However, since we live in an increasingly global world, we occasionally have to consider time zones when scheduling meetings. Business travelers have long needed to keep track of meeting times as they move across time zones, and the number of online meetings spanning the globe has skyrocketed since the pandemic. Whether you’re scheduling appointments on the other side of the country or collaborating with a remote team, it’s essential to be able to work effectively with time zones on your iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Here’s what you need to know.

Fact 1: All Events and Reminders Have Time Zones

The first thing to understand is that every calendar event and reminder has an associated time zone. However, that’s not always obvious—you won’t see any options for adjusting time zones in Calendar on the Mac unless you enable an advanced setting, and reminders never show their time zone.

By default, events use the local time zone of the device on which you create them, which is usually appropriate. However, you can adjust an event’s time zone to make sure you’re notified at the right time after traveling.

Unlike calendar events, timed reminders in the Reminders app are permanently linked to the time zone in which they were created, and this setting cannot be altered. When traveling across time zones, reminders’ local times will adjust accordingly, triggering alerts at unexpected times.

Fact 2: Time Zone Display Can and Will Change

The second point to grasp is that calendar apps display the times of events based on two factors:

• Device time zone: Apple devices typically set their time zone automatically based on location. If you live in Virginia and fly to Oregon, your iPhone will switch from Eastern Time to Pacific Time as soon as you take it out of airplane mode, and your Mac will do the same once it connects to the Internet. You can manually set the device time zone in Settings/System Settings > General > Date & Time, but that’s seldom necessary.
• Calendar time zone overrides: You can make the Calendar app display events as if you were in a different time zone. This feature can help you confirm that events scheduled in another time zone show up at the correct times. On the iPhone or iPad, enable Settings > Apps > Calendar > Time Zone Override. Be careful not to forget about this override, or it may lead to confusion later. On the Mac, go to Calendar > Settings > Advanced, select “Turn on time zone support,” and choose a time zone from the pop-up menu that appears near the upper-right corner of the window.
  

When an event’s time zone differs from your device’s current time zone or the time zone override setting, Calendar will indicate the discrepancy. For example, an event at 2 PM Eastern Time event viewed on a device set to Pacific Time will display as 11 AM, with the original time zone noted in parentheses.

Working with Event Time Zones

When creating events where the time zone might be significant, you have three options:

• Stick with the local time zone: Since all events are associated with a time zone, if you do nothing when creating an event, it will default to your current time zone. This is appropriate when the event will be shared with someone in another time zone through an invitation or shared calendar. However, it poses issues when creating events related to a trip.
• Change to a remote time zone: When scheduling your future self in another time zone—perhaps for business meetings or conference sessions—you can set those events to the time zone of your destination, ensuring they appear at the correct time once you arrive. On the iPhone and iPad, choose the time zone when setting the start time. On the Mac, with time zone support enabled, select it from the Time Zone menu.
  
• Switch to the floating time zone: For travelers who frequently cross time zones, Apple supports a special “floating time zone” that ensures events appear at the same local time regardless of location. For example, a noon lunch meeting set with a floating time zone will always appear at noon, whether you’re in Boston or Denver. However, the floating time zone does have its limitations. While all Apple devices synced through iCloud honor the floating time zone, you can create events with it only on the Mac, not on the iPhone, iPad, or iCloud.com. Additionally, syncing events through Google Calendar or Microsoft Exchange should work, but if you edit an event on the Web or with non-Apple apps, it will revert to the local time zone.

Common Time Zone Scenarios

Now that you understand that events are always associated with time zones, how they appear in Calendar, and how to specify particular time zones for events, let’s look at some common time zone scenarios:

• When traveling to another time zone: For events during an upcoming trip, you can either manually set the event’s time zone to match your destination or use the floating time zone. The manual approach ensures that events appear at the correct local time once you arrive, although it may be confusing to visualize before departure. The floating time zone maintains the same “wall clock time” regardless of your location, making it easier to plan your schedule before you leave.
• Creating events while away: Conversely, when scheduling an appointment back home while traveling, set the event time zone to your home time zone. The event will appear on your calendar at the correct adjusted time. The floating time zone works well as an alternative for personal events that should take place at the same local time, no matter where you are.
• Trips with multiple time zones: For complex itineraries involving flights and travel transitions with departure and arrival times in different zones, the Calendar app on the iPhone and iPad allows you to create events that start and end in different time zones. Tap the Time Zone option beneath the Start and End time pickers to set different time zones. Although you cannot create these multi-zone events on the Mac, they will display correctly on all your synced devices.
• Remote scheduling: When inviting people from different time zones to an event or scheduling meetings with team members in various locations, create the event in your local time zone. The invitations and shared events will automatically adjust to each recipient’s time zone. When searching for optimal meeting times across multiple time zones, use a tool like World Time Buddy, which provides visual guidance for overlapping business hours.
• Reminders can be tricky: Since reminders always use the time zone where they were created, their local times will shift as you travel, leading to notifications at unexpected times. The only workaround is to edit their times manually when you arrive at your destination and again when you return home. Alternatively, consider using an app like Due that keeps reminders consistent with “wall clock time.”
• Scheduling global events: When planning a webinar or other online event that people in many different time zones might attend, use a tool like Every Time Zone to identify suitable times across various regions. After creating the event at the selected time, drag it from Calendar to the desktop to generate an ICS file for sharing with participants. This file will reflect your local time zone, and when attendees double-click it to import, their calendar app will display it at the appropriate time for them.

Although we’ve focused on Calendar on the iPhone, iPad, and Mac here, the same concepts—except for the floating time zone—apply to other apps like Microsoft Outlook and Google Calendar. By keeping these time zone concepts in mind, you can avoid calendar confusion and ensure that you don’t miss important meetings, regardless of where in the world you find yourself.

(Featured image by iStock.com/STILLFX)

Social Media: Managing time zones in Apple’s calendar tools is straightforward if you remember two key points. Our article clarifies your options and explains how to handle common scenarios.

The post Working with Time Zones in Apple’s Calendar Apps first appeared on MacTech Solutions.

(Featured image by iStock.com/fizkes)

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The post A Simple Technique for Decluttering Your Reminders List first appeared on MacTech Solutions.

With Reminders, however, Apple’s engineers snuck some surprising little features into the Mac version. We like using Siri on the iPhone, Apple Watch, and HomePod to add items to our iCloud-synced Reminders to-do lists and shopping lists whenever we think of them. And then, when we’re at our Macs, all those reminders are waiting for us. Here are some useful tricks on the Mac that you may not have noticed.

Open List in New Window

By default, Reminders is a single-window app with a sidebar that shows all your lists. You can hide the sidebar to focus on a single list at a time, at which point you navigate between lists by clicking the dots at the bottom of the screen or swiping on a trackpad.

But what if you want to see multiple lists at once? You can open any list in its own window by double-clicking it in the sidebar or by choosing Window > Open List in New Window. Resize and position that window as you like. Reminders even remembers which lists you had open if you quit and relaunch (and if it doesn’t, deselect the “Close windows when quitting an app” checkbox in System Preferences > General).

Check Today’s Tasks and Notice the Scheduled List

Perhaps the best part of making reminders is telling Siri to alert you at a particular time. “Hey Siri, remind me to test my backups on Friday the 13th at 9 AM.” Such reminders work well if you just want a notification at that time, but for those who like to see what’s coming up, Reminders has a few features for you.

To see what you’ve scheduled for today, choose View > Go to Today—we prefer the Command-T shortcut. To expand your view of tasks to those you didn’t finish yesterday (drat!) and those that are coming soon, click the automatically generated Scheduled list at the top of the sidebar. (It also exists at the top of the list of lists in the iOS version of Reminders.) The Scheduled list shows every reminder that has an associated time—it’s helpful for longer-term planning.

The Scheduled list may become overwhelming if you schedule lots of tasks, so Reminders on the Mac has one more trick for helping you view your tasks by date. Choose View > Show Calendar to display a tiny calendar at the bottom of the sidebar. Any date that has tasks on it gets a dot underneath; click one to see that day’s items.

Set and Sort By Priorities… Or Not

For those who have so many tasks that they need to prioritize them to stay on track, Reminders provides four levels of priority: None, Low, Medium, and High. To set and reset them quickly for a selected to-do, use the keyboard shortcuts:

• Command-1 for Low
• Command-2 for Medium
• Command-3 for High
• Command-4 for None

Once you’ve set priorities, choose View > Sort By > Priority to put your most urgent items at the top. Alas, if you have multiple Reminders lists open at once, the Sort By setting applies to all of them. So you might want to switch back and forth between Priority and other sorts, such Due Date, Creation Date, or Title. Or choose Manual and drag the items into the order you like.

Other Shortcuts

If you want to move an item from one list to another, you can drag it. The trick is to click to the left of its circle or the right of its name; clicking on the name will start editing. You can also Command-click to select multiple items or Shift-Click to select a range of items.

Although clicking the i button that appears when you hover over an item lets you set its notifications and priority, it’s easier to double-click the item. Or, you can Control- or right-click to the left of any item to update it too. Even better, select multiple items first, and then Control- or right-click them to modify them all once! And if your goal is to delete unnecessary items rather than marking them as completed, just select them and press the Delete key.

Reminders may not be the most full-featured to-do list app, but with these tricks and its Siri integration, it can be surprisingly powerful.

The post Apple’s Mac Reminders App Is More Capable Than You May Realize first appeared on MacTech Solutions.

Manage Your Kids’ Purchases

Every Family Sharing group has an organizer. That person (probably you) sets up the family on a Mac in System Preferences > iCloud and connects a credit card to the account to pay for all App Store, iTunes Store, and iBooks Store purchases of apps, music, TV shows, videos, and ebooks.

For any child under the age of 18 in the group, you can turn on Ask to Buy. This feature lets your kid shop for apps or media, but complete a purchase only if you approve it. Ask to Buy also applies to free downloads so you can maintain control over free games. You can give other adults in your family the ability to approve Ask to Buy requests.

Share Apps, Media, and More

To help you keep costs down, once someone in the family has purchased an app or media file, anyone else in the family can download it. Keep in mind that some apps don’t allow such sharing and in-app purchases can’t be shared. Helpfully, you can hide some or all purchases from other family members.

You can also buy a family subscription to Apple Music, Apple’s streaming music service. At $14.99 per month for a family instead of $9.99 per person, it’s a good deal.

Family Sharing creates a few items that all group members can access on their Apple devices:

• A shared Family album appears in the Photos app, making it easy to build a common set of photos. You can designate the Family album as a screensaver on your Mac or Apple TV.
• A shared Family calendar in the Calendar app helps track those basketball games and piano recitals that everyone needs to know about.
• A shared Family list in the Reminders app has many possible uses, such as a grocery list with location-based alerts or a chore list with timed alerts.

Find Your Children (and Their Devices)

Family Sharing simplifies the setup and usage of two key Apple services related to finding things.

All family members automatically become “friends” in Apple’s Find My Friends app. This bundled app shows where everyone is on a map (more specifically, it shows where their primary device is). We find this feature helpful for determining when someone is likely to be home for dinner or for a teenager to see that a parent is en route to a pickup. If you need privacy briefly, you can temporarily stop sharing your location.

You won’t need the Find My iPhone app—which shows the location of all your family’s Apple devices, including the tiny AirPods—on a daily basis. But when your tween isn’t sure whether he dropped his iPhone on the bus or in the museum, it’s a godsend. You can also use Find My iPhone to play a sound on a missing device (in case it’s in the couch), put a message on it, or even erase the device entirely.

Family Sharing may not do everything you’d want, like share entire Photos libraries or contact lists, but it’s a boon for any household whose members use a variety of Apple devices.

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Set up multiple lists. If your head is overflowing with things to track, you might find it helpful to organize your reminders in different lists, such as one for simple things to do, another for holiday gift ideas, and a third for items to pick up on your next trip to the hardware store. In the Mac and iPad versions of Reminders, click Add List at the bottom of the sidebar; in the iPhone version, pull down from the top of the screen to reveal the search field and then tap the + button to the right.

Use Siri. Perhaps the best part of Reminders is that you can use Siri to create reminders, which works great on an iPhone or iPad, but is particularly compelling on an Apple Watch. Just say “Remind me to get tickets,” and if you want to be reminded by a notification, expand it with a time, as in “Remind me to get tickets tomorrow at 9 AM,” or with a location, as in “Remind me to get tickets when I get home.” You can even tell Siri to add reminders to a specific list, as in “Add lag bolts to the Hardware Store list.”

Sync your reminder lists. Reminder lists are stored in iCloud, so they are automatically shared among all your devices as long as each device is signed in to iCloud and has Reminders syncing turned on. On the Mac, look in System Preferences > iCloud, and in iOS, navigate to Settings > iCloud.

Share a reminder list. You can also share a list with your spouse or colleagues who use iCloud. To do this on the Mac, hover over the list name in the sidebar to click the Sharing button and then enter one or more iCloud-connected email addresses. In iOS, go into the reminder list you want to share, tap Edit > Sharing > Add Person and then either enter email addresses or tap the + button to select someone from your contacts.

View reminders in your calendar. Because Apple made Reminders its own app, even your timed reminders won’t show up in Calendar, forcing you to check both Calendar and Reminders as you plan your day. If you want reminders intermixed with your calendar events, check out BusyCal, from BusyMac, or Fantastical from Flexibits. Both are full-featured alternatives to Calendar that can also manage reminders.

It’s up to you to actually complete your reminders, but with these tips, you can at least be sure you won’t forget any!

The post A Few Friendly Reminders for Making the Most of Reminders first appeared on MacTech Solutions.