Remindian bridges Obsidian and Apple Reminders with two-way sync — and it's hard to go back

At a glance:

• Remindian is a third-party app that syncs Obsidian checkbox tasks directly with Apple Reminders, offering fast two-way sync across macOS and iOS devices.
• It provides granular controls — per-folder, per-list, and per-tag filtering — so users can prevent stray checkboxes from cluttering their Reminders.
• The tool works with popular Obsidian task plugins such as TaskNotes, but it is limited to Apple's ecosystem and carries an "unverified developer" warning until Apple notarizes the binary.

What Remindian does and how it works

Remindian blurs the line between an Obsidian plugin and a standalone application. Rather than installing through Obsidian's community plugin browser or BRAT, users download a .dmg file and run it as a separate app that connects to an Obsidian vault. Once linked, Remindian automatically scans the vault for lines beginning with [] — Obsidian's standard checkbox syntax — and pushes them into Apple Reminders as actionable items. The sync is nearly instantaneous: the app monitors the vault for changes and updates Reminders after a short interval, though a manual "Sync Now" button is always available for on-demand refreshes. A small dashboard in the Remindian UI displays real-time counts of completed tasks, newly created ones, and other stats, giving users a quick at-a-glance overview of their vault's task load.

One issue the app encounters is false positives. Any line in a vault that uses the [] checkbox format — even something as innocuous as a status field in a pitch-tracking spreadsheet — can be interpreted as an outstanding task by Remindian. The developers anticipated this, however, and built in several ways to deal with it (more on that below).

Granular controls that set it apart

Where Remindian really distinguishes itself is in its configurability. Many Obsidian plugins offer customization, but Remindian goes further with options that span from the mundane to the highly specific. Users can choose whether the app launches on system login, and they can fine-tune exactly which tasks get synced. Specific Obsidian lists can be excluded entirely. Individual folders can be whitelisted or blacklisted. For those who tag their tasks, Remindian can be set to look only for a designated tag and ignore everything else.

These controls are not just nice-to-have — they directly address the false-positive problem. Because Remindian triggers on any checkbox line, designating a specific folder or tag as the sole source of tasks is an effective way to keep the Reminders app from flooding with 50 spurious entries. It takes a few minutes to configure, but once set up, the workflow becomes seamless.

Compatibility with existing Obsidian task plugins

Users who have already invested in task-oriented Obsidian plugins will find that Remindian plays well with others. TaskNotes, one of the more popular task-management plugins for Obsidian, works flawlessly alongside Remindian. Because TaskNotes already structures tasks in a dedicated .md file with YAML frontmatter, converting that workflow into a Remindian-compatible one is straightforward. Tasks created with Obsidian's default command (- []) are also automatically picked up by Remindian and reflected in Apple Reminders.

This interoperability matters because many Obsidian users layer multiple plugins to build a productivity stack. Remindian slots into that stack without requiring users to abandon their existing task-creation habits or tools.

Limitations to consider

Remindian is not a universal solution. Because it syncs with Apple Reminders — a proprietary macOS and iOS application — the tool is entirely locked to Apple's ecosystem. Android and Windows users are out of luck and will need to explore alternative sync methods or different platforms altogether. For Mac-first users who live in Obsidian daily, this is a minor caveat; for anyone who juggles operating systems, it is a hard boundary.

There is also the matter of macOS's Gatekeeper. Because Remindian is relatively new and has not yet been notarized and signed by Apple, macOS flags the app with an "unverified developer" warning on first launch. This is a standard security step for independent software distributed outside the Mac App Store, and it does not indicate any actual security risk. The developers are expected to submit the app for Apple notarization as it matures, which should resolve the alert.

Who should use Remindian

Remindian is purpose-built for a specific audience: Obsidian users who rely on Apple Reminders as their cross-device notification and task-tracking layer, and who have grown frustrated with the gap between the two. If your workflow already revolves around Obsidian on macOS and iOS, and you find yourself manually duplicating tasks just to see them on your phone, Remindian eliminates that friction with minimal setup overhead.

It is not trying to be everything for everyone. It does not compete with Todoist, Notion, or other cross-platform task managers. Instead, it solves one narrowly defined problem — bridging the Obsidian vault and Apple Reminders — and solves it well. For its target audience, it is arguably a no-brainer.