Latest news with #GoogleTasks
Android Authority
08-07-2025
- Android Authority
I gave Google Tasks another shot — and remembered why I left
Andy Walker / Android Authority I'm not a calendar person. My day sliced into blue and yellow chunks down to the last minute — even telling me when to eat or take a break — isn't the kind of rigidity I can live with. That's far too structured for me. I instead swear by a hotchpotch system of Post-it notes, the good-old paper and pen, and most importantly, my task managing app — TickTick. TickTick is where all my personal and work tasks live, giving me a clear view of what needs to be done, whether it's for the day or the week. It's packed with features to the brim and has been my go-to for ages now. Google Tasks is to task managers what Google Keep is to note-takers. But every now and then, Google tweaks something in its Tasks app, and I get tempted to give it another try. I've had these urges several times over the past few years — and each time, I've come back annoyed by the app and frustrated that I still can't complete my productivity stack with just Google apps. My latest attempt with Google Tasks, though, has convinced me I need to suppress my urges more deftly. What's your go-to app for managing tasks or reminders? 0 votes Whatever came preinstalled on my phone NaN % I'm a TickTick fan too! NaN % I use something else (comment below) NaN % What app? I stick to pen and paper! NaN % How basic can a tool be? Andy Walker / Android Authority Ask Google Tasks. No seriously. Google Tasks is to task managers what Google Keep is to note-takers — it gets the basics right, and it's really well-made for that. But ask it to do just a little bit more, and it falls flat. Even after all these years, it feels like Google is offering the absolute bare minimum it needs to call this a task manager. You can add tasks, set timed reminders, set repeat frequencies, sort them into custom lists, and star the important ones. That's… pretty much the whole app. This refreshed hands-on of mine should ideally end right here. But coming from something as packed as TickTick, I've got a loooong list of things I missed — or, to put it more constructively, things Google still needs to add. You can add tasks, set timed reminders, set repeat frequencies, sort them into custom lists, and star the important ones. That's... pretty much the whole app. I just want the essentials package TickTick has truly spoiled me. It's got everything you could ask for — and then some. But for Google Tasks to be a decent alternative, it doesn't need to match TickTick feature for feature. It just needs to give users better control over their tasks and time. For example, while Google has improved its repeat frequency options since I last used Tasks, it still doesn't allow for reminders on the first or last workday of the month. That might sound like a small thing, but I rely on it to send out invoices, making it hard to live without. Then there's the matter of priority. Right now, all you can do is star a task. That's fine if your list is short, but once you go over a dozen tasks, it's not quite enough. Surely, calling your bank at their suggested time deserves more weight than remembering to cancel your Apple Music trial — yet both just sit there, equally ranked. What still surprises me most is the lack of sharing. This is Google — the company that basically wrote the book on collaborative tools inside Drive. And yet, there's no way to share tasks or lists with someone else on Google Tasks. I frequently share lists with friends and teammates on TickTick, and it's baffling that this simply isn't an option with Google. There's also no location-based reminders — something Google Keep has had forever. Add to that the lack of a desktop app, having to open a specific browser profile just to see my tasks, and no Mac widgets — and the friction just keeps adding up. And the list goes on and on. TickTick is the task manager to beat And at this point, I genuinely think Google should just copy it. Megan Ellis / Android Authority TickTick feels almost magical with its in-line natural language parsing. Type 'Pick up groceries on Friday at 6 PM,' and it automatically files it under the right day and time. It supports markdown too — so you can tag with #, assign lists with ~, and assign priorities with !. You can add images, attachments, and notes to your tasks. Google already lets you set up reminders in your natural language using Assistant and Gemini — it just forgot to bring them over to Tasks. The subtask feature in TickTick is something I use a lot. You can add a checklist within a task, see a satisfying little progress bar, and it marks the whole thing complete only when every item is ticked off. It's perfect for structured to-dos and also lets you add bulleted notes for a quick overview. I also recently moved from TickTick's standard list view to its kanban-style board — and it's been a game-changer. Everything feels more spacious, and I'm less overwhelmed by all my unticked tasks. And TickTick's desktop app is a real blessing. I can add tasks without getting distracted by Instagram DMs. Everything I just mentioned is part of TickTick's free plan. I haven't found another task manager that matches it on so many fronts. If you're not tied to an ecosystem of apps, it helpfully plugs into literally everything: Slack, Outlook, Alexa, IFTTT, Google Voice, Assistant — you name it. And the best part? Everything I just mentioned is part of TickTick's free plan. I haven't found another task manager that matches it on so many fronts. Google can, and Google should Andy Walker / Android Authority This may read like an emotional monologue from a dramedy that earns it applause, but really, Google has the talent and resources to make Tasks great. It could easily bake in the collaboration magic of Docs and add location- and weekday-based reminder options. With just a few smart updates, Google Tasks could go from a bare-bones product to the default task manager every Android user just ends up using, like Gmail or Keep. I get that not everyone actually wants or needs this level of control. And sure, people like me already have alternatives. But it's always better to have the option and not need it than the other way around. And I'm not asking this of a tiny startup scraping by on a subscription model — I'm asking this of a multi-billion-dollar company that's already pouring resources into Gemini and AI. Why not bring some of that goodness into an essential product like Tasks, too? If Tasks wants to be part of my productivity stack, it's going to have to do a little more. That day, for now, feels far off.
Tom's Guide
04-07-2025
- Tom's Guide
I put an iPhone, Samsung Galaxy and Google Pixel through a 6-round AI assistant face-off — and here's the winner
For those of us without a secretary, PA or underpaid intern to take care of research and admin on our behalf, the best we've got is the digital assistant on our smartphones. And with the ability to use generative AI and more personal data, these assistants can do way more than they could even just a couple of years ago. With Apple, Samsung and Google all heavily promoting their latest phones with the enhanced intelligence of their AI tools, it's had us questioning who has the most capable digital assistant as we hit the halfway point of 2025. Is the reinvented Siri and Apple Intelligence powerful enough to take on Google and Gemini? And where does Samsung's blend of Gemini and its proprietary Galaxy AI tools fit into all of this? That's what the following comparisons hope to answer. Using the same prompts, covering a number of common actions you may want to do on a daily basis, we'll show you which phone and which AI assistant does the best job of automating things and hopefully making your life easier. A simple prompt to start with: make a reminder so I don't forget to grab some groceries later on. It's something digital assistants were capable of even before generative AI came in, so we shouldn't see any of the phones struggle here. To nobody's surprise, the iPhone, Galaxy and Pixel are all able to do this easily. There are however some interesting limitations to note. For instance, Siri was only able to place the reminder in Apple's own Reminders app, not my usual TickTick app, nor Google Keep, nor even Apple Notes. Not a problem per se, but unfortunate if you were hoping to make Siri work with non-Apple apps. Gemini on the Pixel set up the reminder in Google Tasks, an app which any Google Account owner can use, but one which I didn't have downloaded on my phone. Tapping the reminder after setting it opens Tasks in a Chrome tab, which would be a fair compromise if Gemini had then actually set up a task as commanded. So make sure you download the apps you need before trying to get Gemini to take care of important reminders for you. It's a similar story on the Galaxy, except you can ask Gemini to place the reminder in either Google Tasks or Samsung Reminder. It can even transfer tasks between the two, albeit slightly clunkily by deleting one and recreating the same text and alert time in the other. Get instant access to breaking news, the hottest reviews, great deals and helpful tips. Fortunately, unlike the Pixel, Samsung Reminder is automatically installed on the Galaxy S25 Ultra, meaning no weird Chrome shenanigans like on the Pixel. Winner: Galaxy S25 Ultra A good AI assistant should be able to accurately identify things on-screen or through your camera lens. So I opened up an image of the Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge on each phone, and then asked what device I was looking at. On the Galaxy and Pixel, the optimal way to do this is to call up Circle to Search and draw around the item you're interested in. And sure enough, with a tap and a swirl of your finger, Circle to Search was able to ID the phone, providing some basic detail and lots of matching images. I did try to use Gemini and a screenshot on the Samsung to ID the phone as well. This didn't go well, with the chatbot declaring the phone was in fact a flash drive. Siri needed to tag in ChatGPT to find an answer to my question. This is normally effective, but relying on an alternative service when you could simply have opened up ChatGPT yourself is a bit of a cop-out. But unfortunately for the iPhone, the short response and limited context of the image lead Siri to tell me it's a different Samsung phone. Winner: Galaxy S25 Ultra/Pixel 9 Pro XL Knowing oneself is perhaps the hardest thing, including for smartphone assistants. So we checked which of our testing phones could tell us how to change the brightness of the device's screen, or even take care of it for us. The only one that was able to complete the task in full was, surprisingly, the iPhone. While it doesn't come across in the screengrab, my brightness was on about 50% before asking, and 75% afterwards, with Siri also popping up a slider so I could adjust things more precisely myself. The Galaxy and the Pixel both gave the same response — that Gemini couldn't help me directly, but could provide a link to the relevant Settings page. That's still pretty useful, especially if you wanted full manual control over the brightness, but it's not as full a response as Siri could iPhone 16 Pro Max It's only natural to change your mind sometimes, so I wanted to see how well our candidates would adapt to a command with an update midway through, specifically one about setting a timer. Everyone misreads the cooking time in recipes sometimes. Siri and the Gemini twins both took this in their stride when I updated my request partway through making it. So as an additional test, I tried to see what would happen if I wanted to modify a timer. This showed some interesting differences in capabilities. On the iPhone, Siri deleted the one-hour timer and then started a 30-minute one instead. The Galaxy phone produced an error, perhaps because Gemini doesn't have the means to make a change like this in Samsung's Clock app, only the Google-made one. This seems likely since the Pixel was able to complete the same request in full, updating the one-hour timer so that it still had its original name while running for a different length of time. You could consider this a draw for Apple and Google or a win for the Pixel depending on which outcome you personally prefer for overwriting timers. But either way, Samsung loses here. Winner: Google Pixel 9 Pro/iPhone 16 Pro Max As we reach the end of our comparisons, it's time to see how Apple Intelligence, Galaxy AI and Gemini handle multi-part requests. This is a recently advertised addition to Gemini's capabilities, and could be a powerful time-saver if it works properly. This two-action prompt should give me the date of the next Crystal Palace soccer game (against Liverpool in August at the start of the next Premier League season) and add that to my calendar, ideally my Google one since I use that more, but I would have accepted an Apple Calendar invitation as a compromise from the iPhone. Unfortunately for the iPhone, it failed to recognise that I'm asking it to add a calendar event, not asking about one I already have. When I split the prompt into two, Siri offered up a link to Google Search results, which didn't directly tell me the date of the match, or to a ChatGPT response, which offered me the date of Palace's last game, not the next one. Disappointing all around. This works flawlessly on the Galaxy S25 Ultra and Pixel 9 Pro XL, thank to Gemini's Cross-App Actions capability. Both parse the command in one go, reading out the date to me and setting up a Google Calendar event. Winner: Galaxy S25 Ultra/Pixel 9 Pro XL I've saved the most complicated task for last, one that requires finding and passing information between at least three different apps. This took a couple of tries for all three phones, and none of them did exactly as I asked. But in the end, there was a clear winner. The iPhone only offered a ChatGPT response to the question. With the help of the third-party AI, Siri was the only assistant to ask what kind of gluten-free meal I wanted (I picked dinner to match the others). It then provided a transcribed recipe and method, but admitted it couldn't make a note or message with this information. It also didn't provide a link to the source of the recipe, which is a rough deal for whoever came up with it, but an unfortunately consistent problem with all AI chatbots. The Pixel initially only tried to send a link to my work number, rather than creating a note as well. When I asked it to add a Google Keep note before sending the message, it was not able to do so. Breaking the tasks down into two separate prompts eventually got me the required result. It was the Samsung that got the closest, setting up a Google Keep note (after asking if I wanted a Keep or Samsung Notes note) and a message to my work number with a recipe link. My only complaint was that the link that Gemini used in this instance was to the Gemini conversation, rather than to the website itself. The message link was to the actual recipe, which is more important for sharing purposes. Winner: Galaxy S25 Ultra I began my testing assuming that Siri was going to come in dead last in this comparison, with Samsung and Google, both using the same underlying Gemini chatbot, would be joint winners. But as we've found, things are more complicated. Siri is not great at dealing with multi-part commands, and is obviously still tied firmly into Apple's app ecosystem. However, it was just as competent at understanding my more complicated queries as Gemini was on the other two phones, even if it couldn't always deliver or had to run to ChatGPT for help. Gemini, be it on a Pixel or a Galaxy, is definitely the better AI assistant, with the Galaxy version perhaps slightly better overall due to it offering support for Samsung apps as well as Google ones. It also seemed to understand my multi-part queries better too, although that could be down to luck of the draw with the way Gemini happened to understand my queries at a given moment.
Android Authority
27-05-2025
- Business
- Android Authority
These are the 6 Google apps I always install on a new Samsung phone
Ryan Haines / Android Authority Apps that come preloaded on your smartphone can be a touchy subject. An app I use every day and I'm glad to see on my phone out of the box could be considered bloatware by someone who doesn't use it. Naturally, there are numerous Samsung apps on a Samsung phone, but you'll find Google apps like Chrome, Gmail, and YouTube pre-installed, too, among a few others. However, plenty of other Google apps are worth using, and these are the ones I download first on my Samsung phone. Before we begin, a brief disclaimer: Apps pre-installed on Samsung phones vary based on model and region, so while none of these came preloaded on my Galaxy S24 Ultra or Galaxy S25 in the UK, one or two might already be on your phone in your country. Google Tasks Zac Kew-Denniss / Android Authority I use Tick Tick Premium for most of my task needs, but if you don't want to pay for or use something as involved and only need a simple task app, Google Tasks should be the one for you. Samsung's Reminders app is good, but it can only sync to non-Samsung devices via Microsoft To Do, and that synchronization isn't as instant as I'd like. So, Google Tasks is the perfect app for me that works on the web, Android, and iOS and costs nothing. Even though I'm a Tick Tick user, I still keep Google Tasks installed for its Assistant/Gemini and voice command integration, something Tick Tick currently lacks. If I'm driving with Android Auto or have my hands full and need to set a reminder via my Nest speakers, those simple items can be added to my Google Tasks account with 'Hey Google, remind me to …' Google Wallet Zac Kew-Denniss / Android Authority Galaxy devices come with Samsung Wallet pre-installed. The app is fine, but many banks and loyalty programs don't support it, and I find the overall experience more clunky than Google's alternative, which is more widely supported. In fact, I can't think of any banks, at least in the UK, that don't support Google Wallet. Samsung Wallet also insists on adding a swipe target on the bottom of the home and lock screens, which I always activate by mistake when I'm trying to open the recent apps screen. Turning that off (or uninstalling Samsung Wallet entirely) and switching to Google Wallet makes the overall experience smoother and less frustrating. Google Calendar I enjoy Samsung's Calendar app quite a lot, but I still use Google Calendar for certain things, and you might prefer it, too. For starters, it works well with Google Tasks, showing them in your calendar and providing a shortcut to make reminders without leaving the app. If Google Tasks is your go-to, then Calendar should be too. Outside of Tasks, Calendar integrates better with third-party calendar accounts than Samsung's app, at least in my experience. I use it to integrate my due dates at work and shared calendars with my family group. Another bonus is that Google adds some delightful design flourishes, like the illustrations at the top of events. Gboard Zac Kew-Denniss / Android Authority If you only take one of these recommendations, please let it be this one. Even I, who usually advocates for Samsung apps being better than most people think, admit that Samsung's keyboard is trash. Whenever I see a post online about an iPhone user switching to a Samsung phone for the first time, one of the biggest complaints I see is that they can't stand the keyboard. Gboard is the best keyboard, and downloading it on your Samsung phone will make the phone easier to use and the entire experience less exasperating. The only exception to that rule used to be foldables, as Samsung's keyboard was the only one that defaulted to a split layout when the phone was open, but now Gboard does this too, and even has full S Pen detection for handwriting input. There's really no reason not to ditch Samsung Keyboard and switch to Gboard. Google Docs Zac Kew-Denniss / Android Authority Google Drive comes pre-installed on most Samsung phones, but Docs doesn't. I know we don't all handle documents on our phones regularly, but most of us do at some point, and I'd rather have it ready for when I do need it than have to rush to install it when required. The beauty of Google Docs is its ability to handle almost any document format, like those used in Microsoft Office, which other apps can struggle with. Combine that with the simple and quick cloud sync through Google Drive, robust editing features, and plenty of options for sharing and collaborating in documents, and Google Docs is a must-have app for me. Google Keep Zac Kew-Denniss / Android Authority Google Keep is the best note-taking app and an essential for any smartphone. The key to its success is its simplicity. It's easy to create notes and lists, attach media or links, categorize with colors and categories, and pin the important notes to the top. Plus, it recently got better formatting with headers, bold, italics, and underlining. Another reason Keep is my notes app of choice is how quickly it syncs between devices. Keep is available on Android, iOS, and via the web, and it takes seconds for a note to sync via your Google account. There are other note apps with cloud sync, but I haven't found one as seamless and simple as Google Keep. Among the plethora of Google apps available, these are the ones I use most. Gboard makes any Samsung phone feel a million times more usable, Tasks is a simple way to stay organized, and Wallet is the superior way to pay. Is there a Google app you can't live without? Let me know below.
