Importing Data From Apple Reminders

Learn how to migrate your data from Apple Reminders to Things.

This page provides instructions for migrating your entire Apple Reminders database over to Things. If you just want to import individual items, read this.

Minimum requirements: macOS 10.15, iOS 13, iPadOS 13, or visionOS 1.

What happens during import?

The import process only copies your data into Things, so you can safely run it without affecting your data in Apple Reminders. Here’s how the data will be interpreted:

• Lists will become Projects.
• Templates will become Projects.
• Groups aren’t accessible to Things, so cannot be imported; Lists nested inside them are also excluded. There’s a workaround.
• Reminders will become To-Dos.
• Due dates will become When (start) dates.
• Tags will become Tags.
• The URL field is not accessible to Things, so its URL cannot be imported. There’s a workaround.
• Things does not support nesting/indenting to-dos under one another, so any such hierarchy will be flattened.
• The following are not supported in Things and will not be imported:
  • Image attachments.
  • Flagged status.
  • Priority status.
  • At a location notifications.
  • When messaging a person notifications.

Prepare for import

Before proceeding with the import, you may need to prepare your data in Apple Reminders. As noted above:

• Things cannot import Groups or the Lists nested inside of them. Because of this, we recommend that you first go into Apple Reminders and relocate any lists that are inside groups: simply drag them out of the group. This will make those lists visible to Things during import.
• Things cannot import the contents of a reminder’s URL field. The solution is to move the URLs into each reminder’s Notes field before running the import. We’ve created a shortcut that can do this for you automatically. Get the shortcut.

Import your data

Here are the steps for importing your data from Apple Reminders: