No reminders syncing on iOS

Since upgrading to Agenda 10 on all my devices I can confirm that:

  1. Using the \remind shortcut or the reminder icon on the iPhone correctly sets up a reminder in Reminders on the phone. This reminder appears siloed on the phone as it does not sync to either Mac or iPad.

  2. The same is true when setting up a reminder on the iPad. It is set up correctly on device, but is not synced to my other devices.

  3. If the \remind shortcut or the reminder contextual menu item is used to set up a reminder on Mac, this is set up correctly on device and syncs correctly to both iPhone and iPad.

I hope that helps. No silver bullet found.

Andrew

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Dear all, a quick update, we believe we might have found the cause for the reminder sync issues on iOS, most likely a bug in Appleā€™s code where they didnā€™t take certain APIs into account while introducing their new fancy reminders functions in 10.15/iOS13. We will introduce some changes in the next update and would like to hear from you if that indeed fixes things once itā€™s out. Stay tuned!

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FYI my tests show that I can create reminders on Agenda iOS and have them sync to Mac, but updating reminders do not sync (this includes marking them as complete).

  1. Use \remind to create a reminder in Agenda iOS. The reminder appears in Reminders on the same iOS device, and syncs to Agenda and Reminders macOS and other iOS devices.
  2. Mark the reminder as complete in Agenda iOS. The reminder is completed in Reminders on the same iOS device. The reminder is not completed on Agenda macOS or other iOS devices. It appears to be with the gray clock icon, but it still appears in Reminders on the other devices.
  3. For any reminder created in Agenda iOS, editing the reminder name either in Agenda or Reminders will not sync to MacOS or other iOS devices.

Essentially Iā€™m seeing that create works, but update is still broken.

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Just as an FYI on a related issue:

Iā€™m happy to report that after downloading the iOS and iPad OS 14 beta 2, this is no longer issue. Tasks are synching from creating in Agenda thru Reminders thru to Exchange.

After a clean install of my iMac to Catalina, I find that Agenda isnā€™t syncing reminders/to-dos on macOS or iOS again. Events are there on both OSs, but not reminders/to-dos.

Iā€™m wondering if itā€™s anything to do with the ā€˜upgradingā€™ feature in macOS 10.15.x and iOS 13.x Reminders app, which I have not enabled, because this breaks much of BusyCalā€™s CalDAV (iCloud) functionality. Does Agenda rely on that ā€˜upgradingā€™ ?

Well, this issue has been unresolved since February, which makes me conclude that itā€™s unlikely to be resolved. Reluctantly shelving the app.

As an afterthought, it might be interesting if you polled users who have and who have not upgraded Appleā€™s own Reminders apps on iOS and macOS (i.e., to the new EventKit format) to see how many of each type have and do not have problems syncing Reminders in Agenda.

It might be that those who are having problems syncing Reminders in Agenda are those who have not upgraded (because they wish to continue syncing reminders with their other apps which still store data in iCloud CalDAV, or because they havenā€™t for whatever reason). Does Agenda bidirectionally sync data from the upgraded EventKit format? Or does it only do it one way, from (upgraded) Reminders to Agenda? Or does it use CalDAV? Suspicion is that itā€™s the first.

Sync of reminders is completely relying on Appleā€™s frameworks, nothing is synced through Agenda. They (Apple) had a bug in iOS13 that prevented sync of reminders if we would set the URL. This has been fixed in the latest update of Agenda (or better, we just donā€™t set the reminder URL anymore), and we had confirmation from Apple this should also be solved in iOS14. As far as we know, we have not had anyone reporting sync issues with reminders anymore since we made those changes.

To answer your question:

Does Agenda rely on that ā€˜upgradingā€™ ?

No, because I have not upgraded myself, and Drew did, and for both of us the reminders sync.

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Can you please share what versions of Agenda / iOS / iPadOS / macOS you believe reminders sync works with?

Because in my case, reminders created in Agenda 10.0.5 (136) on iOS 13.6 do not sync to macOS 10.15.6 or iPadOS 13.6.1.

In principle it should already work in 10.0.4, we have no longer received issues. It sounds like you still have a reminder that might be blocking things. Perhaps best is to delete any reminders created in Agenda from a while back and see if that unblocks the sync.

Okay, I can happily report that I have Reminders syncing!

Hereā€™s what I did:

  1. Delete all completed reminders on MacOS. I suppose many of these had old Agenda links
  2. Disable and re-enable Reminders sync on iCloud on my iOS devices

This seems to have flushed out any reminders that were blocking sync, and I have successfully been using Agenda + Reminders for a little over a week.

@mekentosj Thank you for the guidance.

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Ah great to hear that! Even better is that Apple ā€œsupposablyā€ has fixed the URL support in macOS11/iOS14, something weā€™re investigating as we speak.

My reminders are still not syncing on macOS or iOS

Have you tried the steps that @Pat_Maddox described above (making sure you run version 11)?

Yes Iā€™ve just tried that. Reminders are not syncing properly on macOS or on iOS. There are some there, but they donā€™t reflect changes. For instance, Reminders that were moved on this morning from yesterday to today are still in yesterday. BusyCal shows the correct updates, but Agenda is totally unreliable with Reminders.

Busycal talks directly to your calendars, instead how are things reflected in Agenda vs the system Calendar app? Are they too out of sync?

My reminders are synching within the reminders app between my MacBook Air and iPhone, however they are not showing on the agenda app on my Mac, but do on the iPhone

I just went to preferences within agenda and had all reminders list ticked, so didnā€™t have to change anything, however, just looking in the preferences seems to have fixed the synch issue so all ok now - thanks

fwiw Iā€™ve found that iCloud Reminders sync just kind of sucks, independent from Agenda. It seems to be worst on machines that go offline for a few days - such as my work computer, which I shut for the weekend. About once a week I disable Reminders in iCloud System Preferences, and then re-enable it, and the Reminders show up correctly. Again this appears to have nothing to do with Agenda - the Reminders app shows old data until I disable / re-enable it.

We have found in the past that if you have never actually opened or used the Reminders app on a device, it may not sync properly. A simple fix for that is simply to open the app, and add a test event. Should trigger a sync.

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