Google Tasks is finally decent

Did you know that Google has a task management app? Not many do, because it’s been tucked away and largely ignored for years. It first came out in 2018 as a feature in Gmail, and has slowly expanded into a more full-featured app. It’s still rather bare-bones, but some recent improvements (as shared by The Verge a few months ago) have made it into a contender for simple task needs.

While it’s a very basic app, the integration it has with the full Google suite of products makes it compelling. In short, if you use Microsoft or others for your email, Google Tasks is of no value to you. However, if you use Gmail and/or Google Workspace, there might be a place for it.

Core features

Google Tasks allows you to create tasks, assign due dates to them, set them to repeat if needed — and that’s about it. In terms of task management, it’s very straightforward. In terms of integration with other Google services, though, it’s got some neat tricks it can do.

Sidebar

First, you can have it show up in the sidebar of many Google apps (Gmail, Calendar, etc), and it can do some simple interactions.

For example, you can drag an email over to tasks and it will create a task for that message. When you click the task in the future, the related email automatically comes up.