In this brief tutorial, we’ll show you how to add items to a Grocery or Shopping list in the Reminders app using only Siri on your iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple Watch.
The process is pretty simple. You just create a list and ask Siri to add items to it.
Step 1: Create a new list in the Reminders app
Open the Reminders app on your iPhone and tap Add List at the bottom. Next, name the list whatever you want. For this tutorial, I named the list “Grocery.” Once you’re done, tap the Done button in the top right corner of the screen.
If you don’t create a list beforehand, Siri will respond with, “I didn’t find a “name” list. Do you want to create one?” You can say or tap Yes. But to make things smoother, we recommend creating a list first.
Step 2: Ask Siri to add items to the list
Activate Siri and say, “Add milk to the Grocery list.” Siri will instantly add the item to your grocery list. It works on all Apple devices like iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, and HomePod.
You can even go further and say more complex commands like, “Add brown eggs to the grocery list and remind me about it at 9 PM.” However, I’ve noticed that this command fails if the time you specify has already passed. For instance, if you ask Siri to remind you at 9 PM, but it’s already 10 PM, the reminder might not set.
You can open up Reminders to view the list at any time. The app is smart enough to automatically group grocery items in proper lists!
No matter where you created the reminder, it will conveniently sync via iCloud to all your other Apple devices.
Some important points
1) Siri is smart enough to split multiple items. So if you say, “Add bread, olive oil, milk, and eggs to the Grocery list,” it adds them as separate items.
However, I found that if you mention too many items at once, Siri may merge them into a single, meaningless task. Additionally, the voice assistant sometimes combines related items. For example, if you say “cheese and bread” it often adds them as one entry (cheese bread) instead of two separate entries. You can avoid this by speaking the related terms separately. So, instead of saying, “add cheese, bread, eggs…” you can say, “add cheese, eggs, bread…”
2) If you primarily use the Reminders app for groceries, you can go to the Settings app > Apps > Reminders > Default List and set the Grocery list as your default. From now on, any reminders you add via Siri will automatically be added to this list. So, instead of saying, “Add milk to the Grocery list,” you can simply say, “Remind me to buy milk,” and Siri will add it to the default Reminders list, which is Grocery.
3) Siri can’t remove items from the reminders list. So, if you say, “Remove milk and bread from my grocery list,” you’ll get a ‘sorry’ response instead.
More tips for lists and reminders: