Remember the Milk Android Review

Remember the Milk is one of the best To Do list apps for Android. It runs on a variety of platforms including the iPhone, iPad, and Blackberry. Gmail also can integrate with Remember the Milk as well and will show a To Do list from a linked account along with your emails if you want that. There is also a web app version for anyone to access their own account via a web browser which works very well.

The Android app version of the Remember the Milk product is much the same as with other versions of the software. As is typical with Android, there is no separate tablet version and smart phone version, however the interface does change noticeably on a tablet to make excellent use of the extra screen real estate.

Free versus Pro Account

The Android app is offered free of charge to anyone with Android 2.2 or above. The free app is fully functional in almost every way and is very usable in its own right.

Cloud syncing is only performed once every 24 hour period for new or changed information entered into Remember the Milk. The sync will run automatically or it can be manually triggered to send certain information into the cloud more quickly. This way other devices will be able to view the latest entries faster once the sync has been manually performed in the Android app. After that time there will be a 24 hour wait until the app can sync again in either direction.

Given the cross-platform nature of the Remember the Milk experience, the Pro account provides a regular cloud sync which will keep all devices updated that are running the app. Reminders are also added to provide alerts to users for upcoming tasks with a deadline set. Home screen widgets are included to be able to see a list of different smart lists, items with the same tag, and a list of tasks due on a certain day. There are also convenient buttons to be able to more quickly access certain features within the app or to enter a new task quickly.

The annual subscription costs $25 for the Pro account. Priority email support is also provided to Pro account holders.

App Design

The design over the app was revised early in 2013. It is incredibly slick with hand-written labels and several sliding panels on the main screen. The actual list of tasks can slide into view from the right side and be swiped back out of again to get to the Smart Lists or tags on a smart phone. The different app options line the left border making it easy to switch between features quickly. Even on a small 4-inch display the experience is nothing short of delightful. The tablet version involves less swiping because certainly in landscape orientation there is plenty of screen space. 

The app itself is fast to open even on an Android 4.2 OS with a dual-core chipset and 1 GB of RAM. The user experience with apps across platforms is also very similar so one can easily use Remember the Milk on multiple platforms during the day.

The company also takes great care with their app development. They took over a year to complete their first iPad version of their software which was a big success upon its release.

Time-sensitive Sections

The central focus in the app is to show tasks that will occur "This Week," "Today," "Tomorrow," "Saturday," "Sunday," "Monday", and so on. This will change the tasks that are displayed on the right side of the display in the task list. Once the relevant time period has been selected, the tasks can be swiped back into view on the smart phone display or seen more immediately on a tablet version.

Categories vs. Tags

With some To Do list managers you are stuck with adding a task item to a single category or if you're lucky, more than one category. With Remember the Milk, the software does away with this concept entirely and adopts the tagging used on web sites and blogs like WordPress. Tasks can be assigned multiple tags and therefore show up on more than one tag list.

A task can be assigned a tag for “party” and “friend” which means it is easy to see all tasks related to friends and those relating to a party. The tagging system is extremely powerful yet simple at the same time.

Locations

GPS can be used to update where tasks are required to be actioned and to make tasks more geo-related. The ability to group tasks by location so they can be performed in a batch is helpful especially if the tasks have different tags and ordinarily would have appeared on unrelated lists.

Searches and Smart Lists

Most likely the best feature of the app is the Smart Lists one. Perform a search for something and then see the search result. That same search can then be saved as a “Smart List.”

Smart Lists are displayed separately within the app. They provide a way to access key information based on several different criteria which uses a regular expression-type search structure (being able to include certain items, while excluding others) but done so in an accessible way. It is possible to learn how to use the power of Smart Lists quite quickly and on the Remember the Milk forum users compare Smart List configurations to compare notes.

Customized Searches

Users can type in natural language to perform searches. These can be incredibly powerful. Natural language is then matched to specific terms which can search for different types of items in various ways.

It is therefore possible to search for several friends with To Do items, up to one week ahead of today, including today, but excluding the past. This can further be matched to those tasks that mention “birthdays.” Any search can then be saved as a Smart List (see above) and referred to regularly. The result is incredibly powerful.

Home Screen Widgets

Remember the Milk has several widgets that can be added to one or more of the home screens as a Pro subscriber. These can be configured to show Smart Lists and other pieces of information to keep up to date.

Verdict

For complete task management and also managing tasks using the popular David Allen Getting Things Done (GTD) approach, the app can track all tasks extremely well. Whilst it can also be used to enter small errands to be run, for short quick lists another app like Wunderlist is probably more suitable because it does take a little bit of time to add each new task in Remember the Milk whereas with Wunderlist new entries can be tapped in very quickly.