Todoist Launches on Windows 10

Todoist took the Windows 10 version of its task management and to-do list app out of preview today. Todoist is free with a premium subscription option, and it is also available on every other device type imaginable, making it a truly cross-platform solution.

I spoke with Todoist head of Windows Jan Kratochvil last week at Build 2016 in San Francisco. Jan came to Todoist about a year ago after creating a Todoist client for Windows call TaskCrunch: That client is the basis for the official Todoist for Windows app, which is a UWP app that works with both PCs/tablets and, yes, phones.

We’ll get to phone in a bit. First, let’s start with Windows 10 for PCs, which is obviously—and correctly—a big focus for Todoist.

“We have very good designers,” Jan told me, drawing an obvious comparison to Wunderlist, which was purchased recently by Microsoft but has a more distracting UI. “The Windows verison of Todoist is tailored so that it looks and works like Outlook, with a three pane design. It’s very natural, and will be familiar to Windows users.”

Aside from the general look of the app—which should indeed look and feel familiar to Windows PC users—it’s nice to see that Todoist has made something that likewise works like a real PC productivity app, with nice pop-up UIs that appear as you mouse-over UI elements. This isn’t a Fisher Price-looking modern app, it’s the real deal.

But it also supports touch, so users on Windows tablets will feel at home too: You can select the hamburger menu to hide the panes and transform Todoist into a friendlier, more task-focused UI. And Todoist plays nicely with Windows 10, supporting OS features like the ability to pin individual tasks to Start and use interactive notification pop-ups. It’s also very nicely customizable.

I’ve only just started using Todoist, so it may be a while before I can fully appreciate the full range of its functionality. But let’s quickly tackle the elephant in the room: Windows phone.

Obviously, Windows phone is on the way down. So why would Todoist even bother to support this platform?

“We did have a long discussion on the phone part,” he admitted. “It’s hard to justify, and Windows phone usage is not as optimal as we’d like. But with UWP, the UI scales well … it’s awesome. It’s super-easy to make the app work on phone.”

That said, the phone version of Todoist could lag a bit behind the other mobile clients in some key areas, most notably performance, because the firm can’t commit a lot of resources to such a small platform. “We will keep working on it,” he told me.

And on that note, fantastic: I’m happy that Todoist is supporting Windows phone, and this app’s availability on Windows 10 broadly is a positive move.

You can download Todoist for Windows 10 for PCs and Mobile from the Windows Store.Seriously, you should check it out.