Questions
Answers to the questions that usually come up before installation. If yours is missing, write to us and we will add it.
01
Your data
Where is my data stored? Does any of it get uploaded?
Your tasks live in Apple Reminders, exactly where they already were, and keep syncing through iCloud under Apple’s policy. Everything ReminderMAP adds on top, meaning groups, states, notes and history, is a database file on your own Mac.
We run no server that receives your task data. There is no account or sign in, and ReminderMAP creates no user identifier for you.
Will it change the tasks in my Reminders app?
Only when you ask it to. Move a task, tick it off or edit a date in ReminderMAP and that change is written back through EventKit, Apple’s official interface, immediately.
It never reorganises, rewrites or tidies anything on its own. The app does not touch the Reminders database directly, and it does not run background jobs that alter your reminders while you are not looking.
Why does it ask for access to my reminders on first launch?
Because it cannot read or write a single task without it. macOS asks on Apple’s behalf, and on macOS 14 and later it is the full access permission, because the app both reads your lists and writes your changes back.
The permission is between you and macOS. You can withdraw it at any time in System Settings, and the app will simply stop being able to see anything.
Nothing is read before you agree. The app opens on a short guide explaining where your data lives and that the first sync only runs when you press the button, so the permission prompt is not the first thing you see.
If I delete a task in ReminderMAP, does it disappear from Reminders too?
Yes. ReminderMAP writes changes back to the original reminder rather than keeping a separate copy.
Deletion asks for confirmation first. To set a task aside without deleting it, use the parked state.
Why can I not see groups, states and logs in the Reminders app?
Because Apple Reminders has no field for them. There is no group inside a list, no state beyond done and not done, and no place to record why something stalled.
That is why the planning layer exists as a separate local file. Anything Reminders can hold is written back to Reminders. Anything it cannot hold has to live somewhere, and it lives on your Mac.
What do I lose if I uninstall it?
Every task, date, list and completion is still in Apple Reminders, untouched. What goes away is the layer on top: groups, states, work logs and monthly review.
Export to JSON first and you keep that too. Export is free, always available, and includes your state data even if you are no longer paying.
Does it need an internet connection?
No. Take the Mac offline and everything still works: the map, your groups, your states, your work logs, editing all of it. Every piece of that is a local file, and your reminders come from macOS on the same machine rather than from a network call.
Your purchase is verified on your own device by macOS, so there is no licence check phoning home either. The one thing that does need a connection is iCloud keeping your reminders in step across your devices, and that is Apple’s sync doing exactly what it did before ReminderMAP existed.
Can I sync the planning layer between two Macs?
No. The planning layer is stored on one Mac. Syncing it between Macs would require a different account and storage design.
One Mac holds the planning layer, and backups can be pointed at a folder inside iCloud Drive so a dead disk is not a lost plan. Your tasks themselves sync everywhere through iCloud as usual.
02
Buying it
How far does the free version go?
The free tier has no time limit. It includes the full map, unlimited groups, dragging, zoom, search, undo and redo, two way sync with Reminders, the overdue, due today and next up schedule columns, notes you add to the work log, automatic backups and JSON export.
Three things are paid: the four states with stuck reasons, reaching back through past months of finished work, and AI access. The current month of finished work is free to look at.
Monthly or yearly?
Yearly costs about half as much as twelve monthly payments and starts with two weeks free. Cancel before the trial ends and nothing is charged. Monthly lets you use the paid features for a month without committing to a year.
The exact price and trial length are whatever the App Store shows you before you confirm, and both may vary by region.
If I stop paying, does my data disappear?
No. Nothing is deleted, ever, on any downgrade. Your groups, states, notes and work logs stay exactly where they are.
What changes is that the paid parts become read only. You can still see them, still export them, and resubscribing restores full access exactly as it was.
How is this different from MindNode, GoodTask or Things?
Things and Todoist want you to move in. They are good apps, and the price of using one is abandoning Reminders, which means giving up Siri, the Lock Screen, your watch and every Shortcut you have built.
MindNode is a mind map first: the drawing is the source of truth, and Reminders is somewhere it can send tasks rather than the place the tasks come from. GoodTask is a better front end for Reminders, and it is still a list.
ReminderMAP treats Reminders as the database and the map as its shape. Nothing is imported, nothing moves house, and what you add on your phone is on the map when you next open it.
Is there an iPhone or iPad version?
Not in the first release. This one is for the Mac, where the screen is big enough to hold a plan you can actually read.
Your tasks are in Apple Reminders, so they are already on your phone, in the app Apple ships. What is missing there is the map.
How do updates arrive, and where can I see what changed?
Through the Mac App Store, like any other app you got there. Depending on your App Store settings, new versions either install on their own or wait for you under Updates.
What changed in each version is listed on the ReminderMAP page in the App Store, under Version History. That is the one place we keep release notes.
After I pick monthly or yearly, the confirmation window has no button. What can I do?
That window is the App Store purchase sheet from macOS, not part of ReminderMAP. When it asks for Touch ID, it occasionally appears without its confirm button.
Confirm with your Apple Account password instead of Touch ID, and the purchase goes through. If that does not work either, tell us on the support page and include a screenshot.
03
The AI connection
ReminderMAP can expose your planning layer to an AI assistant you already use, through MCP. This is the part people have the most questions about, so here are more of them.
There are free Apple Reminders MCP servers already. Why would I pay for this?
If all you need is access to reminders, use one of the free servers already available.
What they cannot give you is the planning layer, because it is not in EventKit for anyone to read. The group tree, the four states, the line explaining what a task is stuck on, the work log, the month you just finished. None of that exists in Apple Reminders, so no server built on top of it can hand those to your assistant.
Three smaller differences on top: it is built into the app so there is nothing to install, it needs no automation permissions, and every write it makes goes into the same undo history as your own edits.
Which AI clients work with it?
The ones you run from a command line, and the ones built into a code editor. Claude Code connects, and so does Codex. What they have in common is a place to put an address, and the endpoint is an address.
The chat apps have no such place. Claude for Mac takes a program it starts itself or an address out on the internet, and a local one is neither. ChatGPT opens its connections from OpenAI servers that never see your Mac. A browser hosted assistant cannot reach an endpoint on your own machine at all.
Settings has a button that copies the whole block. Send it to your tool and ask it to connect. There is no separate command line tool to install and no plugin to keep updated. The endpoint is part of the app.
Connecting a browser hosted assistant requires a tunnel that you run yourself, which exposes the local endpoint to the internet. The AI access page explains the tradeoff.
Does it go online? Could someone else connect to it?
It does not go online. The endpoint listens on 127.0.0.1 only, which means the loopback interface on your own Mac, and it requires a token that the app generates. Nothing is exposed to your network and nothing is exposed to the internet.
If you ever want to invalidate that token, Settings has a button for it.
Could the AI make a mess of my tasks?
Writing is off until you turn it on. There is no delete tool, and the assistant cannot rename a task. Before its first write, ReminderMAP takes a full backup and keeps it separately from ordinary backups.
Every change it makes is marked in the work log as the AI’s work and comes back in a single undo, and one batch is capped at fifty tasks. Undo is deliberately not something the assistant can do on your behalf.
Does it work when the app is closed?
No. The endpoint lives inside the app, so the app has to be running. Setting it to open at login is the usual answer.
This is the same reason nothing can reach your data when the app is not open. There is no daemon sitting in the background.
Is AI access included in the free version?
No. It is part of the paid tier in full, and the endpoint does not start at all without a subscription.
There is no reduced free version of it, because a connection that can read your states and history but not act on them would be a demonstration rather than a feature.