Force Reminders to refresh

24 January 2013, 02:00

I love iCloud and use it to sync data between all my Apple computers and devices. The only issue is when syncing occurs. Sometimes I start an app like Notes on my MacBook Pro, for example, and stuff I’ve created on my iPad or iPhone doesn’t sync for a minute or two. Sometimes everything syncs straight away.

I’d like a button to force syncing to happen but that isn’t the Apple way… Not officially, or at least if you’re using Reminders.

Reminders has a debug menu you can enable. It has just one entry — Refresh — that does exactly what I describe above. To enable it, close Reminders then open a Terminal window (it’s in the Utilities folder of Applications) and type the following:

defaults write com.apple.reminders RemindersDebugMenu -boolean true

Then start Reminders and use the Debug menu to sync to iCloud whenever you want.

To disable the debug menu, again quit Reminders, then open a Terminal window and type the following:

defaults delete com.apple.reminders RemindersDebugMenu

NOTE: This is clearly a hidden feature not intended for primetime. I can’t imagine it causing any problems but you’ve been warned!

Edit: I was a little wrong when I said manually updating from iCloud wasn’t The Apple Way. In Calendar (a.k.a. iCal) you can select View -> Refresh Calendars.


Disagree? Tell me why...

 
---