Chapter 6: Using Reminders, Notes, and Notifications

In This Chapter

Setting Reminders

Making Notes

Using the Notification Center

As I’ve said many times before in my books, “If it works in one place, it’s likely to show up in another.” In this case, three very popular timesaving (and headache-preventing) apps have crossed over from the world of iOS devices — the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch — and have securely landed on your Mountain Lion Desktop! Those apps are Reminders, Notes, and the Notification Center, all taken from iOS 5.

That’s not the only good news, though: These three Mac applications work seamlessly with an iCloud account you’ve already set up, so if you also use an iOS device (with the same Apple ID), the notes you take and the Reminders you make are automatically synchronized among all your Apple computers and devices! (If you didn’t create an Apple ID when you installed Mountain Lion, visit Chapter 3 of this minibook for the details.)

Because all three of these new applications have a similar goal — namely, to keep you in touch with the information, daily tasks, and digital events that matter to you — I decided to cover them in one shiny chapter. Consider this chapter a guide that demonstrates how you can note, remind, and notify like a power user!

Remind Me to Use Reminders

You don’t need to look far to find the new Reminders application on your Mac. Just click the Reminders icon on the Dock to display the main window, as shown in Figure 6-1.

The highlights of the Reminders window include

Search box: Click here and type a phrase or name to search for it among your Reminders.

Reminders Sidebar: You can add as many separate Reminder lists as you like within the application (one for Work, for example, and another for your Mac user group). In the Sidebar, you can switch quickly between your lists. (Note that two lists, Reminders and Completed, already appear.)

Hide/Show Reminders Sidebar: Click this button to hide or show the Reminders Sidebar. You save a significant amount of screen real estate when the display is hidden.

Calendar: This handy calendar indicates which days of the current month already have Reminders pending: They’re displayed with a dot under the date. You can jump to any date by clicking it. To move forward and backward through the months, click the Previous and Next buttons next to the month name. (Note that this calendar does not sync or exchange Reminder dates with the Calendar application that I cover in Chapter 8 of this minibook.)

New List button: Click this button to add a new Reminder list to the Sidebar; from the keyboard, press +L. The list name is highlighted in a text box, so you can simply type the new name and then press Return.

Reminders: These entries are the actual Reminders themselves. Each is prefaced by a check box so you can select the check box when the Reminder is complete, thereby moving that Reminder automatically to the Completed list. And yes, if you select the Completed list in the Sidebar and deselect the check box for a Reminder, it returns (like a bad penny) to the original list.

Add Reminder button: Click this button to add a new Reminder to the currently selected list; from the keyboard, press +N. In its simplest form, a Reminder is just a short phrase or sentence. Press Return afterward to save it to your list.

Adding a Reminder is pretty straightforward. First, click a date in the calendar display to jump to that date, and then click the Add Reminder button. Type a few words and press Return to create a basic Reminder. However, if you hover the cursor over the Reminder you just created, an Info button appears next to the text (that’s the lowercase “i” in a circle icon). The game is afoot! Click the Info button to display the settings you see in Figure 6-2.

The fields on the Edit sheet are

Reminder text: Click this text to edit the Reminder text itself.

On a Day: Enable this check box if the Reminder should appear in the Notification Center on a particular day, By default, the date is the one selected when you created the Reminder. You can click the Date and Time fields to change them.

At a Location: Here’s a powerful feature. Enable this check box, and you can choose a card from your Contacts application that includes an address (or simply type an address into the box). Now Reminders will monitor your current location on your iOS device and notify you when you’re leaving or arriving at that location (and optionally, on the date and time you specify in the On a Day field). For example, you could create a Reminder that notifies you on your iPhone when you’re arriving at the mall on September 15 to pick up the watch that’s being repaired. Shazam!

Repeat: Set this Reminder to automatically repeat every day, week, two weeks, month, or year at the same time.

Priority: You can assign one of four priorities to the Reminder: Low, Medium, High, or None. Assigning a priority prefaces the reminder text with one (Low), two (Medium), or three (High) red exclamation points so that the Reminder stands out from the crowd.

Note: Click next to the Note field to enter a free-form text note along with the Reminder.

Click Done on the Edit sheet when you’ve finished making changes. You can edit a Reminder as often as you like. For example, I sometimes have to change the date on a Reminder multiple times as my schedule changes.

To delete a Reminder from the list, right-click it and choose Delete from the menu that appears.

Taking Notes the Mountain Lion Way

Imagine a notepad of unlimited pages that’s always available whenever you’re around your Mac, iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad — that’s the idea behind Notes, and it’s superbly simple! To open the application, click the Notes icon on the Dock. The window shown in Figure 6-3 appears.

The salient stuff in the Notes window includes

Search box: If you’re hunting for a specific note, click in this box and type a phrase or name to search for it.

Folders list: You can create new folders to hold specific kinds of notes. In Figure 6-3, for example, I added a Work folder. To add a new folder, choose File⇒New Folder or press +Shift+N, and then type the new folder name. To switch between folders, display the Folders list and click the desired folder.

Notes Sidebar: Each Note you create appears as a separate entry in the Sidebar. You can click a Note to switch to it immediately.

New Note button: Click this button to add a new Note. You can also right-click the Sidebar and choose New Note from the contextual menu. Notes uses the first line of text that you type as the title of the Note, which appears in the Sidebar.

Show/Hide Folders list: You can click these two buttons to display or hide the Folders list.

Note page: This free-form pane is where you type the body of your Note. You can also drag images from a Finder window and include them in the body of the Note and even attach files by dragging them from a Finder window as well.

Delete Note icon: Click the Trash icon at the bottom of the Note page to delete the current Note. The application will prompt you for confirmation before the deed is done.

Share note icon: Open this pop-up menu to share the contents of the current Note, just like the Share button that appears on the Finder window toolbar. Sharing options can include a new Email message, a new message in the Messages application, and new postings to Twitter and Facebook.

To edit a Note, click it to select it in the Sidebar, and then simply make your changes or additions in the Note page. You can format the text from the Format menu — everything from different fonts and colors to inserting bulleted and numbered lists.

Staying Current with Notification Center

Of the iOS newcomers to OS X, the Notification Center is unique — it’s not actually an application you launch! Instead, the Notification Center icon appears at the far right side of the Finder menu bar, and it’s always running.

Click the icon (or, if you’re using a trackpad, swipe from the right edge to the left) to display your notifications, as shown in Figure 6-4. These notifications can be generated by a whole host of Mountain Lion applications, including Calendar, Mail, FaceTime, Reminders, Game Center, Messages, Safari, and even the Apple App Store.

I love how the Notification Center doesn’t interfere with the applications that are open. It simply moves the entire desktop to the left so that you can see your notifications. You can close the Center at any time by clicking anywhere on the Desktop to the left, clicking the Notifications icon on the Finder menu bar again, or swiping in the opposite direction.

Notification entries that appear in the Center are grouped under the application that created them. Many entries can be deleted from the Center by clicking the Delete button that appears next to the application heading (it bears an X symbol). Other entries remain in the Notification Center until a certain time has elapsed, like Calendar alerts. (You’ll read all about the OS X Calendar application in Chapter 8 of this minibook.)

But wait, there’s more to the Notification Center than just a strip of happenings! Depending on the settings you choose, notifications can also appear without the Notification Center being open at all. These notifications are displayed as pop-up banners (which disappear in a few seconds) and alerts (which must be dismissed by clicking a button). Figure 6-5 illustrates a typical alert notification.

You can configure the notifications for all your applications from the Notifications pane within System Preferences, which you can reach easily if the Notification Center is open. Just click the gears icon at the lower right of the Center. I discuss the settings on the Notifications pane in Book II, Chapter 3.