How to Put a To-Do List on Your iPhone Lock Screen

Three things can carry a to-do list on the Lock Screen: a widget, the wallpaper, or a card from an app. This guide takes Apple's route first, then the wallpaper route, then widget apps, using Apple's own wording and App Store listings as they read on November 1, 2026. To read the whole list instead of glancing at three lines, NoteWall writes it into the wallpaper. The wider setup sits in our Lock Screen Productivity Guide.

Disclosure: NoteWall is our app. It is one of the routes below, and the table says plainly when you do not need it.

Use Apple's Reminders widget. Touch and hold the Lock Screen, tap Customize, tap Add Widgets, and choose Reminders. It needs iOS 16 or later, costs nothing, and stays in sync with the Reminders app. The catch is size: Lock Screen widgets are built for a glance, so expect a few lines, not a full list.

Apple Support's article How to add and edit widgets on your iPhone (read November 1, 2026) gives the steps, quoted as written:

Apple frames these widgets as a way "to get information at a glance", with the temperature and battery level as examples: small facts, where a task list asks more of the space. When room runs out, Apple says "you can tap the Remove button to remove a widget and make room for the one you want to add."

Apple's iPhone User Guide page Complete items in Reminders on iPhone says "With the Reminders widget, you can complete items from the iPhone Home Screen or Lock Screen." It documents the list choice for the Home Screen: "touch and hold the widget, tap Edit Widget, then choose a list." On the Lock Screen, Create a custom iPhone Lock Screen says to "Tap your existing widgets or tap Add Widgets" in the editor, so the list is chosen in the same Customize screen.

A workable habit is a short Reminders list named "Today", holding only the three or four things you want to see, with the widget pointed at it. More on the widget, and why reminder notifications vanish, is in how to put reminders on your iPhone lock screen.

Put the text in the wallpaper. A wallpaper is an image behind the clock, so your list can be any length and size, with nothing to configure on the Lock Screen. The trade-off is that it is read-only and goes stale until the image is rebuilt, by hand or by an app. Plain notes work the same way: putting notes on your iPhone lock screen covers that.

It costs nothing, but tick off one item and the wallpaper is already out of date. Every change means another screenshot.

NoteWall automates the screenshot loop. You keep the list in the app, it builds the wallpaper, and an Apple Shortcut called Set NoteWall Wallpaper applies it, because, as the app's FAQ explains, iOS does not let apps change your wallpaper directly. The FAQ puts first-time setup at about 2 minutes and a refresh with Update Wallpaper at about 5 seconds. It also has its own reminders, habits and streaks.

Three honest limits. The Shortcut step is where many people stall; the usual causes are in this guide to a Shortcut not changing the lock screen wallpaper. You type items into NoteWall itself, since its listing does not describe importing from Apple's Reminders app. And the result is an image, so nothing on it is tappable: to change the list, you edit it in the app and tap Update Wallpaper.

Its listing, read November 1, 2026, shows Lock Screen Notes: NoteWall at version 2.4.1 (updated October 6, 2026), iOS 17.0 or later, rated 4.4 from 109 ratings, and says "No widgets. No notifications." If you want a widget you can tap, read on.

Yes, in two kinds. Apple's Reminders widget is built in. App Store apps add their own Lock Screen widgets, and some also use Live Activities, which keep a live card on the Lock Screen. Three listings are summarized below as they read on November 1, 2026. Listings change often, so check the live page first.

Any widget app means a second place to keep tasks. If your list already lives in Apple Reminders, the built-in widget avoids that.

On an iPhone with iOS 16 or later, add the Reminders widget: touch and hold the Lock Screen, tap Customize, tap Add Widgets, and choose Reminders. Keep the tasks you want to see in the list the widget shows. For the whole list at full size, make it the wallpaper instead.

That wording is the question in an Apple Community thread, "How to put to-do list on lock screen", posted August 12, 2020 and now closed. It is cited only as the question people ask, not as a source; the answer comes from Apple's support pages. The thread predates the feature, which Apple's article ties to "iOS 16 or later".

Use the Reminders widget if your tasks already live in Apple Reminders and a few lines are enough. Use the wallpaper if you want three to five items readable at full size and are fine refreshing it. Use a widget app only if you want a tappable list that the Reminders widget cannot give you.

Anyone who picks up the phone can read the Lock Screen, so keep medical, financial and work items off it. The routes also combine: wallpaper for the three things that must happen today, Reminders widget for the next dated item.

Keep it to three to five short items, each starting with a verb, because wanting to do a task is not the same as being prompted to do it. A 2006 meta-analysis by Thomas Webb and Paschal Sheeran in Psychological Bulletin pooled 47 experiments that raised people's intentions and then measured behavior: a medium-to-large rise in intention (d = 0.66) produced only a small-to-medium rise in behavior (d = 0.36). It concerns intentions in general, not lock screens, but a list you see at the moment you can act is a prompt, and the Lock Screen is a screen you look at anyway.

Keep Reading: Lock Screen Widgets vs. Wallpaper Notes: Which iPhone Approach Wins?