Reminders

I am a big user of Google Tasks to keep track of all of the little things that I need to do around the house. Most of my tasks are simple reminders for me to pay my bills a couple of days before they are due.

As soon as Google announced that you can now add reminders into Google Now my first thoughts were is this going to integrate into Google Tasks. As soon as I tried it for myself, the answer was pretty clear; No, not at the moment at least.

I then started comparing the two are I have found that for my use of Google Tasks, the new Google Now reminders can do almost everything I want from a tasks app. I can tell it what I need to do and when I need to do it and my phone will then remind me to do those things.

There are a couple of things that Google Tasks does better though. Those are an easy way to view your outstanding tasks and completing those tasks prior to the due date. You can delete your reminders in Google Now if you complete a task early, but you lose the ability to track that tasks as a completed task. You can view all of your reminders in Google Now but it is hidden in the settings menu.

The second thing is the ability to modify a reminder. Say for example I remind myself to write an Ausdroid article when I get home, but then I find out that I have other plans and I won’t be able to write the article until the following day. The only way to change this is to delete the current reminder and create a new one. I want to be able to modify an existing reminder.

I have a feeling that the Google Now reminders has not been designed to replace Google Tasks, but given the fact that Google have neglected tasks for quite some time now, I wouldn’t be surprised if we see additional functionality added to the reminders system and we see the death of Google Tasks.

What do you think, could Google replace tasks with reminders? How have you been using the new Google Now reminders?

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    Takashi SASAKI

    Now that Google Inbox also has reminder feature, I really need to have a way to integrate them.

    Ellis Thomas

    Hey Darren, Hats off to your thoughts about Google, I praise you on this regard. Well, not pretty simple but its highly difficult to manage tasks when the term comes from a company with multiple projects. Mainly for the project managers when let’s say 10 projects are running under him, it’s a very hard time for him to keep track of all the projects as such. Talking about my company my project manager gets pissed off when ever his seniors asks him for the updates at times. Preferably he don’t have any option other than keep working for day and… Read more »

    Bernard Bakker

    Both Google Tasks and Google Now Reminders have some pretty nice features. Tasks works quite well with Google calendar and GN reminders remembering me to buy also a trainticket for my trip tomorrow when i arrive at the trainstation is great! But it’s very unfortunate that the two aren’t integrated as you have mentioned before. It seems that Google is forgetting that integration between products is thé unique selling point of their products & services. Both GN-reminders ánd Keep aren’t linked to similar Google products, as mentioned in your article, tasks do not show up in the reminders. And(maybe even… Read more »

    Bob Peterson

    Maybe I am a bit thick, but why not simply use google calendar for your reminders

    Duncan Jaffrey

    Google is heading down the same line with tasks/ reminders as it did with Chat, talk hangouts… They have just done the first major merger of their instant messaging services (minus SMS/ MMS = epic fail, people apple got it right with imessage platform agnostic single message inbox). Now for reminders/ tasks we have Google tasks as a sort of hot mail plug in Google Keep as a drive extension Even schemer could be seen as a task tracking app and now reminders as part of Google now. Let’s get ahead of the game. Single task ecosystem. I think the… Read more »

    Phil

    You realise you can schedule bills to pay in your internet banking a couple of days before they are due, right? 🙂

    victor

    Google Keep working on both pc and android.

    Luke Wiwatowski

    I’m guessing it’ll hook into keep more than tasks. I feel as though tasks will hit the chopping block soon.

    MrJayTee74

    But there is no “Google Task” on Android, so I’m at a loss to understand how it can replace it

    Jezz_X

    But there are plenty of third party apps that hook into it

    Sujay Vilash

    gTasks is one and it is actually quite good at it. Give it a try. If I remember correctly, it is free so you cannot go wrong.