Introducing Quick Add

11 Jul 2026

The fastest way to add reminders (maybe 😀)

So I’ve just released a new app - for both iOS/iPadOS and as a Mac Menu Bar app - called Quick Add, which is a fast way of adding Apple Reminders

Why another Reminders app?

I’ve been using Todoist for many, many years, but I’ve often dabbled in using Apple Reminders on and off during that time

I’ve always wanted to have the better native integration of Apple Reminders, but what always drew me back to Todoist was the quick way you could add a reminder, priorities, project etc. with just text input.

Apple Reminders has got better over the years, but I realised if I have that quick way of adding a new reminder with Apple Reminders, I’d probably make the switch full time.

Hence me making Quick Add!

Using AI to help

To be honest another driver was GitHub Copilot moving to a PAYG model, and I had a month’s worth of tokens to use up!

To be clear this not a “vibe-coded” app - I had a clear vision of what I wanted to build, and how I wanted it to look. I’ve built many apps the now old-fashioned way, but like most developers now I use the AI coding tools we have at our disposal to save a lot of time

In particular, writing the parsing engine to turn the text input into structured reminders would have been a bit of a chore. Doing this in my spare time before would have taken a lot longer, and to be honest is a bit boring to do, which is why I hadn’t built this before

Now with AI coding help, it was easier to define exactly what the parsing rules should be, and then get the helper to generate the majority of the code - and most importantly lots of great unit tests - to help build it much quicker and probably more accurately than I could have done myself

Limitations of EventKit

I wanted to ship the apps in the App Store, which meant I had to work within the limitations of using EventKit, Apple’s SDK for adding reminders.

Reminders has added several really useful new properties on reminders over the last few years e.g. support for hashtags and URLs, but haven’t updated EventKit for years to keep up

I’ve done the best I can to support using this, by adding the appropriate data in the added reminder’s notes, but it is super frustrating that Apple can’t be bothered to expose these new fields to 3rd party developers

Built for me (but feel free to use it too!)

This is very much built exactly to solve a problem I had, so it may not be for you

With AI coding tools making writing projects like this so much easier, I think there will be more and more highly personalised app like this

However, I reckon I’m not the only person in the world who’s looking for a simple app like this - if that’s you feel free to give it a go

Quick Add is “Charityware”

Like Quick Add? Here’s how to say thanks …

Quick Add is free to use, but if you are enjoying the app and want to say thanks, please consider donating a small amount to a charity of your choice

If you’re looking for some ideas, here’s a few charities I’m happy to support: