Connect Circle to Orbit and the people you are due to catch up with appear in your task list. Tick one in Orbit and Circle counts it as Caught Up.
The connection is off until you turn it on, and both apps ask you separately before anything is written to your task list.
Turn it on
In Circle, go to Settings ▸ Connections ▸ Connect to Orbit. Circle explains what will be sent and asks you to confirm.
Then open Orbit. The first time it sees the connection it asks as well, in Settings ▸ Connected Apps ▸ Circle Keep Up ▸ Allow Catch-up Tasks. Nothing appears in your list until you agree there too. Circle’s status says “Waiting for Orbit” until you have.
Both apps need to be on the same device for the hand-off to run, and both need active access through a subscription or Pay Once. If only one has it, the connection pauses and says which side is waiting; nothing already created is affected.
What a catch-up looks like in Orbit
A task titled “Catch up with Anna”, due on the day Anna falls due. It behaves like any other task in your list: it lands in Today when it is due, appears in your widgets, and Siri can read it.
It is not editable, and that is deliberate. Circle owns the title, the date and how often you keep up, so Orbit shows them rather than letting you change them in a place Circle would only overwrite. The task gives you the two things that are yours to decide: Reschedule, and Open in Circle, which takes you straight to that person.
Add them before they are due
Settings ▸ Connections ▸ Add to Orbit early decides how many days early a catch-up appears: three by default, anything from none to a week.
Lead time only decides when the task shows up. Its due date is always the real one, so an early task waits in This Week and moves itself into Today on the day. Ticking it early still counts as a catch-up, exactly as tapping Caught Up in Circle would.
What crosses, and what does not
A name, a due date and how often you would like to catch up. Your notes, your catch-ups, phone numbers, email addresses and birthdays never leave Circle.
Names Sent decides how much of a name goes: a full name, a first name only, or initials. First name only is the default because it usually identifies the task while sharing less.
Send Photos is off unless you turn it on. When it is on, the person’s contact photo appears beside their name in Orbit. A photo is handled differently from a name: it is placed in a container the two apps share on that device, never stored on the task itself, so it does not sync to iCloud, does not appear in widgets and is not added to search. Turning the setting off, or disconnecting, deletes the photos.
This is worth understanding before you connect. A name sent to Orbit becomes part of an ordinary task, so it can appear in Orbit’s widgets, in search and to Siri, places Circle deliberately keeps names out of when it is used on its own.
Ticking, moving and dismissing
- Tick it and Circle counts it as Caught Up at that moment, and the next due date is set from there.
- Move it to a later date and Circle snoozes that person until the same date.
- Delete it and Circle takes it as “not now” and asks again one cycle later.
- Un-tick it and Circle removes the catch-up it recorded. Nothing you recorded yourself is ever touched.
It works the other way round too: tap Caught Up in Circle and the matching Orbit task is completed.
Disconnecting
Settings ▸ Connections ▸ Disconnect from Orbit. Circle asks what should happen to any catch-up tasks still waiting in your list: Keep Tasks in Orbit turns them into ordinary Orbit tasks, and Remove Them from Orbit moves them to Orbit’s Deleted list, where they can still be recovered. Ones you have already ticked stay where they are. They are history, not settings.