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Ask HN: What Makes a Great To-Do App? Your Ideas?
What makes a great to-do app? Is it about features or a whole new way of using it? Could a different mindset be the key? Maybe a simple design?
I've tried all the famous apps: todoist, basecamp, linear, trello, asana, obsidian, and even github. But something feels missing. The process of researching, note-taking, logging, tracking, and completing tasks—it's not quite right.
Imagine you're making a to-do app from scratch. What would you focus on? What new ways of thinking or methods would you bring in? What could you leave out?
- wryoak 3y agoI was working on a todo app for Android over a decade ago and it was very simple. The only gimmick was that it tried to replicate the satisfaction of crossing off a to do list item with pen and paper. Not checking it as done, clicking anticlimactically on a bubble next to the name, but running a line through it with extreme prejudice and satisfaction. Specifically, you were supposed to run your finger across it and it would be sliced in half with haptic and audio feedback. Because that’s the point of to do lists: to empty them. And giving a satisfying experience of completing an item seemed to me the best way to encourage that. I never finished it. I stick with pen and paper these days because it’s my opinion that a to do list should not survive the day it is written. Anything longer lived is not a to do list, but a list of goals or obligations. A slip of paper with hand scrawled tasks, easily lost, reinforces that. It’s funny to me, in fact, that I can write out a todo list faster than I can type (via phone keyboard) or dictate it. Modern tech is still so slow. Anyway, anyone please feel free to steal the gimmick if it fits into your project. I’m sure some app out there already has.
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- Leftium 3y agoMy dream to-do app is a combination of some novel features plus the best ideas from other apps (TaskPaper, Notational Velocity, Drafts app, SimpleNote, etc...) The overall concept is tasks, notes, and bookmarks are integrated together. As I do a task, I often want to take notes on that task. Some bookmarks can be tasks to read/share later. - Plaintext-based interaction + graphical views (markdown, calendar/timeline, etc...) - TaskPaper-style tags like @due(2023-10-10) - Drafts-style actions on text - Multiplatform/sync like SimpleNote The novel features of my to-do app: - Priority is just the due-date: I usually want to work first on tasks that are due earlier. - Larger tasks are broken down into sub-tasks. Those sub-tasks can have earlier due dates, bumping up the "effective priority." - "Effective Priority" is a dynamic tag: its value is based on the first of the parent's or children's due-dates. I've been making prototypes of subsets of the features, like: - https://multi-launch.leftium.com/ https://multi-launch.leftium.com/ - https://instant.leftium.com/ https://instant.leftium.com/ - https://todo-taskpaper.leftium.com/ https://todo-taskpaper.leftium.com/ - https://plaintext-press.leftium.com/https://www.dropbox.com/s/1g5qrmfinno8a5j/patagonia.taskpaper https://plaintext-press.leftium.com/https://www.dropbox.com/... - https://github.com/Leftium/todo.html https://github.com/Leftium/todo.html
- purplecats 3y agoit may be of interest to you that TaskPaper was recent open-sourced to an extent
- spikey_sanju 3y agoYour suggested tasks, notes, and bookmarks are much needed, similar to features in apps like Trello, Todoist, Notion, etc. Combining plain-text interaction with graphical views is cool. Multiplatform sync is a plus. However, many of these features already exist in some apps. In 2023, it's surprising that there's no app yet to plan our day based on priority and thought process, aided by AI and more. Seems like AGI is still far off.