This smart app brings conditional reminders to iOS and iPadOS
Price: Free
Subscription: $3/£3 per month
Version: 1.0.9
Size: 36.5 MB
Seller: Stefan Liesendahl
Meet Sam: arguably the smartest to-do app out there. If you like the relative simplicity of Apple’s Reminders but sometimes wish it offered a little more, Sam could be the app for you. On the surface, it’s a clean and elegant to-do app. But underneath, it’s a powerhouse of conditional rules and settings, which can add a dose of AI into your “getting-things-done” workflow.
When you first launch Sam on your iPhone or iPad, it’s all about the basics – configuring your name, importing the contents of the Reminders app, and maybe creating a simple reminder of your own. You’ll notice the clean, elegant user interface, the crisp font, and the white background. The app is quick and responsive: it looks and feels good.
To-do items.
Then Sam introduces you to his “conditions” and the intelligence of the app will hit home. Because while Apple’s Reminders includes simple triggers for time and location, Sam is full to the brim with a whole range of conditions which will determine whether or not you’re reminded to do something.
Take mowing the lawn, for instance. This is something you probably only do at the weekend, if the weather is dry, and during daytime hours. Adding a reminder for this lets you create these conditions as you go – there’s a condition tile for weekend and weather, and you can set active time periods in the app, too.
Adding conditions.
Then when you launch Sam, the app ranks your reminders based on whether these conditions have been met. This smart system lets you work through the most appropriate reminders first. Sam also reminds you about individual items when all of the conditions have been met.
It’s a great solution and works really well. Most of us probably struggle to predict when the right time to be reminded about something might be. Then when the reminder fires, we end up ignoring or snoozing it. The more to-do items you have, the messier this kind of system gets. Sam’s conditional reminders solve this problem and streamline the process of getting-things-done on iOS and iPadOS.
Hidden features.
While there are a whole range of conditions – like Wi-Fi connectivity, location, battery and activity levels, and upcoming weather – you can add more by visiting Sam’s Store, or you can create your own. But to add more than one condition, you’ll need to sign up for Sam’s $3/£3 monthly subscription. This also adds unlimited groups and tasks, sync between devices, and a personalized briefing when you launch the app.
Sam’s Store.
It’s true that some things are missing – there’s no calendar view, nor is it possible to use lists with individual reminders. But we can live without those for now, because what Sam brings in terms of its intelligent reminder system is something special.