But if you haven't found a to-do list that works for you-particularly a free one-it's worth giving Tasks a shot. It doesn't use a smart assistant like Any.do (although lord knows Google's capable).

'Keep is for note taking and quick capturing of ideas.' It is designed to help users manage lists of tasks and subtasks related to work, for example-emails to reply to, meetings to prepare for, and documents to review,' says Goerisch. It'll do the same soon in Docs, Sheets, Slides and Calendar, as the refresh seeps into other G Suite products.Īnd while Keep and Tasks may still share some overlapping functions, they deviate enough that it makes sense for them to live as distinct options. One click, and your to-do list springs to life inside your email. Well, side billing, technically rather than having to dig for it, Tasks lives as an icon in a right-hand panel, along with icons for Calendar and Keep. 'We're of course looking into bringing additional features to enhance the product,' he says, though he declined to say if that included Google Assistant integration, another currently absentee feature.Įven with its austere offerings, though, Tasks has plenty of appeal, especially since Google's newly unveiled Gmail redesign gives it top billing. If you haven't found a to-do list that works for you-particularly a free one-it's worth giving Tasks a shot.įortunately, Goerisch has a few items left on his Tasks to-do list. From there, you can either look at an existing task in a little more depth, or create a new one. Open it up, and you're greeted with a list of tasks. In some ways that's a relief you won't be tempted to dither. Tasks is about as stripped down as it gets, in both form and function. Google Tasks is not, to be clear, a full-featured To Do app. But along with a revamped Gmail interface, Google Wednesday launched a dedicated Tasks app for iOS and Android-and may have not only cleaned up its mess, but given you a viable way to wrangle your to-dos. None of these services have historically played particularly nice together. There's Google Keep, a note-taking app Google Reminders, which nag you about Calendar events, email follow-ups, or Keep notes and Google Tasks, which originated in Gmail nearly a decade ago as a stripped-down to-do list feature. While Google rightly gets a lot of flack for its scattered approach to messaging, its to-do list offerings have been a close second for sprawling, scrambled efforts.

Google todo list