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Google is crippling scammy task managers and RAM booster apps in Android 14
Now these apps will only be able to kill their own background processes
Apps claiming to speed up your phone have been around since the Play Store was still called the Android Market, and most of them are snake oil. Whether they say they'll boost your RAM, speed up performance, or cook your breakfast, they're usually just closing background processes at best, and this practice actually does more harm than good. Thankfully, Google is finally taking a hard stance against these scammy apps in Android 14.
Google Tasks has failed to take off, and Google has no one to blame but itself
The app took more than 3 years to reach 10 million downloads
There's nothing Google's developers love more than making new messaging apps and task management/to do/reminder apps. When Google Tasks was announced, more than three years ago, we thought it would be the one solution to rule them all — at least for task management. Except Google's strategy with this app, as it has been for years, has remained as disjointed as ever. It's no surprise then that Tasks just made it past the 10 million download mark on the Play Store.
Todoist Boards challenges Trello with powerful new project management features
It organizes tasks into a horizontal, multi-column layout
Todoist is one of our favorite apps for keeping on track. Whether it's a simple grocery list or an advanced checklist broken down into subsections, Todoist can handle it. And starting today, Todoist Boards is rolling out to help users and teams alike organize their projects in a more versatile way.
It seemed like Google Tasks had been on the way out for a long time, but last year, Google decided to breathe new life into it and launched a dedicated Android app for the service. Even though the application has received some welcome additions over the last months, you could unfortunately never add tasks straight from the Google Calendar app (that's only partially possible on the web right now), but Google is working on changing just that. XDA Developers managed to manually activate a Tasks integration in the latest Calendar release, 2019.47.2.
A couple of months ago, task manager Todoist received one of its biggest updates with the "Foundations" release, which added project sections, better subtask management, dynamic task addition, and more. The app's devs aren't taking the remainder of 2019 off, though, and keep releasing beta updates with new features. The latest beta is interesting to us for two reasons: auto dark theme on Android and a new, experimental OCR scanning option.
Popular productivity app Notion is finally available on Android. The service makes it easier to organize your life with everything from notes to to-do lists, and its support for all major platforms lets you access your data from almost anywhere. Its beautifully clean design is also a great selling point.
I use the task manager Todoist every day to stay on top of my pending orders at the pharmacy and I have learned every trick in the book to make the most of it. There's one feature, however, that I never knew I needed this much until it begun rolling out to beta testers last week and started making its way to the stable app today: Favorites.
Last summer, Microsoft launched Planner as part of its Office 365 suite of productivity apps for businesses and schools. It could readily be described as a Trello style kanban board with the collaborative functionality of a tool like Basecamp rolled in as well. After the launch of the iOS app last week, Microsoft is now bringing Planner to Android.
One of Android's differentiating features has been the ability to multitask, especially by allowing apps to coexist on one screen or to show elements on top of each other. Although the concept of floating apps was prevalent for years on the platform, Facebook Messenger popularized the idea of less intrusive bubbles, which simply put round icons at the edges of your screen to allow quick access to your chats and contacts. Link Bubble further pushed the envelop on that approach, taking the bubbles and making them work for you in the background.
Todoist has been holding my professional and personal life together over the past couple of years, and that is no understatement. In my Stuff We Use article, I mentioned how I use it to prepare my pharmacy's daily orders, but I've also grown to rely on it for my regular to-dos, while preparing for trips, or when inspiration hits me and I come up with a new article idea for Android Police for example.
Task management isn't usually meant to be enjoyable, but that doesn't mean it can't be elegant. That's the thought behind Wunderlist's latest version that brings the app up to speed with Lollipop — well, slightly — with some added functionality to boot.
Although I'm not a to-do list kind of person, I have had to change my habits ever since I became a small business owner and had to manage multiple orders, payments, and responsibilities throughout the day. Todoist became my de-facto solution for various reasons that aren't the goal of this post, but the one aspect of the app that kept nagging me a bit was the lack of Android Wear integration.
If you already use Remember the Milk to handle your todo lists, then there's a good chance you already know about this update. If you're not currently using RtM, though, then maybe it's time to give it another look.