Persistent Lock Screen Notifications

One neat trick up Reminders’ sleeve is something that we’ve never seen another app able to do: keep notifications on the lock screen, even after you’ve unlocked your iPhone. It’s clear that Apple is using another home court advantage here by taking advantage of an iOS feature that’s not available to other developers.

What this means in practical terms is that once you get notified of a reminder — either by time or location — it will stay on your iPhone lock screen until you explicitly acknowledge it, even after you unlock your iPhone and start using it. Push the sleep button again to turn your iPhone screen off, and the next time you pick it up, that reminder banner will still be sitting there, waiting for you to do something with it. Of course, you can still dismiss it manually, but you have to specifically do that — it won’t just disappear by itself.

This is a really small thing, but it’s actually one of my favourite features of the Reminders app as it makes it basically impossible to miss or forget an important reminder, and also — thanks to Apple’s enhanced notifications — makes it easy to snooze it or mark it done once you’re actually ready to deal with it; since it’s right there on the lock screen, you can simply tap-and-hold to get more options, saving you from having to visit the Reminders app or Today screen to actually check it off.