How to Build a Kanban Board Inside Apple Reminders

Apple Reminders Kanban uses sections inside a list plus column view to turn any list into a Trello-style board with drag and drop columns for status.

Honestly, the first time I saw the column view in Apple Reminders, I closed the app and reopened it twice to make sure it was real. It is. It has been since iOS 17. And almost nobody uses it. People still pay for Trello to do the exact thing Apple Reminders ships for free on every Mac. Or pay $35 once for Ultra Reminders if they want true nested cards inside columns, which is the wall the native column view eventually hits.

Last Thursday at 9:14AM, I took a project board out of Trello (a shared OJ trip launch with 23 cards across four columns) and rebuilt it in Apple Reminders in about 11 minutes. It worked. Drag and drop, status columns, the whole thing. This guide is the result.

If you want the bigger picture of what Apple Reminders can really do once you push it, the Apple Reminders for Power Users: The Complete System hub article is the place. This page is the Kanban-specific walkthrough.

What you'll achieve

A working Kanban board inside Apple Reminders, with named status columns (To Do, In Progress, Blocked, Done or whatever you want), the ability to drag cards across columns, and the same iCloud sync that already runs your other lists. No third-party app, no $5 a month, no new login. By the end you will have one finished board and four ready-to-paste templates for common workflows. If the native columns are not enough later, Ultra Reminders adds true multi-level nesting on top of Apple Reminders without breaking the data model.

What you'll need

• A Mac running macOS 14 (Sonoma) or later, or iPad on iPadOS 17+, or iPhone on iOS 17+. Column view shipped with these releases.
• iCloud signed in and Reminders sync enabled.
• About 10 to 15 minutes for the first board.
• A clear sense of the columns you want before you start. Pick three to five. More columns kills the Kanban benefit.

Heads up: column view works best on Mac and iPad. iPhone is functional but cramped. If you build the board on Mac, it syncs to iPhone automatically.

Step 1: Create the list

Open Apple Reminders on Mac. File menu, New List. Name it after the project ("Q3 Launch", "Move to Bangalore", "Wedding Planning"). Pick a color and icon. The icon matters more than people think. You will glance at this list daily. Pick something distinct.

Do not put the new list inside an existing folder yet. Get the structure right first, organize second.

Step 2: Switch to column view

With the new list open, find the View menu in the menu bar. Choose As Columns. The list flips from a vertical task list into a horizontal board. If you do not see "As Columns", you are on a macOS version older than 14. Update macOS first.

On iPad, tap the three dots in the top right of the list, then "View as Columns". On iPhone, same path. The iPhone view is functional but use it for triage, not planning.

Once you flip to columns, the list will have one default column with no name. That is normal.

Step 3: Create your status sections

Each column in the Kanban board is a Section in Apple Reminders. To add a new section, right-click in the list area and choose "New Section", or use the New Section command from the View menu. Name the first one "To Do". Add another. Name it "In Progress". Add "Blocked". Add "Done".

For most projects, four columns is the sweet spot. Three is too few. Six is too many. The four standard names work for almost everything. If you want fancier names ("Backlog", "This Sprint", "Shipped"), use those instead. The names are just labels.

"I tried five columns. Two were always empty. Cut to three and the board started getting used."

• paraphrased from r/macapps, April 2026

Step 4: Add tasks as cards

Click into the To Do column and start adding tasks. Each task becomes a card. Use verb-first phrasing: "Email Sundeep about Q4 numbers", not "Sundeep email". The verb tells you what to do at a glance. Add notes, due dates, tags, subtasks, and flags as normal. Everything Apple Reminders supports works inside columns.

Tip: paste a brain-dump into the To Do column from the Mac clipboard. Apple Reminders will create one task per line. Faster than typing 20 items.

Step 5: Drag cards across columns

This is the magic step. Click and hold a card, drag it from To Do into In Progress. Drop. The card moves. The Section assignment updates instantly. Sync fires. The same card now shows up in In Progress on iPhone, iPad, and any other Mac signed into the same iCloud account.

Drag is the entire Kanban experience. Once you have done it three times, the board feels native. The drag is smoother on Mac than on iPad. On iPhone it works but feels fiddly. Plan to do drags from Mac and review the board from iPhone.

Step 6: Add a "Today" smart list bridge

Here is the trick that makes the Kanban board actually useful in your day-to-day. Create a Smart List that filters tasks across all your lists with today's due date. Anything in the In Progress column that you want to work on today, add a due date of today. It shows up in the Today smart list automatically. The Kanban board is the project view. Today is the work view. Same data, two lenses.

The full smart list setup is in How to Set Up Smart Lists in Apple Reminders if you have not built one yet.

Step 7: Tag cards for cross-board filtering

Use tags inside cards to filter across multiple Kanban boards. Tag #urgent, #waiting, #thisweek, whatever vocabulary you use. Then build a Smart List filtered by the tag. Suddenly you have a "everything urgent across every project" view that pulls cards from every Kanban board you have built.

The full tag system is documented in How to Use Tags in Apple Reminders (Complete System). Worth reading once before you build a third Kanban board.

Step 8: Reuse with templates

Once you have a working board, you can save the entire structure as a template for next time. With the list open, choose File menu, Save as Template. Name it ("Project Launch", "Trip Planning", "Sprint"). Next time you need that board, File menu, New List from Template. The columns, section names, and any default cards come back instantly.

Four templates worth building first:

• Project Launch: Backlog, This Week, In Review, Shipped
• Sprint: To Do, Doing, Blocked, Done
• Trip Planning: Booking, Packing, Day-of, Done
• Content Pipeline: Idea, Drafting, Editing, Published

If you also want true nested subtasks inside cards (a card with sub-cards with sub-sub-cards), Apple Reminders flattens after one level. That is a real limit. The full breakdown of where this matters is in How to Create Subtasks and Sublists in Apple Reminders. Ultra Reminders is the Mac-only EventKit bridge that fixes that flattening at the UI level while keeping your data in iCloud Reminders.

Common pitfalls

• Too many columns. More than five and the board becomes unreadable. Cut.
• Using columns instead of separate lists. If two columns are really separate projects, make them separate lists. Columns are for stages of one workflow, not for unrelated work.
• Forgetting that iPhone column view is cramped. Build on Mac. Triage on iPhone. Do not try to redesign the board from a phone.
• Dragging on iPad with Apple Pencil. It works, sometimes. The finger drag is more reliable. This might change. As of May 2026 it is finger-first.
• Expecting swimlanes. Apple Reminders does Kanban columns, not Kanban swimlanes. If you need horizontal categorization across the board, this is not the tool.

"Honestly, kanban in Reminders covers 80% of what I used Trello for. The 20% I miss is swimlanes and card covers."

• paraphrased from r/macapps, March 2026

Verification

You know the Kanban board works when:

• You can drag a card from one column to another and the change syncs to iPhone within five seconds.
• The Smart List "Today" pulls cards across columns based on due date.
• You can pin the list and access it from the sidebar in one click.
• A teammate (if shared) can drag cards too and you both see the change.

If sync is breaking, that is a separate issue. The fixes are in Apple Reminders Not Syncing Between iPhone and Mac: 14 Fixes, but you might also want to look at the 11 Hidden Apple Reminders Features You're Not Using since most people who use Kanban also use the other power features.

FAQ

Q: Can I share the Kanban board with someone else?

A: Yes. Share the list as you would any Apple Reminders list (Share button, invite by email or Messages). The columns sync. The other person can drag cards too. As of May 2026, shared list sync is still inconsistent in some configurations. If your partner is not seeing edits, sign out of iCloud and back in on both sides. Annoying. Real bug.

Q: How many columns can I have?

A: Apple has not published a hard limit. In practice, more than 8 columns gets unreadable on Mac and unusable on iPhone. Stay under 6. Stay under 4 if you can.

Q: Can I add an image or file to a card?

A: Yes. Each card supports image and URL attachments, just like a regular reminder. Drag a file onto a card. It attaches.

Q: Does the Kanban board work on iPhone?

A: Yes, but barely usable for editing. Use iPhone for glancing and quick checking. Build and re-organize on Mac or iPad.

Q: Why use this instead of Trello?

A: Cost ($0 vs $5/month), no separate login, no separate app to keep updated, and your tasks live in iCloud where Siri and the Action button can capture into them. Trello has card covers, power-ups, swimlanes, and team workflows that Apple Reminders does not. If you need those, pay Trello. If you need a simple Kanban for personal or small-team work, Apple Reminders is enough. If you need cards-with-nested-subcards, Ultra Reminders sits on top of Reminders and gives you that without leaving the iCloud ecosystem.

Ultra Reminders solves a kanban board without paying for Trello or Notion. Free 14-day trial at ultrareminders.com.