Comparing Reminders and Todoist

I was a Todoist user for the best part of the last decade. I've tracked all sorts in my to-do list there, from work tasks, to household chores, to planning my wedding. It had a great Alexa integration, and I used it extensively with my wife, to manage shared tasks and our shopping list.

Then Amazon killed the Alexa lists API and the Todoist integration ended. Our shared tasks ended up in the (absolutely awful) Alexa app, and I figured this was a great time to try out Apple's default Reminders app. It's got a lot of great features in the last few years, and is so much closer to Todoist in so many ways.

I went all-in, fully deleting a load of lists and filters in Todoist and re-creating them in Reminders. I lost a streak of completing tasks that stretched back to 2019. (I think streaks are a silly way to manage a to-do list, but I also understand that they work, because I would often check it just to feel good about my productivity, and I felt disappointed to lose the streak!)

I used Reminders for around a month, and mostly enjoyed it. It does pretty much everything I want: it has smart lists, it has repeating tasks, and honestly I quite like how it looks, with colourful titles, icons for lists, and links in task metadata. Best of all, it's free as part of the various OSes that I use.

But I also found myself playing with the EventKit API to address some shortcomings, like the fact the Apple Watch complication is just a static app icon, and the widget doesn't give any sense of progress through the day.

Over the last month or so, I also realised that my wife and I had used Todoist to plan family and household projects, and this is missing with Reminders as Reminders doesn't go beyond Apple's devices, and she uses Android.

So I moved everything back over. I really liked Reminders, but not being able to work with anyone, regardless of their phone's OS, is too much of a limitation for me. And I'm increasingly feeling that while iOS and macOS are my favourite computing platforms, I resent being tied to them by core apps and services, if I did want to move to Android.

Reminders is a great app though, and it's incredible how much you can do with it as a free service that comes with your phone.