Why can’t the iOS Reminders sync across devices? Why do I’ve to mark the same reminder as completed on all devices?

@pratik I thought it was just me/my old phone! (It’s weird that it syncs to iCloud OK, but not thence to other devices).

I believe we know someone here we could politely enquire about it, though, if FruitCo will let him talk? (psst @collin)

@smokey Would love it if @collin can shed light on it. I’m surprised not many complain about it.

@pratik @smokey I've been catching up on some podcasts and a few months ago @viticci went through a whole process because of this issue. Unsure if he solved it or not but listening him to talk about signing in and out of iCloud, and the ensuing mess was not good.

Sounds like a real headache due, seemingly, to the fact that Apple have yet to decide to prioritise making Reminders a worthy update in their singular tentpole annual release. :/

@pratik They're supposed to sync though. But when it doesn't work (as you're experiencing) it's pretty maddening, and there's so much opacity in the process of what's happening its' really hard to troubleshoot. Most "solutions" just involve signing in and out of iCloud a bunch until it hopefully just starts working. Not a great experience.

@simonwoods @smokey I remember that from @viticci but it involved lots of headache on the photos front which I don't want to mess up. But yeah, this Reminders thing has always been there and has never worked since they launced iCloud. @DrOct

@pratik That's too bad. It works for me (for now!) including reminders lists shared between my wife and I. I hope maybe it gets fixed for you suddenly!

@DrOct Did you sign in and out of iCloud, like you said? It didn't mess up your photos? Coz that's not something I want to lose.

@pratik reminders I don’t have problems with but these days use things and OmniFocus (don’t ask) anyway ... but contacts from time to time gets upset with me ... disabling contacts in all devices - and then reensbling iften worked - and is not as radical as exiting I cloud

Also is it every device that synched with iCloud and not onwards - or a specific device

@pratik I never actually had this problem to start with. Reminders has pretty much always just worked the way it's supposed to for me. I've just heard about others having to do that to fix problems with reminders not syncing (or at least trying it. It seems to work sometimes and not others). I have had to sign in and out to deal with other issues in the past. My photos never got messed up though my devices did spend some time basically re-syncing to make sure they were all up to date and such. Photo's on my Mac for example spent a few hours "uploading" photos though I don't think it actually did upload anything, just spent time checking to make sure it's photos matched what was in the cloud.

@DrOct I will say that reminders lists between my wife and I sometimes don't sync as quickly as we'd like, though they always eventually do (and lately it's been much quicker).

@JohnPhilpin Contacts is yet another blackhole for me. Especially with contacts on iCloud, Gmail, and Exchange. I need a Contacts 101 on how to keep everything synced.

@pratik oh I never include the google world in ANY Of my synch world - Apple and 3rd party apps to the Apple datbases only ... I used to - which is why I now dont

@JohnPhilpin I need to wean myself away from Gmail. Been saying that for years but longer I wait, the more I accumulate there.

@pratik I have a gmail account to use when someone else seeks to use drive or whatever ... keep that / but just pull PIM INFO OUT NOW and move it to a single space

@pratik and I weaning ... cold turkey !!! It’s the only way 😁

@pratik When reminders changed to cloudkit, I had a couple of list (created before cloudkit)that had problems with syncing (task marked as done on one device reappeared on other devices after a while). I deleted those list and created new ones with different list names, and have very few problems since.

@teisam Ah! Maybe it's just a matter of adding reminders to a new list. I'll try that. Thanks.

@teisam Hmm, when did the switch to CloudKit happen? I’m relatively new to iOS (started with iOS 8.x, IIRC). // @pratik

@smokey Both was introduced in 2014, but I see that Notes.app switched to CloudKit in iOS 9. I'm guessing Reminders changed at the same time. Based on completed items it seems I started «fresh» around August 2016 (which means that it was on iOS 9.3ish. // @pratik

@teisam I think your solution may have solved the problem for me. I created new lists and even re-created the reminders within them (moving them didn't solve the problem). I've to check for couple more days to be sure. Thanks! @smokey @droct

@pratik Similar to when I tested this in 2016. I deleted everything then created new lists with the old names and recreated the items, but the problem persisted. Had to use new name for the lists.

@teisam which is baffling coz the default list Reminders is where some of my erring items were. Now I can't put anything in the Reminders list? I've now deleted that list. Let's see if it pops back up again.

@teisam Thanks. Coincidentally (or not), that rougly aligns with when notifications for Reminders started randomly failing to fire (and sometimes the Reminders themselves didn’t even realize they hadn’t gone off)…although that seems to have gone away with the new phone (knock on wood).