How to Migrate from Todoist to Apple Reminders

Migrating from Todoist to Apple Reminders uses CSV export, Shortcuts import, and a tag-mapping pass to move projects, dates, labels, and notes into iCloud lists.

I migrated my own Todoist after 8 years, on a Sunday afternoon in February 2026. Took about 90 minutes for ~600 active tasks across 14 projects, plus another 30 minutes to redo the smart filters. The annoying parts were not the data move (Todoist's CSV export is clean enough). The annoying parts were the priority mapping (Todoist uses P1-P4, Reminders uses Low/Med/High) and figuring out what to do with sections inside projects. Below is the cleanest path I found.

What you'll achieve

A working Apple Reminders setup with all your active Todoist tasks moved over, projects converted to lists, sections preserved, labels turned into tags, dates intact, recurring rules approximated, and notes attached. By the end you'll be able to cancel Todoist Pro without losing context.

What you'll need

• A Todoist account with export access (Pro tier or free, both can export)
• A Mac (the migration uses Shortcuts; iPhone alone is technically possible but slower)
• About 60-90 minutes for a typical migration of 200-800 tasks
• iCloud signed in on Mac and iPhone
• Optionally, Ultra Reminders on the receiving end if you want the AI capture and natural language input that Todoist had and Apple Reminders doesn't

Step 1: Export your Todoist data

Open Todoist on the web (the desktop and mobile apps don't expose export). Go to Settings, then "Backups." Download the most recent backup as a ZIP. Inside the ZIP you'll find one CSV file per project, named after the project.

If "Backups" is greyed out, you're on the free tier with no backup history. Go to each project, click the three-dot menu, choose "Export as template," and save each one as a CSV manually. Tedious but free.

You should now have 5-30 CSV files on your Desktop, one per project. Open one in TextEdit or a spreadsheet to confirm the columns: TYPE, CONTENT, DESCRIPTION, PRIORITY, INDENT, AUTHOR, RESPONSIBLE, DATE, DATE_LANG, TIMEZONE, DURATION, DURATION_UNIT.

That's the raw material.

Step 2: Decide your list mapping

Before you import anything, decide what becomes what. This 10-minute planning pass saves an hour later.

• Todoist projects to Apple Reminders lists: one-to-one. Each project becomes a list with the same name.
• Todoist sections to Reminders sections: one-to-one. Reminders supports sections inside lists.
• Todoist labels to Reminders tags: rename if you want. "@waiting" can become "#waiting." Reminders tags don't use @, they use #.
• Todoist priorities: P1 to High, P2 to Medium, P3 to Low, P4 to no priority. Adjust if you want.
• Todoist filters to Reminders smart lists: these have to be rebuilt manually. Reminders smart lists use a different filter UI, so plan to spend 15 minutes rebuilding the 3-5 filters you actually use.
• Todoist comments to Reminders notes: the comments collapse into the single Notes field. Plan accordingly.
• Todoist Karma, completed history, productivity stats: lost. There's no equivalent in Reminders.

Write the mapping down on paper or in a note. You'll thank yourself.

Step 3: Create the destination lists in Reminders

Open Reminders on Mac. For each Todoist project, create a list with the same name. Optionally group them in a folder ("Work," "Personal," "Side projects").

If you want sections inside a list, you can create them now or after import. I create them after, because the import script knows about them.

For the folder structure pattern that survives a Todoist migration cleanly, see How to Set Up Smart Lists in Apple Reminders.

Step 4: Run the import Shortcut

This is the actual data move. Apple's Shortcuts app can read a CSV and create reminders, but it does not handle bulk cleanly out of the box. Two options:

Option A: Free, manual. Use the built-in "Add Reminder" Shortcuts action in a loop. For each row in each CSV, create a reminder in the matching list with the title, due date, and notes. This works but you'll be running it 14 times (once per project) and clicking through allow-prompts.

Option B: Use a community Shortcut. Search "Todoist CSV to Reminders" in the Shortcuts gallery. As of May 2026 there are at least three published Shortcuts that do this in one shot. I tested @nathaniel's "Todoist Migrator v3" and it handled my 600 tasks in under 4 minutes per project. Your mileage may vary on which one works best when you read this; the iOS 18 Shortcuts API changed some action shapes.

Option C: Pay $0-5 for a desktop migrator tool. A few small Mac apps do the import with a UI. Nothing wrong with this if Shortcuts feels finicky.

Run the import. Watch one or two projects come through to verify it's working. Then let it rip on the rest.

Step 5: Map your tags and rebuild your filters

Open Reminders. Find a few tasks that had Todoist labels. Add the corresponding tags. The import Shortcut should have done most of these but check a handful manually.

Then rebuild your filters as Reminders Smart Lists:

• Reminders > File > New Smart List (Mac) or Add List > Make Smart List (iOS)
• Set the filter rules: tag, list, due date, priority, flagged
• Save

For the 5-10 filters that actually drove your day in Todoist, plan 15-20 minutes to rebuild. Keep the names the same so muscle memory transfers.

Step 6: Approximate the recurring rules

Apple Reminders supports daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, and custom interval recurrence. Most Todoist recurring rules translate cleanly:

• "every day" -> Daily
• "every Monday" -> Weekly on Monday
• "every other Wednesday" -> Custom, every 2 weeks on Wednesday
• "every 25th" -> Monthly on the 25th
• "every weekday" -> Custom, every 1 day, weekdays only

The hard ones:

• "every last Friday of the month" -> Reminders does NOT support this natively. Workaround: set monthly on the 28th and manually push to the actual last Friday.
• "every 10 days" -> Reminders custom interval: every 10 days. Works.
• "after 3 days" (recurs N days after completion) -> Reminders does NOT support recurrence-after-completion. Workaround: set the recurrence and manually adjust each cycle, or use Ultra Reminders which supports this.

For the deeper guide on what Reminders' recurrence engine can and can't do, How to Set Recurring Reminders That Don't Break is the source of truth.

Step 7: Re-share any shared projects

Todoist shared projects don't carry their sharing into Apple Reminders. You'll need to:

• Open each list that was previously shared in Todoist
• Tap the share icon
• Re-invite the same person via iMessage or email
• Wait for them to accept on their device

Worth flagging: shared lists in Apple Reminders only work between iCloud accounts. If your collaborator was on Android or used Todoist's web app from Windows, they cannot join an Apple Reminders shared list. That's a real loss for cross-platform teams.

Step 8: Sanity-check the migration before deleting Todoist

Open both apps side by side for one week. As you complete tasks in Reminders, mentally check whether the equivalent existed in Todoist and whether it carried the same date. If you spot any drift, fix the Reminders side and note the pattern.

After one week of clean parallel use, cancel Todoist. Don't delete the data immediately: keep the Todoist account on the free tier as a backup for 30-60 days in case you find something missing. That's how I did it. I never went back, but the safety blanket helped.

Common pitfalls

• Trying to import everything in one batch and overwhelming Shortcuts. Shortcuts choked on a 1,200-task batch for me. Split into projects and run sequentially.
• Forgetting that Todoist comments collapse into Reminders notes. If your tasks have rich comment threads, plan to triage manually.
• Assuming "P1" maps cleanly to High. P1 in Todoist visually sits above High in Reminders' UI. Some users prefer mapping P1 + P2 to High and P3 + P4 to Medium. Pick one and be consistent.
• Recurring rules silently breaking. Re-verify the next 3-5 occurrences of every recurring task. Catch the ones that don't translate.
• Sharing not carrying over. Re-invite collaborators or your shared list will sit empty.

Verification

You'll know the migration worked when:

• All your active project lists exist in Reminders with the same names
• Active task counts roughly match (within 5-10% accounts for completed-during-migration drift)
• Your top 5 most-used filters work as Smart Lists
• Recurring tasks for the next two weeks fire on the right days
• Shared lists are re-shared and visible to collaborators

For the broader migration story, including from Things 3 instead, see How to Migrate from Things 3 to Apple Reminders. The hub article The Definitive Guide to Apple Reminders in 2026 has the full setup pattern once you've landed.

"I procrastinated leaving Todoist for two years because I assumed the migration would be hell. The Shortcut took 20 minutes. The filters took an hour. I should've done this in 2024."

• paraphrased from r/macapps, April 2026

FAQ

Q: Will I lose my Todoist Karma score?

A: Yes. There's no Karma equivalent in Reminders. If gamification was your main driver, look at Apple Reminders vs Habitica before you commit (Habitica is free and has the gamification layer Todoist Karma was approximating).

Q: Can I migrate just some projects, not all?

A: Yes. Export the projects you want, leave the rest in Todoist. You can run Reminders and Todoist in parallel as long as your subscription is active.

Q: What about Todoist's "Today" view?

A: Apple Reminders has a Today view too. It looks different. Builds the same way: every task with a due date of today plus any flagged tasks. You can customize the grouping in Reminders settings.

Q: Does Apple Reminders have anything like Todoist's natural language input?

A: Limited. Apple Reminders parses some date phrases ("tomorrow at 3pm") but leaves the literal text in the title. Todoist strips it. This is one of the bigger losses. Ultra Reminders restores natural language input that strips entities cleanly.

Q: Can I sync Todoist and Apple Reminders during the transition?

A: There's no native two-way sync. You can use a Zapier-style automation to push new Todoist tasks to Reminders, but it's not bidirectional. Most people just do the one-shot migration and cut over.

Ultra Reminders solves leaving Todoist without losing labels, projects, and recurring rules. Free 14-day trial at ultrareminders.com.