How to get a reminder while chatting with a specified person in Messages

Remind me when messaging someone - teaser image

With the Reminders app on the iPhone, iPad and Mac, you can get a notification when chatting with someone in the Messages app, ensuring you don’t forget about an important reminder involving that person, like asking them to return a book you loaned them a while ago.

Feature requirements

The “Remind me when messaging” option is a new feature that was added to the Reminders app on the iPhone, iPad and Mac with the iOS 13, iPadOS 13 and macOS Catalina updates.

Tapping the alert marks the reminder as completed

Follow along for step-by-step instructions covering using this feature on your iPhone, iPad and Mac to get a helpful nudge about your important reminder when using the Messages app.

How to use “Remind when messaging” feature

To use this feature, you’ll need to create a new reminder in the Reminders app in iOS or iPadOS and set it to trigger when you text someone in the Messages app.

  1. Open the Reminders app on your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch or Mac.
  2. Select the option “+ New Reminder” (iOS) or File → New Reminder (macOS).
  3. Type out your reminder.
  4. Touch the “Details” (iOS) or “i” (macOS) icon to reveal additional options.
  5. Turn on “When Messaging” (iOS) or “When Messaging a Person” (macOS).
  6. Touch “Choose Person” (iOS) or “Add Contact” (macOS).
  7. Now choose someone from your saved contacts.
  8. Touch “Done” to save your new reminder.

You should now get a Reminders notification when chatting with that person in Messages.

“Selecting this option will show the reminder notification when chatting with a person in Messages,” as per Apple’s description of the feature. Unfortunately, this helpful feature only works in the Messages app. Third-party messaging apps such as Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp cannot be selected for the “Remind me when messaging” feature.

Alternatively, you can use Siri to set this kind of reminder.

Simply utter something along the lines of “Hey Siri, remind me when I’m messaging Tim Cook to ask him about future products,” and Reminders will automatically do the right thing. Keep the format of your query as close to “Remind me X when I am messaging with Y” as possible and don’t use substitutes for the term “messaging” or Siri may not get what you meant.