Any.Do – Get Tasks Done
To-do list apps are a dime a dozen, but Any.Do stands out in a crowded field with both a clean, bright look and novel ways to add to and organize lists.
List-making apps are a bustling sector in the app market, with a plethora of offerings to match every philosophy and approach when it comes to organizing time and information. Productivity geeks fervently advocate whether or not the “Getting Things Done” method works best, or if the “3 + 2 Rule” is a more effective way of managing your list of things to do — and there’s an app to suit every methodology, as well. Any.Do stands out in its field for both its flexibility and its nearly Zen look-and-feel, and also adds some cool functionality to the mix.
What’s the App?
Any.Do is a task management app lauded for its elegant interface and design, available for free on Android and iOS, as well as for the Chrome browser. Surprisingly for many users, the app originated on Android and then expanded to Apple’s mobile platform, and its cross-platform availability has created a wide and active user base.
Users begin their Any.Do experience by signing up for an account with their e-mail address or Facebook login. Once rolling, you add tasks via its minimal, attractive interface, which can then be categorized, shifted around and organized in several ways: by date, project, priority or by user-customized folders. The app’s default view offers an at-a-glance agenda, displaying the current day’s tasks and priorities and links to lists for the next day, the current week and what’s ahead in the future.
Users can add tasks in any number of ways, either by typing or by voice through your mobile device’s microphone, making the app ideal for on-the-go users. (I found adding tasks by voice especially fun and simple, and fairly accurate, even in a noisy room.) You can tap the app to add reminders or share tasks, an added feature that helps with group projects and keeps users on track with their schedule.
The look-and-feel of the app is clean, sleek and modern, and it makes good use of gestures that take full advantage of touchscreens’ capabilities. You simply swipe down in a list to add a task, and it’s easy to hold and drag tasks to move them between days and folders. To mark a task as complete, you swipe an item to the right to wipe it off your list.
The cross-platform availability of the app on both mobile devices and desktops is also an added bonus, especially if users need to capture and organize tasks in a variety of settings. It would be even more useful if it could be used with more Web browsers other than Chrome. The app’s makers have attracted major tech investors, so it could be making its way to more avenues in the future.
You’ll Want It If…
You need an intuitive, graceful task manager that combines both a beautiful interface with the ability to shuffle and juggle list items with ease. The app provides a simplicity that will please those easily overwhelmed by long to-do lists, but the ability to move tasks around, assign priorities and juggle multiple time frames will appeal to serious productivity geeks who spend as much time organizing their to-do lists as much as crossing things off of it.
It’s Not My Thing — What Else Ya Got?
The task manager section of the app market is so packed that there’s a perfect solution for everyone. Any.Do’s design is beautifully minimal, but visually-oriented types will likely also gravitate to Clear, with its colorful yet clean look and its lovely integration of gestures and touchscreens. Others may want even more functionality in categorizing and shuffling tasks, which makes something like OmniFocus ideal for them, although the interface gets increasingly cluttered with more information to manage and organize.