Tellendar vs Apple Reminders: which one for appointments?

Updated October 8, 2026

Reminders is free, already on your iPhone, and since iOS 26.2 a reminder marked as urgent rings like an alarm. Tellendar is a paid calendar app where every appointment gets its own alarms, created from one sentence. For to-do lists, keep Reminders. For dated appointments that have to ring, choose Tellendar.

What Reminders does well

Reminders is a to-do app. You write down what you have to do, with or without a date, in lists you can share. It is free and installed on every iPhone.

• Date, time and repeat. Daily, weekdays, every two weeks, monthly, or a custom rule. An "early reminder" warns you before the due time: "5 minutes before", "2 days before".
• Location reminders. When you get home, or when you get in the car. Plus a reminder when you message someone in Messages.
• Siri and Apple Intelligence. "Add apricots to my grocery list" works by voice. On an iPhone with Apple Intelligence (iPhone 15 Pro and later), you can type "Feed the cat every evening at 5pm" and Reminders fills in the date and time.
• Organization. Lists, subtasks, flags, priorities, tags, photos. Dated reminders also show up in Calendar as an all-day event.
• An alarm for an urgent reminder. Since iOS 26.2, the Urgent setting rings an alarm when the reminder is due, even in silent mode.

Apple sets two conditions. The recent features need your reminders to be in iCloud. And the alarm of an urgent reminder only rings on the device that shares your location in Find My.

Where Reminders falls short for an appointment

A reminder is not an appointment. It has a due time, but no end time and no duration. Your day doesn't read like a calendar.

The alarm of an urgent reminder rings at the due time. The early reminder is a notification: in silent mode, your iPhone vibrates. To be woken the evening before and again one hour before, you need two reminders, or the Clock app on top. The guide How to make your iPhone ring for an appointment, even in silent mode goes through those options.

Reminders knows nothing about Google Calendar. If your appointments are already there, you have to copy them by hand.

What Tellendar does differently

Tellendar is a calendar, not a to-do list. Each event has a date, a start and end time, and as many alarms as you want. You create it from one sentence, typed or dictated: "Dentist Thursday at 3pm, alarm the day before at 8pm and 1 hour before".

• Real alarms. They are iOS alarms, like the ones in Clock: they ring in silent mode and with a Focus on, on the Lock Screen, with the name of your appointment. A "Snooze 10 min" button puts them off.
• Several alarms per appointment. A week before, the day before, one hour before: each one rings.
• Calendar-style repeats. Every other Thursday, the first Monday of the month, the 15th of every month.
• Dictation from the Lock Screen. The "Dictate an alarm" widget opens the microphone without going through the app.
• Google Calendar. Your Google events show up in Tellendar and you can add alarms to them.
• No account. Your events stay on your iPhone, with a backup in iCloud.
• On any iPhone running iOS 26. If your iPhone has Apple Intelligence, your sentences are understood on the iPhone. Otherwise, and only if you agree, they are understood by Mistral AI, a French AI company.

What Tellendar doesn't do

• No lists, subtasks, tags or sharing. It is not a to-do app.
• No location reminders, no notes and no location on an event.
• No Siri.
• Tellendar events don't show up in Apple's Calendar or Reminders. They go to Google Calendar if you have connected it.
• One iPhone at a time.
• Tellendar is a subscription. The price is shown in the app.

At a glance

Which one to pick

If you mostly write down tasks, groceries, things to do when you get somewhere, and one ring at the due time is enough, Reminders is enough, and it is free.

If they are appointments, with a start and end time, you want to be warned several times by an alarm that rings no matter what, and some of them come from Google Calendar, choose Tellendar.

The two can be used together: Reminders for tasks, Tellendar for appointments. If what you miss is mostly your calendar alerts, the guide Why you miss calendar alerts on iPhone goes through the causes.

Frequently asked questions