Todoist remains the most popular task manager on both the Google Play Store and also the Apple App Store. But, over the last two years it has faced a strong competitor in TickTick.
So today I'm gonna go over some of my favorite features within TickTick, the ways that TickTick differentiates itself from Todoist in both the desktop and mobile versions.
Hello everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress, and I'm doing today's video precisely because you asked for it. So I'm gonna start off by asking you another question, what app would you like me to review next? What's something that you are currently using, or maybe something that you are thinking of using that you'd like me to feature here on the Simpletivity channel? Be sure to let me know in the comments down below.
Alright, so let's get things kicked off here within the desktop version of TickTick.
So TickTick has decided to choose sort of a three-column format for displaying its information, and you know, at first glance it looks very, very similar to Todoist. On the left-hand side we've got different filters, if we just want to look at today, the next seven days, or maybe our inbox as a whole. Down below we can take a look at all of our lists, and of course we can add tags and do some other fun features which I'll get to in just a moment.
In the middle of the screen we have the tasks themselves. So we can easily, quickly add new tasks, we can edit and check things off. But what I really like is the third and final column that as I'm selecting and clicking on these different tasks, I get to see all of the details here on the right-hand side.
So here you see I've got an attachment, I've got a comment I can see immediately. And for someone who makes heavy use of the description area here, this is something that I really, really like, that I can see that at a glance. So here you see I've got some subtasks. Well, I want to see that immediately, I don't want to have to dive deeper into this particular task.
The other thing that I really like is that you can easily convert a subtask or a checklist like we see here back and forth. In fact, this is how I started to enter in these sort of bullet point notes, and then I decided why don't I just make this sort of a subtask of this build a new website? And you can do that here just by selecting this option here, immediately go into subtask mode. And it doesn't have to be part of a project like in Todoist in order for you to have this functionality.
Of course as I'm checking things off here, I can see my progress on the front as well. But let's go back, let's go back to sort of the first column here, the menu here. Now, lists is pretty straightforward, this would be similar to projects within Todoist. But here's another feature that Todoist does not have, at least not as of yet, is that you can have folders for your lists, or folders for your projects.
Here you see I've got both a personal and a business folder, I've got a few different lists in here, and I can have different lists in personal. So if I want to add a new list I can give it a name, choose a color, and then I can say do I want it to be in a folder? It can stand alone if I want, I can put it in one of my existing folders or I can create a new folder and I think that's something that a lot of you might be looking forward to as you organize your various lists. I hear quite often people complain about all of the lists, all the various projects, and they have one huge line that they have to scroll through. TickTick makes it nice and easy for you to minimize that by creating folders together.
Tags, pretty straightforward here. I've just got a few examples here, so I've created an errand tag and an email tag, if you happen to follow the GTD philosophy tags can be a great use for that, so no matter where that project, no matter where this task may be attached to, to various projects, you could have multiple projects here, you can quickly and easily use tags to focus down into these particular tasks.
Now down near the very end I want to show you something really interesting here, as someone who uses the Pomodoro technique or a Pomodoro timer, TickTick actually has one built in. You see there's a 25-minute timer here and I can just hit the play button and it's gonna go. It's gonna do its thing, I can go and do my work. And as long as you allow TickTick to send you desktop notifications, you will get an alarm when this timer is finished.
Now let me just stop it here for a second cuz of course you don't have to stick with the 25-minute default, you can check on your own Pomo Timer settings here and they've actually got quite a few options here as to the types of breaks and durations and the different goals that you may have in a particular day. So I really like that, you don't have to go search for another timer, you can use the one that's built right in here.
Now the last thing I want to show you before we head on over to the desktop version, sorry, the mobile version of TickTick is that some of the features that are still a premium feature in Todoist come built in with the freemium version here within TickTick. Most notably are attachments, as you can see here, and comments, so you can easily add comments and add attachments to your tasks. This is not an advanced feature, this is part of the free or the basic version within TickTick.
So now let's transition and take a look at some of the mobile features and functionality within TickTick.
So just before I open the app here on my mobile device, I want to take a look at widgets, and you'll see that I've got one widget installed right here. That's a frequent question I get when it comes to new apps, does it have a widget so I can see relevant information before getting into the app? And TickTick actually has nine different widgets for you to choose from. So in this case I can actually activate and look at some things here within this widget. If I just want to see today, I can do that. If I want to click and see my inbox, I can do that as well. And of course if I just select the widget itself, it's gonna take me right into TickTick.
Now on this initial screen, it's really hard to differentiate a lot of to do list apps because a lot of them look very much the same. You've got a smaller screen, so in most cases you're gonna be viewing them in sort of this vertical format as we see here. But one of the things that I want to show off here is some of the swipe features for individual tasks. This isn't anything new, Todoist has some swipe features as well, right?
So if I swipe here to the right I can quickly check this off, instead of hitting the checkbox maybe I prefer swipe functionality, I can check it off there, but watch this. If I pull it over even more I can actually change the priority. If I let go at this point, maybe I can make this a high priority. I like how you can have dual functionality here. Remember, halfway across or a third of the way across complete, all the way over, and I can change its priority. I'm gonna change it to low.
Now that means I've got two other swipe features if I want to swipe in the other direction. So about a third of the way across I can change the due date, and I can move this to any of the presets or pick my own date as you see here. But again, I've got additional functionality. If I go all the way over I can choose to move this to another list, and here you see the folders that we saw in the desktop version and I can pick where I want to put that particular task.
So I know swipe functionality isn't for everyone, but as we keep progressing we want to make it easier and easier so we don't have to actually click on the task and get into that view, that we can do more of the functionality right here from the main screen. So that is certainly one of the features that I love here in the mobile version of TickTick.
And even things like what we see down here at the bottom, you can see there is the search functionality, the task list view, we've got sort of this calendar view here which is something that I particularly use most often is seeing my calendar in combination, or the days of the week with how I'm planning out my tasks. You can choose which of these buttons you want to see or not, in fact there's quite a few features, that's the tab bar feature here, in terms of turning on what you want to see. Once again you can see we can turn on that Pomodoro timer if we want, if we want to have that at the bottom of the screen. There's actually quite a few adjustments you can make for the mobile version. I know a lot of times I'm disappointed that the mobile version has very few options that we can tweak, but not so much with TickTick.
So there you have it, some of my favorite features within TickTick. Now I'd love to hear from you next. Are you currently a TickTick user or are you a Todoist user, and which one are you going to stick with? Or maybe you have a story to share, some additional functionality that you'd like to highlight and share with others. If so, please be sure to include it in the comments below.
Thank you so much for watching today's video, I hope you subscribe right here to the Simpletivity channel, give this video a thumbs up, and don't forget to leave me a comment down below. Remember, being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.
