GTD App Review – Due Today

Sep 30, 2011 by     3 Comments    Posted under: GTD, GTD App Review

Due Today is great looking app, that is easy to navigate and manage tasks on a small screen. Each task is highly configurable with many properties to tweak (or not, if you turn them off). Yet when viewing a list of tasks it makes great use of colour, contrast and icons to visually communicate all that information about a task, without it feeling cramped or overwhelming.

It has large number of filtering options and special folders that allow to splice and dice your tasks in anyway you see fit.

The add task button is always at hand to add any tasks that come to mind, no matter which list your in.

How it Scored

This is how it scored against the criteria for a great GTD app.

Criteria Result
Quick add Yes. Into an inbox if on home screen or into the list that you currently happen to be in.
Projects/Sub-tasks Yes. Projects, Sub projects and sub tasks.
Contexts/tags Yes, both.
Order tasks No
Notes Yes
Highlight/star Yes. In paid version.
Search Yes. In paid version.
Deadline Yes
Reminder Yes
Recurring tasks Yes
Sync with Google Calendar Yes. via Toodledo.
User Experience 4/5

 

Downsides

See puzzling.

Puzzling

Floating tasks? I was very confused about what this setting was on a task and never got to figure it out. Setting it on a task in the inbox took it out of the inbox, was all I could learn.

Some tasks that had tags in Toodledo, showed that they had tags (with a tag icon next to it) but when opened didn’t show any.

Tasks that didn’t have due dates would show up in the special Today folder.

The difference between Today and Next special folders, is confusing. They both appear to contain almost the same tasks, so not sure what it decides goes into these folders. This is how I would have thought they should behave:

  • Today – tasks with due dates that are overdue or are due today.
  • Future – tasks with due dates for later than today.
  • Next – tasks that have no due date set.

That’s my interpretation of GTD. Is that how you see it?

Useful Extras

  • Projects can be pinned to the home screen
  • I like how it shows the number of tasks vs those that are overdue in a split task number box. It’s a nice design touch that gets the message across really well. Does the same in 1×1 widget too.
  • Lots of reminder options. LED colours, vibrate, ringtone.
  • Out of the box the default settings are just fine but if you want to tweak it, it has a host of options you can set to make it your own. Too many to mentions here. Everything from ‘which side the checkboxes should appear’ to ‘which screen should be the home screen’.
  • A widget, in the paid version.
  • Defaults for tasks that go into a project. Eg For a project ‘Spring Clean’ the default context @home
  • Long hold the Android search button to add tasks directly into Due Today, no matter where  you are in Android. Like a global hotkey, neat idea.
  • Assign tasks to other people.

How it Looks

 

Platforms

Android and Windows. The app can sync with Toodledo. The paid for Android app also supports tablets, Honeycomb and Galaxy Tab.

Support

There is a support forum for discussion, bugs and features requests where the developer is active.

Price

Free for the Lite version and £1.85 for premium version.

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About Tom Philip

Freelance .NET/Android/Boxee/Rails developer. This week I am mostly loving Lean Startup. It’s got me thinking differently and helping me succeed with my products.

3 Comments + Add Comment

  • You have a mistake in your review. The paid version of the program does allow you to order tasks by dragging them (though lite version does not have this feature). To do it, go into a list of tasks, click 3rd button (Sorting, 3 horizontal lines) in the toolbar on the bottom and check the box “Drag and drop to sort”. When you enable this, you can longtap any task and you will see drag buttons appear on the right of all tasks.

    I have a question: how to hide future tasks in a project? I tried to use filters but could not do it.

  • I read on the official forum of the program that hiding future tasks is not possible now but developers are going to implement it.

  • It was probably correct at the time of going to press ;) People will see your comments, so thanks for the updates :)

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