Any.do is one of the most popular to-do list managers on Android, and it's about to get a major update. The Any.do team has just announced the v4.0 update, which is rolling out to Android soon (it's on iOS today). It includes a few features users have been asking for, specifically a built-in calendar and real-time sync. Then there's the new AI assistant, which people weren't asking for, but Any.do hopes you'll like anyway.

The folks behind Any.do already have a calendar app called Cal, but it's not clear if that one is going away. At any rate, a smart calendar will be part of Any.do 4.0. It has daily, weekly, and monthly views, and there's an event creation feature that helps you find open slots in your contacts' schedules. The real-time sync is not so much a new feature as it is just a better version of what the app did before.

 

The Any.do Assistant is completely new, and it's probably not what you expect. It was created based on analysis of mountains of to-do items anonymously captured by Any.do over the years. The result is an Assistant geared toward helping you get things done. Unlike Google Assistant (in voice or chatbot form), you don't go to the Any.do Assistant; it comes to you.

A blue circle icon pops up next to items you create in Any.do 4.0 that the Assistant thinks it can help you complete. Tapping on that launches a chat interface where you can have the bot do the legwork for you. However, it's not always a bot. Any.do can also assign a real human to help with certain tasks. The catch is that a task involving buying something comes with a 5-15% service fee. It'll be interesting to see how well this works in real life and how often the Any.do Assistant pops up in the list.

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