Productivity tools are great. A great calendar App and a good to-Do list App are a must for any power user. Being extremely interested in getting organized (following through is another matter), I went on a quest to find the best to-Do list out there.
Lets get to the requirements.
- A good looking to-Do list on android market
- Should have a web version so that I can add tasks while working on the laptop
- Easy to use
- Should have a nice widget which makes my tasks visible without spoiling the look of my home screen
- Preferable if they have an extension on Chrome
What one might need or like in an App is extremely subjective, so I suggest you get the one that works for you.
Samsung memo
This is the stock one I got with my phone. Hardly any features to talk about.
A nice good looking App. But the widget is not that elegant. Plus at the time I installed it almost 6months back, they did not have any task repeat features. At that point I needed an App which would give me the option of repeating several tasks
A lovely App. An extension in Chrome as well. Nice and Easy to make lists. A decent widget on the home screen. Again not task repeatability.
A nice App. Has sync with Google option which is good I assumed. But basically Google has a very bad product in the form of Google tasks. I wonder why that is though, considering they are making so many Web applications, a decent Task functionality and a simple Note taking App shouldn't be that hard.
I started making a lot of mundane tasks repeatable and added them to the list. After sometime, looking at these mundane tasks show up and cover the entire widget area, hence restricting visibility of the important tasks made me realize that I needed to prioritize tasks. Unfortunately GTasks did not have that feature, so out it went.
This App was perfect. Easy to make lists. A nice web App. Task repeatability and priority options. This was perfect until the notifications for the several repeatable tasks started bugging me. The App seemed too noisy at that time.
The most beautiful to-Do list App by far. Had all the features I needed. The inbuilt dictionary and word prompt was very handy. I could link it to my contacts. For Eg: Call X, would link it to X's contact so I could call directly from the App. Also it would remind me of missed calls. A Chrome extension. Overall very nice, very neat. Only problem was the user. I realized that putting mundane everyday tasks on your lists in repeat mode was actually a dumb idea. For that I suggest you use
Routinely or
Habit Streak.
So I decided to remove all existing tasks and set it up again. But the App does not have a clear all tasks option. Extremely ridiculous. And deleting tasks the repeat is a hard troublesome task on this App.
Anyways I shifted back to wunderlist. But the problem with wunderlist is that some pending tasks which I do not have to finish by any time are not displayed on the widget. Only Today's tasks are displayed. It shows an empty screen if there are no tasks today but not the pending tasks.
Finally shifted back to Astrid which with out my several repeatable tasks is perfect for my needs. Works like a charm and I have nothing to complain about at all.
If you need a to-Do list App, I suggest you try Astrid first.