Apple reminders are great! Easy to create, easy to check across multiple devices, easy to share with family or co-workers, easy to close when you’ve done the task. Until eventually you’ve got hundreds of completed reminders per list…
Why does everyone’s phone suddenly say we need hundreds of packages of tortillas? Why am I being reminded to do things for a job I left years ago? And you suddenly realize there’s a design constraint and no one has designed for this and the app starts misbehaving terribly.
Well the obvious answer is to stop using Apple reminders. But instead, I wrote some AppleScript to automatically delete old reminders. It works well enough that I forgot it existed until I happened to look at crontab for another reason.
purgeoldreminders.scpt
set monthago to (current date) – (30 * days)
tell application “Reminders”
set myLists to name of every list
repeat with thisList in myLists
tell list thisList
delete (every reminder whose completion date is less than monthago)
end tell
end repeat
end tell
Crontab
Jacks-MacBook-Pro:bin symlink jackcoates$ crontab -l | grep purge 20 20 */7 * * osascript ~/Library/Mobile Documents/com~apple~ScriptEditor2/Documents/purgeoldreminders.scpt Jacks-MacBook-Pro:bin symlink jackcoates$
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