I have a reminder app on my phone, but is there a good utility for reminders on my Windows 10 computer?
Given how complex and sophisticated computer systems are nowadays, you would think that basics like a calculator, to-do list and reminders would be long since solved. Heck, even a basic calendar seems like it should be the simplest of programs to get right after decades of personal computing operating system development and literally millions of programmers coding up solutions. And yet, since these aren’t glamorous, headline-grabbing programs, neither Windows, Mac nor Linux have really nailed all these functions.
Don’t believe me? Launch the default calculator in either MacOS X or Windows 10 and marvel at how clumsy and dull it looks. Why?
Reminders are similar in that there are some neat programs to solve the problem, but none do so with panache and style. Until we got into voice based systems, because it turns out that asking a device to set up reminders with a natural language interface is, well, a natural! Ask your Amazon Echo to “remind me tomorrow at 3pm that I have a haircut” and it’ll do just that.
But Windows 10 has a hidden voice and natural language capability that many people overlook: Cortana. Yes, it’s not just for Windows phones but is integrated into your Win10 start menu [once you enable it, as needed. Use this reference if needed: How to enable Cortana].
That’s how I set reminders on my own Windows 10 systems. Let me show you how it works, it’s pretty slick! To start, simply do a search for “reminder”:
You can see that Cortana is already eager to jump in and get involved, even before I start typing!
A few letters in, however, and it’s already popped up what seems like a good match:
“set a reminder”. Sounds like what I want to do on my Win10 system!
Click on the option and Cortana is going to let you specify the type of reminder and fill in all the data:
I’m going to set a reminder to get milk for an hour from now, so that’s a “Remember to…”
Not immediately obvious, but the boxes Cortana shows can be click on and typed into, so that’s what I’ll do!
Since it’s a time-based reminder, I click on “Time” and it shows some defaults of 30 minutes, 1 hour, tomorrow at the same time and the always helpful “another time…”. I’ll choose “in 1 hour” and we have a full reminder ready to set:
Before we click on “Remind” to make it live, click on the recurring option of “Only once”, because there are some really slick ways you can have an event recur if you need it:
Lots of choices. Finally, it all looks right, so a click on “Remind” will set the reminder:
Seems like a lot of work. The good news? Once Cortana is part of your Windows search, you can actually sidestep all the work and simply type — or say!! — a full reminder request directly. Like this: “remind me at 2:00 to get eggs“. Here’s how Cortana processes and displays this requested reminder:
Key to remember: If you don’t click “Remind” to set it, you haven’t yet actually created a reminder.
But still, pretty darn easy to do. And the pop-ups are clear and easily understood too:
All in all, pretty slick stuff. Just one of many great tricks that Cortana can do to help your Windows experience be better!
Pro Tip: While you’re here, please check out all our Windows help. It’s quite extensive!
Thank you for mentioning it. No one seems to appreciate Cortana. Maybe it’s because of this whole privacy thing that’s been going on for the past 3 years or so.