the apple reminders app but until nextcloud tasks supports recurring tasks I'm kinda stuck with it. I took a look at implementing it a year or so ago and it's a decent amount of work even to just have the non UI parts working (so that checking a task doesn't delete it if recurrence was set elsewhere) https://github.com/nextcloud/tasks/issues/34 https://github.com/nextcloud/tasks/issues/34

smallpipe 3y ago

That's really cool! One thing I can think of, instead of setting the shortcut to run when your phone is plugged in, you can make an automation start when an app is opened/closed, so if you use this on the Reminders app, it should do the sync automatically.

xiwenc 3y ago
Thanks a lot for the suggestion! Not sure if this was a recent feature/trigger in shortcut automations. Will update the article soon with this addition.

speg 3y ago

> One of the issues I got with Apple Shortcuts is the lack of timer based triggers. That’s odd, I have (just double checked) an automation to run a shortcut every day at 0030 on my iPad. Maybe it’s just disabled on iOS?

xiwenc 3y ago
Ah if i recall, in the past timer based triggers cannot be run automatically. It required manual confirmation. That has changed it seems. Thanks for pointing out.