Taskade Review: Manage Tasks, Bullet Journals, Organize Thoughts, and More

Taskade is a new free tool on the market which not only allows users to manage tasks but also allow them to create bullet journal, organize their thoughts, and collaborate with others. I have been using this software for a little over two weeks now and I do think that it’s worth giving a try. To me, the app felt like a crossover between Trello, OmniOutliner and OmniFocus, which might be a good thing or a bad thing depending on your needs. That said, considering both Trello and OmniFocus are my favorite project management tools, I was tempted to give this one a try. So, whether are already interested in Taskade or just looking for a new free versatile tool for your Mac, here is my review of Taskade after using it for two weeks.

Taskade Review: Overview

Taskade is a free app which is available for both macOS and Windows. Apart from using Taskade as native apps on these platforms, you can also use the app as an extension on your Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox browser. The best part of using Taskade as a browser extension is that it essentially transforms your new tab page into a Taskade page. So, if you are someone who needs a constant reminder about his pending tasks, I would say that Taskade’s extension is the good place to start. That said, for my review period, I have mostly used the native macOS app of Taskade, so all my comments are based on experiences which I had with the native app.

Okay, let’s first start with an overview of the app. As I mentioned above, Taskade brings a lot of functionalities to the table and as soon as you launch the app, you will see how you can use those functionalities. As you can see in the picture above, the app comes with a pre-created Group named Personal which houses various Lists. As you might have guessed by now, Group is the uppermost organizational hierarchy which is followed by Lists.

Once you take a good look into them, you will realize that Taskade is a tool which basically lets you create vertical lists with different formatting options such as highlight, bullet lists, tasks, sub-tasks, and more. You can use a combination of these formatting options inside the mainframe of vertical lists to create a task list, bullet journal, notes, project roadmaps, and more. However, whichever format you chose, remember that its basic skeleton will always remain a vertical list.

Taskade Review: Key Features

Now that we know a little bit about the app, let’s check out its main features to see what all it has to offer us:

Groups, Lists, and Everything else

The main feature of the app obviously is its ability to store information whether its tasks, notes, or anything else. To do that, first, you will have to create a Group which is as simple as clicking the “Create Group” button present at the leftmost panel of the app. Now that you have done that, you can create lists inside the Group which can be done by hitting the “Create List” button. Once you do that, you will get an option to create either a Checklist, an Outline, a New Note or use any of the pre-existing templates that come with the app.

The templates are basically the sample project that you already saw in the Personal project which we went through in the overview section.  For our purposes, we will create a simple task list. As you can see in the picture below, you get a very beautiful looking page where you can create the title of the list and then add as many tasks as you want. You also get a ton of formatting options for text including bolding, italicizing, color coding, and more, all of which are present at the top of the page.

The app also gives you the ability to nest tasks under other tasks. You can do that by hitting the tab button on your keyboard. Once you hit tab, the task will be automatically nested inside the task above it. I use this feature a lot in OmniFocus, and I am really glad that it’s here. Now, since we chose a task list, we are seeing a check mark list, however, we could change that to either a bullet list or just plain text by clicking on the little red icon which appears whenever you are in editing mode.

As I said, Taskade is basically a vertical list-creating app which uses different formatting options to create the different type of lists. That’s why even if you start with a task list or an outline or any other option while creating the list, you can always convert that list to anything else using the given formatting tools. That also means that essentially you can create a list which has all of these items.

Sharing, Collaborating, and Messaging

One of the biggest benefits of using Taskade over other task management apps such as OmniFocus is that it allows you to share and collaborate with others in real time. You can easily share either an entire group or an individual list with anyone with whom you want to collaborate with. To share a group, you can just click on the Invite button and enter either the email of the person or copy the share link and send it to them.

To share a list, you will need to open the list and then click on the share button which is present right beside the Invite button. Remember, Invite button is for groups and share symbol is for the lists.

Once you have shared your group or list, your collaborator can easily make changes to the list in real-time. You can also chat with you collaborates by clicking on the chat button present at the top-right corner of your list. That said, the built-in collaboration tools has a lot of drawbacks but we will get to them in a later section.

Theming

Taskade also allows you to theme your background, a feature which is quite similar to the one on Trello. To theme your background, just click on what looks like a painter’s palette icon present at the bottom left. Here you can choose between either solid bold colors or different wallpaper type background images. That said, unlike Trello which allows you to choose different backgrounds for different boards, in case of Taskade, you are stuck with a single background.

Taskade Review: Shortcomings

Although I enjoyed using the software, at this point in time, there are just too many shortcomings which overshadow its good parts. One of my biggest problems with this app is that there is no change history. With apps which allow collaboration, it’s utmost important that there is a way to know which user added or deleted what information.

Since Taskade doesn’t have it, anyone can make changes without the admin being any wiser. That’s just calling for a disaster to happen. Secondly, I also don’t like that the app needs a constant internet connection to work. I found myself mostly using the app for collecting my thoughts and needing an internet connection kind of makes that hard when I am traveling.

Yes, I can create a hotspot on my smartphone but that’s an added step which I don’t want to take. Also, since the app is still in development, it still doesn’t have a mobile app. The website does lists that both iOS and Android apps are in development. All these shortcomings are annoying but what’s really a deal breaker for me is the absence of calendar integration. I really hate that I can’t set due dates to tasks or make them show up on my calendar. For that reason alone, I can never see myself using this app.

Taskade Review: Final Thoughts

Considering the app is still in development, I would say that Taskade is an app which is worth keeping an eye out for. Personally, I found the app really useful as a way to dump out my ideas and create actionable items out of them. Since, the app lets me easily switch between texts, bullet lists, and checklists, it’s easier to just record whatever there is inside my head and create actionable items using the checklist feature where ever I can.

However, for everything else it fails. It doesn’t show a change log which makes it really bad as a collaboration tool and it doesn’t have calendar integration which makes this a bad task manager tool.

I feel that Taskade is trying to do too many things at the same time and not excelling at anything. In its current state, the app is only good as an outlining tool. I feel that my use case scenario is the best thing you can follow to get something productive out of this app. Don’t get me wrong, I love the app’s idea and I think it has potential, but it needs too many improvements before it can compete with all the other heavyweights which already dominate the market.

On the other hand, the app is completely free which makes to accessible to anyone who want to use it. I do believe that in future, the app will start following a freemium model, but for now, its totally free, and you should check it out.

Download: Taskade