This is a difficult topic due to the way the Reminders app works on iOS13 compared to iOS12, but also how things work in general and why for example we decided to go with the notes field also for events.
To start with the latter, the reason we choose the notes field for calendar events is that you might already have a URL and we don’t want to override it. Good thing is that on both iOS and macOS the Calendar app supports clickable links so no issue there.
The reason why we went for the url in the notes field of a reminder is two fold:
- because of the same reason as above
- on iOS12 there only is a notes field, the reminders app doesn’t have a URL field, they only added that in iOS13
This leaves us in a nasty spot because in order to have something that works on iOS12 and iOS13 we can only use the “note” field. However in contrast to the calendar app, the reminders app in iOS doesn’t support clickable links in the notes field (it does on macOS).
We have filed a feedback issue with Apple through feedbackassistant.apple.com asking if they could add clickable link support to the notes field on iOS and we encourage everybody to do the same, if you do make sure you mention “FB6224747” when referring to our original request.
One thing we could do is to add the link to both the “url” and the “note” field. On iOS12 you would not see the url field so it would stay as it currently is, but on iOS13 you would get a clickable link at the cost of duplicating data (you’d now get the link in both fields). But alas, this too is broken in iOS13 and 10.15, we set the URL in code but the Reminders app simply doesn’t show it. Another open bug feedback item. To be honest that duplication isn’t too great either so we’re not really sure yet if we want to go this route (especially because the link does work on macOS from the note field). We’ll continue to play with it but I think we might stick with what we have and just hope that with more people reporting the issue to Apple (see above) they will add support for clickable links in the “note” field.
Which brings me to the last point, which is that there’s actually a special type of link that both iOS12 and iOS13 can create, a so-called app-link. This is exactly what we all would like to see. It’s the type of link that you get when you use the Share sheet to create a reminder from say Safari or Mail. It not only inserts a link to the app, but also shows a nice little app icon next to it. So far so good, if only we could create such links. Unfortunately these “app links” are private API at the moment and there is no way we can create these as developers. Again we have asked Apple to open up these APIs so we can create these kind of links:
Hope this gives a better understanding of why things are the way they are in iOS13 at the moment.