In a previous article, I went over how fast it is to add a Calendar event in plain text using the Create Quick Event button. In Mountain Lion’s Reminders app, you can do something very similar—tag a reminder with the date and time of when you want to be notified, and it’ll use Notification Center to tell you all about it when the moment comes. Automatically. Without you having to go in and edit reminder details after you enter them. Groovy!
To check this out, open the Reminders program and select the plus button in the upper right to add a new one.
(You can click on the blank line below your last-entered reminder to start one, too.)
Insert the title you want first, and then type in the date and time when you’d like to be reminded to do it.
Hit Enter, and the app will parse what you’ve typed and use the date and time info to set a notification for you. So much faster than having to manually edit things!
As in Calendar’s Quick Events, you can use words like “dinner,” “tomorrow,” “next Tuesday,” and so on to designate dates or times if that’s easier for you. For example, in the screenshot below, all I typed in was “lunch Saturday,” and Reminders set a notification for me for noon this coming Saturday.
That is both the bee’s knees and the cat’s pajamas.
Note that if you leave out any of the date/time data, Reminders will make some assumptions. For example, if you include a time but no date, it’ll think you want to be notified at that time on the current day. If you specify a date only, the notification will come through at noon on that day.
But no matter what, when the time comes, your Mac will helpfully inform you through Notification Center that you should be somewhere else, doing something else.
Shush, you.