Natural language support
When entering to-do's you should be able to enter the item with natural language such as "Meeting with John today at 3pm" or any number of a wide range of ways. The app would know that it needs to be done today at 3pm. Other shortcuts should be supported including the reoccurring items such as "the second Monday of each month".
Natural language is faster to enter items vs selecting each field. After you enter the task with natural language there should be some visual que that tells you the system has recognized the item such as date, time, list, etc.
Todoist supports this and if you want people to change platforms this is a must have feature.
Will Wilson
shared this idea
In our latest iOS & iPadOS update – version 2.5 – we’ve brought smart due dates to the app.
Will be coming to more platforms in the future.
Let us know what you think on Twitter (microsofttodo), Facebook (microsofttodo) or Instagram (@microsoft_todo)
217 comments
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[Deleted User]
commented
C'mon, people, they've implemented DARK THEME! It's much better than working properly application, it's much more important than usability.
I strongly recommend everyone to switch to Todoist, which with the current speed of Microsoft is ahead at least by 20 years in technologies. -
John Nott
commented
I think it's time to move to another app. For a company with the financial muscle of Microsoft, to leave the natural language feature out of non-iOS apps is a bit of a shame and gives some clue as to the importance of Todo to them. It's quite obviously "good enough" for Microsoft - there's no push to make it the best in the field.
The Windows app in particular is - in comparison to Todoist - just functional. There's no "wow. This is the app I need to use" about it. It's rather damning that Wunderlist had natural language features and Microsoft have only implemented them on some app versions i.e. the feature has merit, and was worthy of porting but development priorities are elsewhere. Then again, Outlook tasks have barely changed since Outlook 2000 so it's not without precedent for Microsoft to let features stagnate I suppose.
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Jorge de Andrés
commented
Thank you. Didn't know todoist had this feature. I was missing it since wunderlist closed. For me it is a must-have.
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Mo Legend69
commented
Mo Legend69
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Andyman
commented
1 year since last update. "Working on it" faster please
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Aaron Eff
commented
I'm very disappointed that this feature isn't on Android or even *Windows* yet. I live and die by my to-do list... it takes me 2-3x as long to create a task if I have to click/tap a bunch of different fields. I like almost everything else about the app, but I stick to Todoist because it's just faster. Adding natural language parsing would make me switch in a heartbeat.
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Kevin
commented
No one from Microsoft seems to read these. They don't incorporate features across all platforms and they don't answer responses to these threads. Very disappointing.
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Anonymous
commented
This is getting beyond a joke... It would take one of your programmers a few days at most to write something. Please release some form of natural language support - even if it is slightly buggy, users such as myself would be happy to report issues.
We deserve an update on this now.
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Anonymous
commented
It's uncanny how this app introduces features to certain platforms and ignoring others for months and months. You would think it would be somewhat easy to integrate natural language support to all platforms, considering that Wunderlist, Todoist, Tick Tick, Nozbe, etc have all figured it out years ago!
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Ramsey Cohen
commented
When will this be added to Windows or Android? It's been on iOS for months and nothing for Windows... That doesn't make sense. Based on how I use my to-do list "To-Do" is unusable because of the current lack of this feature.
Will be using Todoist instead, but, would LOVE to have these features so I can switch.
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Jordan
commented
Why did you buy Wunderlist if you were going to rewrite your own task app from the ground up? Smart dates need to be a priority—for all platforms. Say something is due Friday. On the desktop, you're typing in the task and your fingers are already on the keys. You just tap out "fri" and, boom, it recognizes this as the due date, you mash the Enter key, and you're in business. Right now, not only do you have to transfer to the mouse*, but no calendar picker pops up on the initial click, requiring you to drill down one more level, select the date, then click Save.
*I know you can use tab, arrow keys, and the Enter key to do this by keyboard, but have you actually tried this? It's just not worth it.
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raylapse
commented
I check this post every two months because I believe MS should understand this is the core feature of a to-do app, but I got dispointment every time!!!
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Anonymous
commented
It’s great that you’re rolling out natural language support for date/time but please consider project and possibly tags.
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Bob Jones
commented
Add to iOS in November, still no sign of it for the macOS app. This makes this app a total non-starter compared to something like Todoist. It's pretty sad to see how long this is taking... Plus, the natural language processing in the iOS app is only for singular events, such as "get groceries Friday". But you can't do something like "get groceries first Friday of every month" or "every other week" and have that translate properly. So even where they have implemented it, it's been done so at the most limited level and is still essentially useless.
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Gunduz Mutlu
commented
Three years passed and still very limited feature release?! Are you really interested in delivering a user satisfaction? This became an essential feature for todo apps.
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DmitryT
commented
3 years have passed since it was "planned"...
Marcel is the "best" product manager in the world (no). -
Anonymous
commented
I have moved to To Do from Wunderlist for almost a month, and I still miss this feature hell. Clicking through several steps only to add the due date and reminder is f*cking annoying.
Even this feature on iOS, it is not as good as what Wunderlist did. Type "Do something today 9pm" and then still have to tap to add the due date and reminder? Why you have to be so cumbersome like that. Can we just type?
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Adam Wooderson
commented
This is the #1 reason I used Wunderlist. I can't believe Microsoft To Do doesn't have this built-in to the desktop apps yet. It completely derails the efficient capturing of "to-do's" if you have to move over to a drop-down then open a calendar utility to pick Wednesday of next week. Oy.
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Wes Davidson
commented
Three years, and still waiting…
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Jordan
commented
I know other people are asking for other features, but trust me, they're not as important. (The other features, I mean, not the other people 😉.)