What's New?

Reclaim your schedule with task durations: Aug 30

Your to-do list can be infinite. Your time…not so much. By popular demand, we’re bringing task durations to Todoist to help you take back control over your schedule and craft a realistic plan for each day. 

As one Todoister put it when she requested this feature:

“I am an intern at a law firm, a social activist, a student and, of course, I have many other duties in my life. To manage all that, I need to be able to control how much time I spend on each of my tasks in Todoist.”

By setting the time you’ll start a task and how long it will take, you’ll know exactly what will fit in your schedule — and what will just have to wait for another day. 

Then, see your plan neatly blocked out in your calendar app of choice alongside your other commitments. 

Here’s the nitty gritty on how to use task durations:

• When you click or tap on Time, you can now set the start time and assign a duration to your task.
• You can also add a task’s duration via Todoist’s signature smart Quick Add by typing “for” (e.g., “Team meeting today 4pm for 45min” or “Write first draft 9am for 2 hours 30 minutes”).
• If you’ve connected your Todoist to a calendar app, the task duration will sync to your calendar automatically (and, on Google Calendar, vice versa with 2-way sync so you can update your tasks from your calendar). More about using Todoist with your calendar.

Want to see it in action? Take a look at a short demo from Stijn, our product designer from the Netherlands:

A big thank you to everyone who wrote in to explain what you were missing in Todoist and what you wanted these features to help you accomplish. This update is a first step towards bringing more powerful planning tools to your Todoist… 👀

Take task durations for a spin and let us know what you think.

 

Turn off task goal celebrations: Aug 15

“For the love of god let me hide/disable the new cutesy pop up congratulating me on finishing some arbitrary number of tasks.” 

We’ve heard similar sentiments from quite a few Todoisters that the celebration pop-ups when you complete your daily/weekly task goals are a bit too disruptive. Particularly on mobile.

We’re happy to report you can now turn off these pop-ups entirely from the Productivity tab in your Settings. 🙇

 

Multi-task drag & drop: Aug 3

Re-organizing your tasks just got a lot faster and much more intuitive with revamped drag & drop on Todoist's web and desktop apps. You can now:

• Select and reorder multiple tasks within a project or section at the same time. 
• Create sub-tasks in bulk by dragging them from left to right to adjust their indent level (or drop sub-tasks on top of their current parent task to turn them into regular tasks).
• Move multiple tasks to a different project by dragging them to the left sidebar.
• Know where you drop. We’ve added better visual indicators, so you know where exactly your tasks will land when dragging and dropping.
• Click and hold anywhere on a task to drag it. No need to find the little grey “handle” to the left of the task.
• Plus, reordering projects in the sidebar is now faster and smoother.

Want to see the new drag & drop in action? Take a look at this quick demo from Craig, our frontend developer from Vancouver, Canada, who single-handedly developed this feature: 

Special character support for project, section, and label names: July 11

Previously, when you added special characters to the names of projects, sections, and labels, Todoist replaced them with an underscore. So your “Work @home” project would turn into “Work__home” project.

While many thought this was a pesky bug, it was actually because of technical limitations. (Long story short: characters like @ / # " ( ) | & , ! interfered with the functioning of Quick Add, search, and filters). 

But now, thanks to some under-the-hood adjustments, these restrictions are a thing of the past. So you're free to use all special characters in naming your projects, sections, and labels (with the exception of white space at the beginning or end of a name, which will be automatically trimmed).

Looking for creative names to personalize your to-do list? Here are some new personal favorites from Todoisters:

Add reminders fast with the new Quick Add shortcut “!”: Jul 5

Save yourself several clicks by typing “!” in the task field to add a reminder (or several) to your time-sensitive to-do’s.

Typing “!” — or tapping Reminders on mobile — will now pull up a quick list of suggested reminder times. Choose from the list, or keep typing your own.

Some example formats you can now use to set a reminder:

• !Mon 9am = Monday at 9 AM
• !2h30m = 2 hours and 30 minutes from now
• !30min before (or “!30mb” for short) = 30 minutes before your task is due (only works if your task has a due time)
• !later = 4 hours from now
• !tomorrow = the next day at 9 AM
• !next week = Monday at 9 AM (unless you’ve changed the default for “next week” in your Settings)

Go to our help center for a full list of Quick Add shortcuts for reminders in case you’re curious.

A few other design updates to make setting reminders easier: Jul 5

While we were adding the reminder shortcut, we made a few other design updates to make the whole reminder experience clearer, faster, and more intuitive:

• The new menu on web/desktop allows for smoother date and time picking and the option to set a reminder for an amount of time before your task is due.

• Scheduled automatic reminders will now appear in your task details as soon as you add a due time (if you have automatic reminders turned on in Settings).

• Location reminders have been moved to a separate label for improved visibility. And, for even faster access, you can now place them front and center by customizing your Quick Add.

• An updated design on iOS with bigger map and adjustable radius for more precise location-setting for reminders.

• Enjoy a seamless experience across all platforms now that reminders on Android have been redesigned to look just as sleek as the rest.

 

Create custom filters using natural language with Filter Assist: Jun 30

We’re the first to admit that figuring out the right query for your filter view can be a bit … complicated.

That’s why we set out to overhaul and vastly simplify creating a filter (with a little help from our AI overlords friends 🤖).

Before, you had to puzzle out a filter query that looked like this:

assigned to: me & due before: next month & #Work

Now, you can simply describe the filter you want using natural language, like this:

“all tasks that are assigned to me for this month in my Work project.”

The new, AI-powered Filter Assist will generate the filter query for you to add directly to your Todoist.

Want to see it in action? Take a look at a short demo from our founder, Amir:

Filter Assist is currently only available in English and Spanish. Learn more about Filter Assist at the help center.

 

Psst … Working on Reminders: Apr 25 🤫

Reminders are getting some much-needed love. Keep an eye out for a few exciting improvements coming very soon …

Of course, this is all still very hush-hush (well, most of it!), but we can tell you that reminders will look better and work even better real soon.

In the meantime, here are some smaller updates on reminders designed to help you remember the right tasks, at the right time, at the right place.

Pin reminders on Android 📌

Android users will be happy to hear that they now have the ability to “pin” reminders to their device’s notification panel. Accidentally dismissing a reminder will be a thing of the past. Head to your Settings and turn the Pin reminders toggle on to ensure crucial reminders will grab your attention when you need them.

More snooze options on iOS 💤

Things change, and sometimes a timely reminder is not what you need right now. On iOS, you now have more snooze options when you receive a reminder. To snooze a reminder, long press the notification on your device. Next to your default time for snoozing reminders, you can choose to snooze a reminder for 3 hours or even until 9 AM on the next day. Simply tap the desired snooze option, and get back to what you were working on in the first place.

Improved reminder visualization (iOS) ✨

We’ve updated the design of reminder notifications on iOS, similar to what they already look like on Android. Now, the task name is placed front and center and the notification includes the reminder time. It’ll make interpreting reminders at a glance easier, so you don’t lose time deciphering them. Small change, big improvement!

Why am I not receiving reminders? 🤔

Figuring out how to set up your device to receive reminders can be tricky, so it’s no surprise that our number one frequently asked question is: “Why am I not receiving reminders?” We’ve got you covered with an updated Settings tab, in-app directions, and a new troubleshooting guide to help you set up your device for reminders.

 

Focus on to-do, not overdue: Mar 31

We’ve all had our fair share of overdue tasks staring us in the face. They can be quite daunting, especially when they take over your view of the day as they pile up to panic-inducing levels. Here’s a quick fix: you can now collapse the Overdue section on your desktop or browser. 🤩

Perfect for whenever you feel overwhelmed or just need to focus on Today before dealing with those pesky or less important tasks.

The collapsible Overdue section is available in the Today and Upcoming view. Just make sure you’ve switched to list view and don’t have any grouping enabled.

So, go ahead and hide them for a moment of clarity, but don’t forget to tackle those tasks tomorrow, later in the week, or … someday, maybe. 🗓️

In other news, spring cleaning has started, and we’ve squashed a group of bugs making everything feel fresh and clean again. 🧹 ✨

 

Will you help shape Todoist’s future of collaboration?✨

Do you regularly collaborate with others and believe that working together should be faster, simpler, and more joyful? Then you might be the perfect candidate to participate in our newest private beta. Sign up to be one of the first to test a brand new way of collaborating inside Todoist (before we release it to everyone else!).

→ Request access here

 

Bye-bye bugs: Feb 8

It’s a new year and we’re off to a good start with a nice list of pesky bugs we got rid of. Also, some tuning and polishing have made everything a little better than before.

Customize Quick Add available on all platforms

With Quick Add customization now available on all devices, you can make Quick Add work even quicker for you. Personalize your Quick Add by choosing which task actions you want to display and in what order. Even better, your settings will automatically sync across all platforms.

For example, if your workflow includes regularly assigning tasks to your team members, you can choose to add Assignees to your Task Action list. Do you work with an intricate labeling system? Put it front and center so it’s the first thing you can add to your task. Think of this feature as a way to simplify and tailor your Quick Add to the way you work best.

 

Finish the year strong 💪: Dec 15

As the year draws to a close, we’ve been working hard to release some exciting features to help you end the year focused and organized with Todoist.

A better look at your week 🗓️

Calm and in control 🧘‍♀️. That’s how you’ll feel when looking at boards in the Upcoming view. Available on web and desktop, get a quick overview of your weekly schedule and plan your days ahead. When you enable boards view in the Upcoming view, every day of the week is a dedicated section, with your tasks shown as cards underneath. Drag and drop your tasks between days for superquick rescheduling and use the shortcuts shift + → and shift + ← to navigate to the next and previous weeks.

Plan your day with Boards in Today view

It is now possible to enable boards in the Today view. Exciting news for those looking for an option to “Kanban” their day! Let’s say you have different labels for e.g., phone calls, emails, work tasks, and personal tasks. You can now select Group by Label from the sorting options. Each label will be displayed as a separate column with its tasks shown as cards — a quick and easy way to get a bird’s-eye view of today’s workload.

Formatting made easy ⌨️

Make your task stand out in bold, highlight text in italics, or add handy links to your text. Formatting has never been easier with our new WYSIWYG editor (What You See Is What You Get. Get it? 🤭). All you have to do is highlight a piece of text, then select formatting options from the editor menu that appears. And a special note for the “We ❤️ Markdown” crew: tech-savvy folks can still paste Markdown or type its syntax into Todoist to convert the text into Rich Text.

Formatting text with the WYSIWYG editor is only available on the web and desktop, but any formatted text will appear as such across all platforms.

Complete and start over 🔁

Due to popular demand, you can now reset your sub-tasks whenever you complete the recurring parent task they belong to. Perfect for those daily routines and habit tracking. Go to the task menu (or long press the task’s circle on mobile) to choose how you want to complete a specific recurring parent task. You can also set the default behavior for completing recurring tasks with sub-tasks in your settings. Learn more.

 

Boost your productivity with 5 brand-new extensions: Nov 22

We are very excited to introduce six new extensions, designed to amplify Todoist with powerful functionalities that help boost your productivity! Start tracking your habits, create your very own templates, or enjoy the magic of AI to help you reach your goals.

→ Browse all of the new extensions here.

Habit Tracker (desktop and web only) → Add extension

With the new Habit Tracker extension, you can finally start tracking (and celebrating!) your recurring tasks’ completion streak (in the task description) and completion history (in the comments). 

To use the Habit Tracker extension:

1. Click on any task to open the task view, and click on the three dots icon in the top-right corner to open the task menu.
2. Select Track habit.
3. Don’t forget to share your feedback!

Make sure to complete your recurring task each day. As any recurring task that becomes overdue at the end of the day, will cause your streak to reset.

Export to Google Sheets (desktop and web only) → Add extension

Documenting and reporting on work in progress and completed work just became a whole lot easier with the new Export to Google Sheets extension.

To use the Export to Google Sheets extension:

1. In any Todoist project, click on the three dots icon in the top-right to open the project menu.
2. Select Export to Google Sheets. 
3. Use the checkboxes to select which task fields (including due date, priority, creation date, description, section, assignee) you want to export.
4. Click on Export.
5. Don’t forget to share your feedback!

Templates (desktop and web only) → Add extension

The new Templates extension allows you to browse, search, and import templates directly from within Todoist. On top of that, you can use the Templates extension to import one of your existing projects as a template for a new project. 

To use the Templates extension to import from a template:

1. In any Todoist project, click on the three dots icon in the top-right to open the project menu.
2. Click Templates.
3. Select Import from template. 
4. In the modal that opens, use the search bar to search for a specific template or scroll down to browse the list of templates. Select the template you want to import.
5. Click Import Template.
6. Don’t forget to share your feedback!

To use the Templates extension to import from a project:

1. In any Todoist project, click on the three dots icon in the top-right to open the project menu.
2. Click Templates.
3. Select Import from project. 
4. In the modal that opens, select the project you want to import.
5. Click on Import Project as Template.
6. Don’t forget to share your feedback!

Task Helper (desktop and web only) → Add extension

The Task Helper extension offers three automated task actions, all designed to speed up your work and save you from having to perform some of the following tedious manual actions over and over again. After adding the extension, you'll find these helpers in the task menu:

• Turn a task into an uncompletable task
• Apply parent task’s attributes to all sub-tasks
• Create a follow-up task on task completion 

To use the Task Helper extension:

1. Click the three dots icon that appears on the right side of your task when you hover over it. Or alternatively, click on any task to open the task view, and click on the three dots icon in the top-right corner to open the task menu. 
2. Click Task Helper.
3. Select one of the automated task actions.
4. Don’t forget to share your feedback!

Conversation Starters (desktop and web only) → Add extension

With the new Conversation Starters extension, awkward silences during your 1-on-1s will become a thing of the past. Simply trigger the extension, and 5 conversation starters to help structure your meeting agenda will automatically be added to your Todoist project.

To use the Conversation Starters extension:

1. In any Todoist project, click on the three dots icon in the top-right to open the project menu.
2. Select Add conversation starters. 
3. Don’t forget to share your feedback!

🗄️ Archived projects have moved: Nov 9

Ah, the satisfaction of finishing a project and moving it to your archive. Done, never to be seen again. 👋 Unless … when you do want to see it again. We may have alarmed some of you who were looking for your archived projects in the last couple of days. Sorry about that. We have moved archived projects for better access, allowing you to browse through your archive with more ease. To access your archived projects, click the Projects header in the sidebar and select Archived. Mobile users will be happy to know that archived projects can now also be accessed on mobile. To visit the archive on mobile, scroll down the projects lists and select Manage projects.

Also, we’ve been doing some fall maintenance: sweeping leaves 🍂 and removing bugs 🐛 to keep things working as they should be.

 

Headings for Mobile: Oct 12 📱

Our team has been busy with some app polishing ✨ and minor improvements to keep everything running smoothly. Also, we’ve successfully squashed a group of pesky little bugs. Bye-bye, bugs! 🐛

Heading formatting — now also on iOS and Android!

There’s nothing like a heading to add a bit of structure to your writing. So mobile app users will be happy to hear that they can now also stylize text with headings in task descriptions and comments.

Create a heading by adding # in front of a word or phrase. The amount of # corresponds to the heading level. For example, to create a level two heading, use two number signs (e.g., ## Your Header).

 

iOS 16 Lock Screen: Sept 21 👀

 

Announcing iOS 16 lock screen widgets! We couldn’t let a major update happen for our iOS folks without giving you something new to play with. You can now add tasks, check your goals and see what’s on your list for today, all from the fancy new iOS 16 lock screen. 🔒

In other news, we’ve also been powering through some bug fixes. Because checking things off our to-do list is what we do best. 🎯

Little Tweaks to Keep Todoist Sleek 😎: Sept 6

We’re always tackling the big stuff here at Todoist, but the little tweaks and polishes need tending to as well. Here’s a bundle of improvements and bug fixes to give you a peek 👀 into what’s been crossed off the team’s to-do list.

Shortcut Update: Aug 11

Indenting sub-tasks just got super speedy! While editing your task, use the keyboard shortcut ⌘/Ctrl + ] to indent and ⌘/Ctrl + [ to unindent. Full sub-task control at your fingertips. 🚀

Freshened Up: July 28 🧽

A few bug fixes here, some little updates there, and your Todoist is back to looking fresh and feeling fine.

 

Back By Popular Demand: July 14

We thought it was the result of a bug, but you told us it was actually a handy feature. So, we’re now supporting every! x hour task recurrence!

Perfect if you want a task to recur a set amount of hours from when it was last completed (e.g., taking medication, walking the dog, checking work emails, etc). Currently available on the web app and iOS, with Android following soon.