Damn, now I need to move faster. My app must be ready by the time they close Wunderlist. I expected an eventual closure, but not that soon.
I've spent the last two years developing a todo app that would be a good replacement for Wunderlist (and Astrid, if anyone still remembers that).
The app will include with some major / critical features both those apps lacked: proper hierarchies / first-class subtasks, automatically-activated contexts (e.g. location), snooze for arbitrary durations, a robust implementation of recurring tasks, and an infinite calendar-like timeline to look ahead.
I went full waterfall on it, the spec is 266 pages long and took half a year just to write. I'm currently testing an Android alpha version, and, for me, it works ridiculously well, much better than Wunderlist, which sat on my homescreen since August 2013.
It's not really killed. The original Sunrise, Accompli and Wunderlist teams still work at MSFT and they're working on their new apps respectively (Javier runs all of Outlook now). And Chad Fowler (former CTO of Wunderlist), and company are behind the pivot to To-Do. It's the exact same application. I've been beta testing it and it just has few additional features that will show up over time. It's really just a rebrand and a skin and a new backend they're trying to rapidly improve.
They all got promoted really quickly and have large portfolios (including their original apps and teams) , but now with a mandate to fix the other similar core applications, too. If anything, this crop of teams and ppl now run huge portions of Office -- not the other way around. And they're the ones deciding strategic vision.
These acquisitions were also acquihires. The CEOs/CTOs have high leadership positions now (they went from Partner GEMs -> CTO/CVPs in about a year or so) and are trying to make all of Office better.
I think every time a MSFT article comes up, ppl get in an uproar. Give the company a chance and check your bias at the door.
“This, milord, is my family's axe. We have owned it for almost nine hundred years, see. Of course, sometimes it needed a new blade. And sometimes it has required a new handle, new designs on the metalwork, a little refreshing of the ornamentation . . . but is this not the nine hundred-year-old axe of my family? And because it has changed gently over time, it is still a pretty good axe, y'know. Pretty good.”
That's what I thought of when you said it's just a rebrand and a skin with a new back end. I mean lets call it what it is, a new app by the wunderlist team that's more oriented towards integration with Microsoft's existing suite of products. So yeah, Wunderlist is dead. Long live its spiritual successor.
I'm not convinced this is MSFT specific, and I do appreciate your optimism about the team (your team?) and what it is doing.
Taken as a whole, these sort of acquisitions/acquihires have not tended to go well for the users of the smaller teams original products. One can argue that their is or is not a net win, of course - but if you are a user of a service like this and really like it, chances are pretty good you aren't going to like what company X does with it after acquisition. Given that, it's pretty unremarkable to hear people say "so much for service X, now A has bought them". On the whole, they are mostly right. Sometimes you get an nice service Y out of it though! Often not a great replacement for the original, but nice nonetheless.
How can I give them a chance when they kill the crucial functionality of the app that I liked?
For example, I was a heavy Sunrise user. It worked wonderfully on syncing all of my calendars and showing them all to me in one nice feed with a slick interface. I didn't have to sync my various calendars to one central service and feed all of my calendars to one company. It synced them all to my smartphone, which was a feature I was looking for. Giving all my calendars over to Microsoft... no, thank you.
As someone who works closely with these teams within Microsoft, I can say that these team members are having a huge, positive impact on the Office division.
If anyone is looking for an alternative that will probably be around for a long time, check out Todoist [1]: they are bootstrapped and profitable and been around for 10 years.
In terms of product - it's as simple to use as Wunderlist, but does have a few extra features. And they are cross platform like Wunderlist.
(I'm not affiliated with them. Just a happy user.)
Thanks for the support arikfr! Being a long time HN user, I am happy to see Todoist recommended.
We are in this for the long haul. We don't even go into acquisitions talks (we already turned down a lot of them), and we don't have an exit strategy. If you are interested in learning more please read our `No Exit philosophy` https://tentimezones.com/why-we-don-t-have-an-exit-strategy-...
The Todoist sign-up page now has a migration tool: "Coming from Wunderlist? Import your tasks." If that isn't timely reaction to a market need then I don't know what is.
I've been a paying customer for over 2 years now, after trying many other apps, and I'm not moving anytime soon. However, one thing that bothers me was first killing a voting platform and then the discussion forum on Todoist. You can still contact the support, but there is no way to publicly vote for or discuss any feature requests.
Also, a shameless plug: I've built a Todoist backup tool[0], which can be used even as a non-premium user and which supports more processing friendly formats[1].
I can second this, I've been a paying customer of Todoist for 2 years now, really really enjoy it. The 'natural language' style of setting dates is a nice touch.
Seconding Todoist. I've tried every to-do app/service around, and they're the best I've found.
It's not perfect - there are a few parts of the app that annoy me and can't be configured the way I need[0], but of all the ones I've tried, it's the closest to what I need.
[0] If anyone from Todoist sees this, I'd be happy to go into more detail about what those are.
Great and very complete alternative indeed. While I personally prefer Things, particularly now since version 3 is finally almost here, I was very tempted to migrate to Todoist on more than one occassion when Things / Cultured Code went rather silent in the past.
I've used Todoist, but I've found Remember The Milk a little more suited towards my own needs. I'v been using it for 8 years now (I think), so hopefully it should be around for a while.
I'd second Todoist. Its simply amazing! So easy and delightful a UI and yet it has a lot of really cool features (emailing tasks, nice to set up in a GTD environment etc.)
I was initially excited but this was a let-down:
>>>
The owner of www.todoist.com has configured their website improperly. To protect your information from being stolen, Firefox has not connected to this website.
This site uses HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS) to specify that Firefox may only connect to it securely. As a result, it is not possible to add an exception for this certificate.
I know they are doing what HN commenters tell everyone to do and charge more, but I am just not comfortable paying £22/year for a todo list (£28 through Apple). I'm not really a todo list enthusiast, so I don't want 90% of the features features, just basic stuff like "show all tasks except those scheduled far in the future".
Taskwarrior on Desktop and Taskwarrior + Termux on Android is the most flexible, private, open and lightweight TODO manager I've ever used. No eye candy whatsoever, just pure power. I've been using the combo for a few years now, give it a look.
According to Microsoft’s announcement, To-Do starts you off in a screen called “My Day” which offers a list of items that need to get done today.
While Wunderlist allows you to see the "Today" view first it's not forced ... it's flexible enough to let people manage their To-do lists in a number of different ways. I have a bunch of general To-do lists in Wunderlist including open-ended ones and ones that I duplicate every week (marking the old version as done) and slowly modify. The "My Day" default does not work for me.
The other thing that was great about Wunderlist is the developers really paid attention to Mac and iOS users. I found that the Mac version was better than Windows in a few areas - specifically the ability to expand a note to a bigger view and a lack of buggy behavior when modifying a note (confirmed in Windows 10 but not fixed by Wunderlist, now we know why). In the new setup, Mac/iOS/Android will clearly take a back seat to Windows:
As many users realized, some platforms do not yet support To-Do, including Mac, iPad and Android tablet. List sharing is also not available. But Microsoft says these will roll out in time along with other integrations with Microsoft services.
Too bad. Wunderlist was a great service, the only To-Do app I ever liked.
One of the few major features I'm looking for in a to-do app is the ability to use natural language to set a due date/timer and then get a notification synched across my mac and iPhone. For example: "task xyz in 15 mins".
Does anyone know an app that can do this? Todoist is very close -- you can write "task xyz in 2 hours" but for some reason cannot use "minutes".
I started using Reminders and Siri for this about 3 years ago and it's been wonderful. I don't need a lot of fancy features like GTD, sub tasks, etc, but I do use a lot of shared lists with the wife (shopping, planning, honey-do, and packing being the 4 primary ones).
The combo has been even better since I got my apple watch - you'd be amazed how quietly you can whisper 'hey Siri, remind me to blah in 20 minutes' to your watch...
I've been a Wunderlist user for a while, now shopping around for a viable alternative. It's truly amazing how few options there are that match Wunderlist's feature set. It's also truly amazing how "basic" the features I'm looking for should are this day and age, yet there are very few solutions. I don't want a taskwarrior-esque system, although it would meet most/all of my needs, as I share lists with family memebers who are not tech-savvy in the least bit. Of course, this screams side project.
Simpletask Cloudless might be what you're looking for. It uses todo.txt, which you can sync via Nextcloud (or whatever other provider), and has in my opinion the best functionality of any android todo app.
The downside is that its onboarding UX isn't great, and overall it's not as polished as some other todo apps.
I've done some work on it in the past and would like to find time to do more in the future.
Use http://todotxt.com -- It's just a plaintext file format. There are a bunch of optional GUI wrappers that are aware of conventions and/or help with grep-ing.
Bugger. After 5 years of on-off trying todo lists, I'd finally got to like Wunderlist. Now I guess I'm back to Todoist, which I've never felt any affection for.
I think the beauty of Wunderlist came from it's simplicity.
On another note, I think that for most busy people mere to-do lists are passé. It's too easy for things to fall through the cracks, to create overwhelming lists where nothing is prioritized.
What you need is an auto-scheduling planner that turns your to-do list into a schedule in your calendar. And then if you don't finish things, they move forward in priority order until you get it done. Gives you smart reminders only when you have free time.
Oh, this is disappointing. Any app launched as a result of killing a long-running service now carries the added risk of "when are you going to kill this, too?".
Won't be touching this, have a lot of history in Wunderlist I'll now need to figure out how to move elsewhere.
Wunderlist is perhaps the only shared to-do list application that actually works. I don't know about 100MM, but it's an important application --- which is why there's a pretty substantial thread here about MSFT killing it off.
I've tried a variety of todo apps over the years, but could never really get into any of them. They all seem overly complicated and heavyweight. Recently I discovered what I really need are simple lists and hierarchy. That is, Dynalist or Workflowy.
Workflowy came first, Dynalist is very similar, but is more actively developed and probably has more features at the moment, so I'd recommend that one.
I keep a "short term todo" list as the top item in my "personal" list, and longer-term todos grouped by category below that. The wonderful part is that I can add sub-tasks, or just notes, or groupings, with the same mechanism. All the information is right there and I don't have to think too hard about it. And I can use the same app for notes and other types of lists.
Both support things like tags and due dates, but aren't in your face about them. Personally I hardly ever use those features, though it's nice to know they're there in case I suddenly become more organized. Sharing too.
Obviously, this may not work for everyone, but for engineer types who love recursive structure, the simple hierarchical list model is pretty awesome.
(Not affiliated with either product, just a happy user.)
For me, Wunderlist is well done in offline access, super fast sync and a battery-friendly Mac app. I sometimes work in some place that does not allow internet connection, e.g. warehouse where phone signal is screwed, or some meeting rooms just block the signal due to their privacy.
In many years I still cannot find an alternative. May be Evernote(?)
I was never a big fan of Wunderlist, it was too much eye-candy and too few features for me. But it was the best todo app the whole family could use. Support for all platforms, simple list sharing, and the ability to set custom backgrounds and colors..
Not sure what will replace it. Almost certainly not Microsoft To-Do, though. Seems too opinionated for a todo system and lacks critical features.
[+] [-] VladimirGolovin|9 years ago|reply
I've spent the last two years developing a todo app that would be a good replacement for Wunderlist (and Astrid, if anyone still remembers that).
The app will include with some major / critical features both those apps lacked: proper hierarchies / first-class subtasks, automatically-activated contexts (e.g. location), snooze for arbitrary durations, a robust implementation of recurring tasks, and an infinite calendar-like timeline to look ahead.
I went full waterfall on it, the spec is 266 pages long and took half a year just to write. I'm currently testing an Android alpha version, and, for me, it works ridiculously well, much better than Wunderlist, which sat on my homescreen since August 2013.
[+] [-] blahblah12|9 years ago|reply
https://www.linkedin.com/in/fowlerchad/ - CTO Wunderlist https://www.linkedin.com/in/jsoltero/ - Accompli founder https://www.linkedin.com/in/christianreber/ - Wunderlist Founder https://www.linkedin.com/in/pierrevalade/ - founder Sunrise https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremylv/ - founder Sunrise/Design
They all got promoted really quickly and have large portfolios (including their original apps and teams) , but now with a mandate to fix the other similar core applications, too. If anything, this crop of teams and ppl now run huge portions of Office -- not the other way around. And they're the ones deciding strategic vision.
These acquisitions were also acquihires. The CEOs/CTOs have high leadership positions now (they went from Partner GEMs -> CTO/CVPs in about a year or so) and are trying to make all of Office better.
I think every time a MSFT article comes up, ppl get in an uproar. Give the company a chance and check your bias at the door.
[+] [-] uncletaco|9 years ago|reply
That's what I thought of when you said it's just a rebrand and a skin with a new back end. I mean lets call it what it is, a new app by the wunderlist team that's more oriented towards integration with Microsoft's existing suite of products. So yeah, Wunderlist is dead. Long live its spiritual successor.
[+] [-] ska|9 years ago|reply
Taken as a whole, these sort of acquisitions/acquihires have not tended to go well for the users of the smaller teams original products. One can argue that their is or is not a net win, of course - but if you are a user of a service like this and really like it, chances are pretty good you aren't going to like what company X does with it after acquisition. Given that, it's pretty unremarkable to hear people say "so much for service X, now A has bought them". On the whole, they are mostly right. Sometimes you get an nice service Y out of it though! Often not a great replacement for the original, but nice nonetheless.
[+] [-] r3bl|9 years ago|reply
For example, I was a heavy Sunrise user. It worked wonderfully on syncing all of my calendars and showing them all to me in one nice feed with a slick interface. I didn't have to sync my various calendars to one central service and feed all of my calendars to one company. It synced them all to my smartphone, which was a feature I was looking for. Giving all my calendars over to Microsoft... no, thank you.
[+] [-] alanbyrne|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] downrightmike|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _pmf_|9 years ago|reply
Thanks; I got a good laugh out of this one!
[+] [-] arikfr|9 years ago|reply
In terms of product - it's as simple to use as Wunderlist, but does have a few extra features. And they are cross platform like Wunderlist.
(I'm not affiliated with them. Just a happy user.)
[1] https://todoist.com
[+] [-] amix|9 years ago|reply
We are in this for the long haul. We don't even go into acquisitions talks (we already turned down a lot of them), and we don't have an exit strategy. If you are interested in learning more please read our `No Exit philosophy` https://tentimezones.com/why-we-don-t-have-an-exit-strategy-...
[+] [-] Etheryte|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] darekkay|9 years ago|reply
Also, a shameless plug: I've built a Todoist backup tool[0], which can be used even as a non-premium user and which supports more processing friendly formats[1].
[0] https://darekkay.com/todoist-export/
[1] https://darekkay.com/2014/12/14/todoist-export-tool/
[+] [-] adamjc|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chimeracoder|9 years ago|reply
It's not perfect - there are a few parts of the app that annoy me and can't be configured the way I need[0], but of all the ones I've tried, it's the closest to what I need.
[0] If anyone from Todoist sees this, I'd be happy to go into more detail about what those are.
[+] [-] thirdsun|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jongunter1|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] daniel_iversen|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] msq|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anthonybsd|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] skolos|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TuringNYC|9 years ago|reply
The owner of www.todoist.com has configured their website improperly. To protect your information from being stolen, Firefox has not connected to this website.
This site uses HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS) to specify that Firefox may only connect to it securely. As a result, it is not possible to add an exception for this certificate.
[+] [-] TorKlingberg|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] campuscodi|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TorKlingberg|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] curiousgal|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gtf21|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dgrabla|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ilamont|9 years ago|reply
While Wunderlist allows you to see the "Today" view first it's not forced ... it's flexible enough to let people manage their To-do lists in a number of different ways. I have a bunch of general To-do lists in Wunderlist including open-ended ones and ones that I duplicate every week (marking the old version as done) and slowly modify. The "My Day" default does not work for me.
The other thing that was great about Wunderlist is the developers really paid attention to Mac and iOS users. I found that the Mac version was better than Windows in a few areas - specifically the ability to expand a note to a bigger view and a lack of buggy behavior when modifying a note (confirmed in Windows 10 but not fixed by Wunderlist, now we know why). In the new setup, Mac/iOS/Android will clearly take a back seat to Windows:
As many users realized, some platforms do not yet support To-Do, including Mac, iPad and Android tablet. List sharing is also not available. But Microsoft says these will roll out in time along with other integrations with Microsoft services.
Too bad. Wunderlist was a great service, the only To-Do app I ever liked.
[+] [-] mobitar|9 years ago|reply
https://standardnotes.org
[+] [-] warholio|9 years ago|reply
Does anyone know an app that can do this? Todoist is very close -- you can write "task xyz in 2 hours" but for some reason cannot use "minutes".
[+] [-] djrogers|9 years ago|reply
The combo has been even better since I got my apple watch - you'd be amazed how quietly you can whisper 'hey Siri, remind me to blah in 20 minutes' to your watch...
[+] [-] rickdg|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] camtarn|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] criddell|9 years ago|reply
All I want is a todo list where I can assign tags. So maybe I would do something like:
I can have saved searches for #shopping and #home. That way I don't need folders, I don't need projects. Tags can do it all.[+] [-] kossae|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] smichel17|9 years ago|reply
The downside is that its onboarding UX isn't great, and overall it's not as polished as some other todo apps.
I've done some work on it in the past and would like to find time to do more in the future.
https://github.com/mpcjanssen/simpletask-android
[+] [-] frou_dh|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] porker|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hexsprite|9 years ago|reply
On another note, I think that for most busy people mere to-do lists are passé. It's too easy for things to fall through the cracks, to create overwhelming lists where nothing is prioritized.
What you need is an auto-scheduling planner that turns your to-do list into a schedule in your calendar. And then if you don't finish things, they move forward in priority order until you get it done. Gives you smart reminders only when you have free time.
If that sounds interesting to you check out Focuster http://focuster.com
We're bootstrapped and having a great time listening to customers and building a product whose time has come.
[+] [-] marbletiles|9 years ago|reply
Won't be touching this, have a lot of history in Wunderlist I'll now need to figure out how to move elsewhere.
[+] [-] Tehnix|9 years ago|reply
I feel like I'll just go back to Reminders again, and try to stick with standard clients for these things...
[+] [-] slazaro|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kevingrahl|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] skrebbel|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] coldtea|9 years ago|reply
For what they paid, they got a team that knew how to build a To-Do app, what the challenges are, and how to scale it.
So they bought not having to deal with a dev team that is building a to-do app for the first time.
They also got some existing users (which will migrate) for free, but I don't think they care for that.
[+] [-] tptacek|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dnr|9 years ago|reply
https://dynalist.io/
https://workflowy.com/
Workflowy came first, Dynalist is very similar, but is more actively developed and probably has more features at the moment, so I'd recommend that one.
I keep a "short term todo" list as the top item in my "personal" list, and longer-term todos grouped by category below that. The wonderful part is that I can add sub-tasks, or just notes, or groupings, with the same mechanism. All the information is right there and I don't have to think too hard about it. And I can use the same app for notes and other types of lists.
Both support things like tags and due dates, but aren't in your face about them. Personally I hardly ever use those features, though it's nice to know they're there in case I suddenly become more organized. Sharing too.
Obviously, this may not work for everyone, but for engineer types who love recursive structure, the simple hierarchical list model is pretty awesome.
(Not affiliated with either product, just a happy user.)
[+] [-] dannylandau|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] edditoria|9 years ago|reply
For me, Wunderlist is well done in offline access, super fast sync and a battery-friendly Mac app. I sometimes work in some place that does not allow internet connection, e.g. warehouse where phone signal is screwed, or some meeting rooms just block the signal due to their privacy.
In many years I still cannot find an alternative. May be Evernote(?)
[+] [-] hedgew|9 years ago|reply
Not sure what will replace it. Almost certainly not Microsoft To-Do, though. Seems too opinionated for a todo system and lacks critical features.