With iOS 5, Apple gave us Reminders — an app that had tons of promise & potential. We were demoed a fantastic feature set consisting of both time-based and location-based reminders, and a syncing solution that’d “just work” across devices. However, the default Reminders.app on iOS has been unreliable at best for many people. Location based reminders barely work for me and my only real use of the official Reminders.app happens through Siri where I never end up looking at the actual app. A few weeks ago, a video for an app called Checkmark was brought to my notice. The video was funny and the app showed promise. I’ve been testing the beta for a while now and can definitively say that Checkmark is essentially what apple’s Reminders.app should’ve been.
Checkmark is an elegant and simple solution for quickly creating every reminder you would need. The app has a pretty straightforward UI that has some excellent & subtle patterns. The emphasis of this app is getting things done with as few taps as possible. It lets you set up locations for reminders by adding from the map, your current position or importing from device contacts. I love the selection of icons you can assign to locations. You are also allowed to change the geo-fence radius for each location which is a very nice feature. The tab bar at the bottom lets you switch between location and time based reminders. Location based reminders have a grid of icons akin to the iPhone homescreen that you can interact with in the same way. One feature I absolutely love in this app is the ability to delay the reminders for a specific time after you depart or arrive at a location. The designers & developers have gone all out in making sure that there’s attention to detail in every little corner of the app. There’s a small timer clock above the picker for the time that adjusts according to your reminder. The attention to detail with stuff like this still proves how much effort goes into the design of an app. Checkmark has some great typography and while it may seem a little too simple to some, it remains one of the best designed apps I have used till date.
While I was skeptical at first about the actual utility of the app given my past experiences with location based reminders, Checkmark has blown me away and I have started relying on it a lot in the last 2 weeks. It has a simple and elegant look with an intuitive design. I don’t expect syncing with the absence of an iPad app or a web app but it would nice to see in a future version when support is added for other devices. Checkmark is currently available on the App Store for an introductory price of $0.99.