This post is only about free versions of Any.do and Microsoft To Do
I have been using Any.do for years now and have been compelled to move out. Right choice was Wunderlist – which was bought over by Microsoft – and now shut to allow its Microsoft To Do to take over. I am hoping they are keeping Wunderlist as base and just renaming it to Microsoft To Do.
I am very sure Microsoft To-Do has or going to provide good answers to “problems” I see with Any.do
I am pretty convinced with my experience that anything new that would be added will be a “Premium” feature that would want you to pay
Lack of good scheduler for recurring tasks:
See this is very very important feature for any to-do application. If you can’t schedule it right, the whole idea of reminders fail. And here’s where free version of Any.Do fails.
With free version Any.Do allows tasks to be scheduled daily, weekly, monthly or annually. But not on workdays, not on like 2 days of every week (you have to create two tasks and schedule those separately, but then you will be spending time in managing tasks rather than actually doing those)
Reminders are annoying:
Reminders on mobile are too too annoying. It would even keep hanging, gulping your phone screen when phone is in navigation mode or like chatting; it won’t go until you satisfy it with your response.
Reminder pop-up comes with options which can’t be customised.
Difficulties in Snoozing a Reminder correctly:
Snoozing a reminder needs at least two touches – which is really annoying when you are in middle of something.
And even snoozing with two touches would postpone it to next day 10am which might not really something you wanted.
If you really want to snooze it to time you like it would mean spending sometime with the app with many touches, not in a flash
Need to pay for Integrations:
We need integration with Alexa and similar services – but Any.Do wants you to pay for it to do that – buy premium.
WhatsApp integration – amazing idea – buy premium
Can’t Delete tasks (easily):
There’s no way to delete tasks – you are right, that’s strange but it’s true. Rather than giving a button inside take to delete the task, what Any.Do wants is to mark it complete, and hit “clear my completed tasks” from settings.
Clear Completed Tasks – this clears all completed tasks and doesn’t let you choose and remove that particular tasks that you wanted to delete
Forget about Deleting recurring tasks (easily):
In fact, deleting a recurring task is even more annoying. First delete all recurrences, and then mark the tasks as done, and then hit clear completed tasks from Settings. Again, that clears, removes all completed tasks and not the only one you wanted to remove.
Does Microsoft To-Do have solutions to these? Yes
Most features are for free
New features getting added for free versions too
Just added “Weekdays” option for scheduling recurring tasks
Reminders and Snozzing are in very basic shape right now but looking at how the developers are responding to feature suggestions, pretty sure it’s to turn out good
Integrations – frankly, haven’t tried those yet – seems not available natively
Oh, sure, there’s delete button for tasks – and for recurring tasks too!
