Older folks will tell you about the “good old days” when to-do lists were written down on notepads or notebooks.
Technology has brought us a long way since then. While the basic idea remains, your to-do list is likely now an app on your phone, your tablet, your computer, or all three.
Two of the better-known tools for making to-do lists are Todoist and Apple Reminders. If you’re deciding between the two, this article will help you decide which is a better fit for your needs.
We cover the pros and cons and explain when each app is useful. We also share a third option for anyone who wants to tackle their to-do list and become 137% more productive.
What do you need from a to-do list app?
Let's face it — we all want a straightforward, easy-to-use app that helps us get stuff done. But figuring out the best software for streamlining your time takes some effort.
Most task managers and to-do apps offer task creation and assignment, deadline tracking, progress monitoring, task prioritization, and file sharing, at the very least.
Key features
Let’s look at the details of what you should expect from your app:
- Ease of use. Try to avoid task managers and to-do list apps with a steep learning curve. You want to be able to get up and running quickly — creating, assigning, and tracking your daily tasks with minimal fuss.
- Organization. The point of using a task manager is to become more organized. The tool you choose should be flexible, letting you customize task attributes, labels, and categories.
- Collaboration features. Most of us work in teams these days, which makes collaborative task management and seamless communication critical features.
- Integration capabilities. The days of standalone software are long gone. The tool you choose should offer seamless integration with your existing tech infrastructure.
- Task prioritization and due dates. For effective task management, you need to be able to prioritize tasks, set deadlines, and have reminders sent to your team automatically. You may also need the ability to handle task dependencies for complex projects.
- Mobile support. If you do a lot of work on the run, remember that you can only do it if your task management app is compatible with your device (iOS or Android).
- Reporting and analytics. Reporting and analytics are essential in a business or project environment. You’ll have customers or colleagues who must be kept up-to-date on progress. Analytics can help you identify patterns, optimize workflows, and make data-driven decisions.
- Security and data privacy. The tool you choose should offer data encryption, secure connections (HTTPS), and regulatory compliance features to avoid security and privacy risks.
Do Todoist and Apple Reminders tick all these boxes? Let’s take a look.
What is Todoist?
Todoist, one of the most popular task management tools available today, was purpose-built to help organize daily activities and projects efficiently. With it, you can create tasks, set due dates for them, and organize them according to their project or category.
Todoist offers all the features listed above and also includes priority levels, labels, and filters. Plus, it supports collaboration by letting users share lists, files, tasks, and projects. It’s available on iOS, Android, Windows, macOS, and even Linux.
Todoist also integrates with a wide range of applications and platforms, including Google Calendar, Gmail, Outlook, and Dropbox. Not only that, but it’s available as a web app for you to use in your favorite web browser. This functionality lets you easily collaborate with your team, no matter the tech stack your business has.
Strengths
Todoist provides an easy and convenient way for you to manage your tasks at both work and home. And it does it in a world where people use many different platforms and systems to work and communicate, operating seamlessly across all of them.
One of Todoist’s biggest differentiators is natural language input and data capture. You can describe any date using phrases like “tomorrow at 9 a.m.” or “every second Wednesday” starting next week and continuing for three months, for instance. Todoist will work out what you mean and create your tasks.
Other advantages of Todoist include the following:
- You can try it before you buy it
- It supports widgets and an extensive developer ecosystem
- It offers three viewing options: lists, calendars, and Kanban boards
- It supports location-based reminders
- It integrates with a wide range of existing products and web services
Weaknesses
Todoist has a few reported weaknesses to consider:
- Some users have reported lagging issues with synchronization and notifications
- The free version is limited and doesn’t include reminder notifications
- Location-based reminders are limited to mobile devices
Now, let’s take a look at Apple Reminders.
What Is Apple Reminders?
Apple Reminders is a product developed by Apple for its iOS, macOS, watchOS, and iPadOS platforms. It’s a task management app that lets you create to-do lists and set notifications, including location-based reminders. And in the latest versions of iOS and iPadOS, you can do a lot more.
It probably comes as no surprise, then, that Reminders integrates seamlessly with Siri and other products and services in Apple’s mobile ecosystem. It also supports shared lists, which lets you collaborate and share tasks with others — as long as they are also Apple ecosystem users.
Basic customization is possible, and you can personalize your lists in Reminders. Plus, you can add colors and icons, as well as select different sorting options. A more recent addition is support for photos, documents, and other attachments.
All this builds a useful package of features to help you stay organized, manage your tasks efficiently, and streamline your team’s collaboration.
Strengths
One recent improvement made to Reminders is the addition of widget support. And while other products have had this functionality for a while, few of them have a developer network as extensive as Apple’s.
Plus, since it’s bundled into the Apple ecosystem, Reminders sports some additional advantages over other products. These include the following:
- Native integration with Siri and Apple Watch
- Better location integration across the ecosystem, including CarPlay
- No cost on any Apple devices
Weaknesses
Sometimes, a strength can also be a weakness. Since Reminders is an Apple product, integration with apps outside Apple is limited. As one Reddit user stated, for instance, Reminders loses extra iCloud features when you use the Exchange integration.
Other reviews have mentioned limited desktop functionality. They report that the app is great if you do all your work on an iPhone or iPad, but as soon as you need to do a good amount of work on your desktop, a lot of the functionality disappears. “Clunky” is a word that comes up frequently.
 |
Making the choice
There are always trade-offs when you have to choose between two or more products. In the end, it always comes down to features and functionality that you can or can’t live without. And it’s certainly no different with this decision.
Apple Reminders
If you already have an iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, or Macbook, Reminders is a no-brainer for a standalone user. And if you work with a team that’s similarly equipped, it’s also a simple, low-cost choice — that is unless you discover something it doesn’t do that you really need.
But when the people and businesses you’re working with aren’t using the Apple tech stack, you only have one option: to find a way to get them into the ecosystem. With people, that’s not too difficult. All it requires is a subsidy or inducement of some kind.
For organizations, it’s a lot more complicated — especially if they’ve invested in a different tech stack. You’ll either have to get them to embrace the Apple stack or find other organizations to work with that already use it.
Todoist
If you or your business aren’t using the Apple tech stack, then Todoist is a no-brainer — especially if the people and organizations you work with also have different tech stacks. Because it uses standard communication protocols and supports many different platforms, there’s a good chance that it will work out for you.
Todoist’s natural language input feature is also an invaluable tool in a world with so many different ways to represent dates and times.
And in the event that there’s no direct support for a particular application or device that you absolutely need, Todoist has you covered. The company has published a full suite of application programming interfaces (APIs) and software development kits (SDKs). Those tools allow for additional integrations if needed.
There is a better option
The beauty of the modern tech world is that there’s almost always another choice when comparing two options. And in this case, that’s Motion’s Task Manager. A lot of the functionality is similar, but the key difference is the ecosystem in which it exists.
Motion’s ecosystem is the web. It doesn’t matter what tech stack you or your team members have chosen — you just need a web browser to use it.
The Task Manager is designed to simplify and optimize the way you manage your tasks and provide detailed project tracking. It also ticks all the feature boxes listed above and adds artificial intelligence (AI) to the mix, enabling automation. This means that it can help you optimize your day better than Todoist or Apple Reminders can.
And when you have to change something on your to-do list, Motion will automatically adjust your schedule for you. It will also reconfigure your team members’ task schedules based on the priorities and dependencies that you capture.
Finally, Motion sports seamless integration with other tools, including Google Calendar, Microsoft Outlook, Apple’s Siri, and Slack.
Building your perfect schedule
Motion's intuitive interface and customizable templates make it well-suited for individual users and teams of all sizes. It can help you improve your productivity and provides you and your team with a centralized platform to capture, organize, and track your work.
You can add tasks quickly and provide relevant details, such as due dates, descriptions, and attachments, using Motion’s task creation feature. It helps you make sure that all the necessary information is easily accessible to your team and helps team members stay focused and organized.
There are dedicated task management apps — and then, there’s Motion. Motion doesn’t just manage and organize your tasks; it prioritizes them and adds other tasks to your schedule to help make sure you and your team complete everything on your plate by the deadline.
Use Motion for all your work-related and personal to-dos
A to-do list doesn’t cut it anymore in your professional or even personal life. Regardless of whether you’re running a business or project — or simply building a grocery list — an AI-powered task manager app is the best way to keep track of and execute everything you have on your plate.
Todoist and Apple Reminders are helpful tools for organizing your time. But if you want an app that acts as a personal assistant and task manager and helps you feel accomplished and less stressed, Motion is the way to go.
Try out Motion and say goodbye to missed deadlines and lost time for good.
Sign up for a 7-day free trial today.
