Keep Your Apple Reminders One Click Away with Reminders MenuBar

You know the drill: you're deep in a coding session, context fully loaded, and then you remember you need to add something to your reminders. So you switch to the Reminders app, get distracted by a notification, and twenty minutes later you're researching something completely unrelated. If that sounds familiar, you might want to check out Reminders MenuBar, a simple macOS menu bar app that puts your Apple Reminders right in your peripheral vision without forcing you to leave your current workflow.

What It Does

Reminders MenuBar is exactly what its name suggests: a lightweight macOS application that lives in your menu bar and gives you full access to your Apple Reminders. It uses Apple's EKEventStore framework to sync with the native Reminders app, which means everything you do in the app reflects instantly across your devices through iCloud.

The app isn't just a passive viewer either. You can create new reminders directly from the menu bar, and it supports natural language input for due dates, lists, and tags. So instead of clicking through dropdown menus to set a reminder for "next Tuesday at 3pm in the Work list," you can just type it out. You can also mark items as completed, edit due dates, priorities, recurrences, and tags, and search across all your reminders. There's even a configurable upcoming view so you can see what's on your plate for the next hour, day, or week—whatever interval you prefer.

The menu bar icon itself is customizable too. You can choose to display just an icon, a counter showing how many reminders you have, or the text of your next upcoming reminder. And if you want to toggle the app without reaching for your mouse, there's a global keyboard shortcut you can set.

Why It's Cool

The real appeal here is friction reduction. Every time you switch apps to check or create a reminder, you're paying a context-switching tax. Reminders MenuBar eliminates most of that overhead.

• Natural language input is a genuine time-saver. Typing "call dentist tomorrow at 9am #health" is way faster than navigating through form fields. It feels like the reminder version of how you'd naturally ask a voice assistant.
• The sync is bidirectional and native. Because it's built on EKEventStore, you're not dealing with a separate database that might drift out of sync. Your menu bar app and your iPhone are always on the same page.
• The customization options are thoughtful. Being able to show your next reminder right in the menu bar means you can passively keep track of what's coming up without actively checking anything. That's a small but meaningful quality-of-life improvement.
• It respects macOS conventions. The permission flow is standard, it works in both light and dark mode, and it's a proper native app rather than an Electron wrapper. That means it's fast and lightweight.

The project also has solid community support. The README lists translations in nearly twenty languages, from Japanese to Ukrainian to Brazilian Portuguese, which suggests an active contributor base and a developer who cares about accessibility.

How to Try It

Getting started is straightforward. The app requires macOS Big Sur 11 or later. If you use Homebrew, installation is a single command:

brew install --cask reminders-menubar

If you prefer manual installation, head over to the releases page and grab either the .dmg or .zip file. Both work the same way: open the file and drag the app into your Applications folder.

The first time you launch it, macOS will ask for permission to access your reminders. This is a standard system prompt, and you can manage or revoke this permission later in System Settings > Privacy & Security > Reminders. If you're using OpenCore Legacy Patcher on an older Mac, there's a dedicated fix guide in the repo.

If you run into issues or have ideas for improvements, the project welcomes contributions. You can open issues, submit pull requests, or even help with translations if you speak a language not yet covered.

Final Thoughts

Reminders MenuBar is a focused, well-executed utility that solves a real annoyance for anyone who lives in Apple's ecosystem. It's not trying to be a full task manager—it's just making the one you already have more accessible. If you're a developer who spends long stretches in flow state and wants to keep your reminders visible without breaking focus, this is worth the two minutes it takes to install. The natural language input and menu bar customization options alone make it a solid addition to your macOS toolkit.

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