How-to

How to Use Reminders for Reading List, Watchlist, and Backlogs

By Vyshakh Nair, Founder, Ultra Reminders · Updated May 10, 2026 · 7 min read

Part of the master guide: The 2026 GTD Setup with Apple Reminders

An Apple Reminders reading list uses a tagged list with URLs, status sections, and a Smart List filter to track books, articles, and shows you actually plan to finish.

Honestly, most reading lists die. Pocket has 437 unread articles. Goodreads has 88 books in "Want to Read". Notion's "Watchlist" database has 22 movies you forgot about by Friday. The problem is rarely the list itself. It is the friction to add, the lack of cadence to triage, and no honest "I am never reading this" pruning. Apple Reminders quietly fixes all three if you set it up right, because capture is one tap, the share sheet is everywhere, and a smart list can surface "this week's three picks" automatically.

I rebuilt my own reading and watchlist setup from a Notion mess into Apple Reminders in February 2026. Took 20 minutes. Six months later I have actually finished books from it, which has not been true for me since 2019. Here is the system.

What you'll achieve

By the end of this guide, you will have a working reading list, watchlist, and backlog system inside Apple Reminders that captures from anywhere in seconds, prunes itself with weekly review, and surfaces what to read next without you opening 47 apps.

What you'll need

Apple Reminders on iPhone and Mac.
iOS Share Sheet enabled for Reminders (default).
5 minutes to set up the lists.
Optional: Apple News, Safari Reader, or any RSS reader for the source articles.
Optional: Ultra Reminders for the AI-clustered version that auto-buckets your captures.

Step 1: Create the three lists

Open Apple Reminders. Tap or click + to create three new lists:

To Read (book icon, blue color)
To Watch (TV icon, purple color)
Backlog (folder icon, gray color)

The icons matter for visual scanning. The color matters because the Today widget uses list color for grouping.

Pin all three to the top of your sidebar so they are always one tap away. On Mac, drag them above the regular lists. On iPhone, long-press, Pin.

Step 2: Set up sections inside each list

Inside "To Read", create three sections:

This week
Next up
Eventually

Same structure inside "To Watch" and "Backlog". This is the triage hierarchy. Everything captured starts in "Eventually". Weekly review promotes a few to "Next up". Daily review picks today's "This week" pick.

Sections were added to Apple Reminders in iOS 17 and refined in iOS 26. They turn a flat list into a kanban-style column view if you want it. Read Kanban in Apple Reminders if you prefer the column view for triage.

Step 3: Set up the tag taxonomy

Decide on tags for cross-cutting categories. Mine are:

#fiction #nonfiction #essay #video #movie #show #course
#deep (long, focused) #light (commute, half-attention)
#research (work-relevant) #personal

Add the tag during capture. Apple Reminders parses hashtag syntax automatically. Type "Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari #nonfiction #deep" and the tags are searchable. Read How to Use Tags in Apple Reminders (Complete System) for a full taxonomy walkthrough.

"Three tags max per item. More than that and I never tag anything because it feels like work."

paraphrased from r/productivity, March 2026

Step 4: Build the share sheet capture flow

This is where the system lives or dies. Capturing from a browser must be one tap.

On iPhone Safari, find an article, tap Share, scroll the share sheet to find Reminders. If it is not visible, scroll right and tap Edit Actions, then enable Reminders and drag it to the top.

When you tap Reminders from the share sheet, it pre-fills the title with the article title and attaches the URL. Pick "To Read" as the destination. Add a tag if you remember. Done. Two taps total.

On Mac in Safari or Chrome (use Safari for the cleanest integration), Cmd+Shift+R or Share menu, Reminders.

"I tried Pocket, Instapaper, Raindrop, all of them. Came back to Reminders just because the Share Sheet capture is faster than any of them."

paraphrased from r/macapps, January 2026

Step 5: Build the Smart List for "This Week's Picks"

Smart lists pull tasks across all your lists by filter rules. Create a new Smart List named "This Week's Picks":

Source lists: To Read, To Watch, Backlog
Section: This week
Show as: List view

This single smart list now shows you everything you have promoted to "This week" across all three backlogs. Open it on Saturday morning, pick what you actually want to engage with this weekend.

You can build more specialized smart lists too:

Light commute reads: Tag #light AND list "To Read"
Deep weekend reads: Tag #deep AND list "To Read"
Movie night picks: Tag #movie AND section "This week"

Read 15 Smart List Recipes for Apple Reminders for more recipes you can copy.

Step 6: Set up the weekly review ritual

Friday or Sunday, 10 minutes. Open each of the three lists. For each item in "Eventually":

Move to "Next up" if you genuinely plan to read it in 1-2 weeks.
Delete if you are honest with yourself that you will never read it.
Leave in "Eventually" if it might still be relevant later.

For each item in "Next up", promote one or two to "This week".

This is the only ritual the system has. Skip it for two weeks and the system collapses. Most reading list systems die because there is no triage. The triage IS the system.

If you want a deeper weekly review pattern that covers all of life, How to Build a Habit Tracker Inside Apple Reminders covers the related habit-formation flow.

Step 7: Use templates for recurring content cycles

If you read certain things on a cycle (a Substack newsletter weekly, a podcast on Mondays, a book club book monthly), use Apple Reminders templates. Save your "Weekly newsletter triage" list as a template, instantiate it each Monday morning. Read How to Use Apple Reminders Templates for Recurring Projects for the full template flow.

Step 8: Add daily morning surface

Optional but powerful. Add the smart list "This Week's Picks" as a Home Screen widget on iPhone. Now it surfaces your three picks every time you unlock the phone.

You can also add it to the Mac Notification Center widget, where it sits next to the day's calendar. First thing in the morning, you see your picks before you open Twitter.

Step 9: Sync to read-later state

Apple Reminders does not have a native "read" state for URLs. Workaround: when you finish an item, mark the reminder complete. The completed item moves to the Completed view. If you ever want to revisit, you can find it there.

For people who want a richer "did I actually finish this and what did I think" workflow, this is where Apple Reminders bumps into its ceiling. You either accept it (mark done is enough), or you switch to a dedicated reading app like Readwise. For most people, mark-done is enough.

If you want the broader Apple Reminders for daily life view, 9 Daily Routines Built on Apple Reminders covers more of the rituals that wrap around a system like this.

Common pitfalls

Skipping the weekly review. The list grows, you stop trusting it, you stop using it.
Too many tags. You stop tagging anything because it feels like overhead.
Adding articles you will not actually read. The list becomes aspirational fiction.
Not pinning the lists. They get buried, you forget the system exists.
Not setting the share sheet shortcut. Capture takes 5 seconds instead of 1, you stop capturing.
Mixing reading list with task list. Keep them separate. Tasks have urgency, reading does not.

Verification

After two weeks of using the system:

How many items in "Eventually"? If over 100, you are not pruning enough.
How many items completed (read or watched)? If zero, the triage is broken.
How fast is your share-sheet-to-list capture? Should be under 3 seconds. If longer, the share sheet ordering is wrong.

If your system is working, the rhythm is: 5-10 captures per week land in "Eventually", weekly review promotes 2-3 to "Next up", daily life surfaces 1-2 from "This Week" that you actually engage with. Anything you do not engage with after 6 weeks gets honestly deleted.

For people who want AI to triage the captures automatically, Ultra Reminders' on-device LLM clusters brain-dumps and surfaces likely picks based on what you have completed before. That is the layer you add when you have proven the manual system works first. Read the hub at The 2026 GTD Setup with Apple Reminders for the broader GTD context that this reading-list system fits inside.

FAQ

Q: Why not just use Apple Notes for a reading list?

A: Notes does not have due dates, smart filtering, or a triage hierarchy. It works as a capture bucket, but it does not surface "what should I read this week" automatically the way a Reminders smart list does.

Q: Can I share my reading list with someone?

A: Yes. Right-click the list, Share List, invite via Messages or email. They can add and check off items. Useful for couples sharing a watchlist.

Q: Does Apple Reminders attach the article preview like Pocket does?

A: No. It attaches the URL but no preview thumbnail. You see the title and link only. If preview cards are critical, dedicated read-later apps win here.

Q: Should I use one big "To Read" list or split by category?

A: Three lists (To Read, To Watch, Backlog) plus tags is the sweet spot. More lists than that and the sidebar gets noisy. Fewer and you cannot quickly see "show me only books".

Q: How is this different from a watchlist app?

A: Watchlist apps are richer (movie posters, ratings, streaming availability). Apple Reminders is faster to capture and unifies everything in one place. Pick based on whether you value richness or unification.

Ultra Reminders solves a reading list that does not get buried in Notes. Free 14-day trial at ultrareminders.com.