The Good: Quick and nimble with an elegant UI. Fine grained control over repeating tasks.
The Bad: Lacks feature parity on the various platforms and has some unintuitive gestures and controls.
The Bottom Line: In many aspects, GoodTask offers a better experience when working with Apple’s Reminders. It may well be the ideal blend of simple and minimal while still offering great power for tweaking every minor detail of your task.
Apple bundles a myriad of apps with its operating systems. Some usable, others bearable and then a few which feel painfully inadequate. Reminders — for all its usefulness — falls into the latter. GoodTask however, is determined to fix that.
What is GoodTask
GoodTask is a task list app that syncs with Reminders. It first appeared on the iPad and was a breath of fresh air for anybody using Reminders. With an elegantly minimal UI and whimsical sounds, adding, editing and viewing tasks was no longer a chore.
Since its debut, the developers have continued iterating on the product, introducing a universal binary, a Mac version, a night mode and the ability to also view calendar events (you can’t add or edit events though).
Working With Tasks
Adding tasks to GoodTask is a trivial affair. On the Mac, simply click the + in the lower left or press cmd+N and on iOS, pull down on the task list.
It also attempts to reduce the friction of creating multiple tasks. Pressing cmd+return on the Mac will save the current task and immediately allow you to create another. On iOS, simply tap Add More.
Task entry could be substantially better though. On iOS, adding more details to the task requires that you do so in another screen. On the Mac, things aren’t any better given that you need to click on a small disclosure triangle in order to view the remaining details such as due date, location, URL or notes.
That minor quibble aside, GoodTask doesn’t disappoint when it comes to your task’s details. On iOS the notes field recognises dates, numbers and links, making them actionable and it also offers very fine grained control over repeating tasks.
Powerful control over repeating tasks.
GoodTask is rife with other subtle niceties, such as x-callback-url and the ability to quickly create a task with a due date by tapping and holding on the desired date (on the Mac, press shift+cmd+N). Unfortunately, not all of these features are entirely intuitive and I highly recommend you read the FAQ in the app’s settings screen.
Viewing Tasks
GoodTask shines when it comes to viewing your tasks. It has four distinct views: list, day, week and month view, small indicators beneath dates with due tasks (iOS only) and a new night mode. Add to that the ability to see you calendar entries alongside your tasks and GoodTask becomes a capable and pleasant organisational tool.
For the most part, each view is identical across devices. The notable exception is list view. On the iPhone, swiping left or right will cycle between All, Undated, Recurring and finally each individual list. On the Mac, it simply shows every task grouped by list; on the iPad, the list view is missing entirely.
Week and Month view side by side, as well as both themes.
Not missing from GoodTask however is search. It can search your task’s name and notes and when tapping on a search result, you’re taken to the particular day and the task blinks ever so subtly.
Unfortunately, at the moment search is limited to iOS and even then with disparate implementations. On the iPhone, you need to swipe to a day, week or month other than the current to view the search button, whereas on the iPad it’s readily available.
Issues
One of GoodTask’s biggest drawbacks is its lack of feature parity across devices and platforms (as I’m sure you’ve noticed throughout the review). While not always an easy feat, it’s an important one since it ensures a cohesive experience independent of the device used.
Then there is the issue of sometimes confusing UI and gestures. One such example is the lack of an OK button when adding a task on the Mac. Instead, there is a somewhat understated return button next to the task entry.
Spot the button to submit the task.
While not an issue for most, I take issue with the limited keyboard control GoodTask offers. I can’t use the keyboard to navigate tasks, mark them complete, delete or edit them. as I’ve already mentioned, even when inputting tasks GoodTask is too reliant on the mouse or trackpad.
Finally, I would’ve liked to see some support for batch operations such as deleting, changing lists or even a few details such as priority, due date, etc.
GoodTask: The Verdict
While Reminders isn’t for everybody, those that do use them will surely appreciate all that GoodTask has to offer. While there are few issues I’d like to see fixed, it’s a marked improvement over Apple’s native Reminders app and therefore I wholeheartedly recommend it.
BUY GOODTASK FOR iOS BUY GOODTASK FOR MAC