Task Manager Showdown: TickTick vs Todoist - The Ultimate Productivity Battle!

in today's video we try to answer the age-old question is Tick Tick better than todoist or is todoist better than tick tick I made a recent video about the AI functionalities that are available right now in todoist and in order to look at the AI functionality I had to sign up for a todoist premium membership and so I thought I would take advantage of having that premium membership of todoist in order to really look at the differences or similarities between to doest and tick tick so in this video I take a look at those differences and similarities between those two apps mostly from their basic task management functionalities hello I'm Joshua [Music] best all right so I have both tick tick and todoist open in my browser now I want to take a look at the differences and the similarities between the two apps now they're both empty right now so I don't have any tasks and tick tick tick and if I flip over to todoist I don't have any tasks there so I think I'm going to pull tick tick off over here to the uh right side so that way I can look at them side by side okay so now I have uh todoist on the left side and tick tick on the right side one of the things I notice right away is the similarities between them right so I'm on the inbox in both apps and they both have inboxes right below inbox is the today view in tick tick and right below the inbox is the today view in todoist and right below the today view is the next s days and in todoist it's called upcoming but I think it's pretty similar it has to be pretty similar now below that into doist is a section called filters and labels this is slightly different than tick tick but just slightly right cuz if I look over here in this navigation pign I also have filters and tags within tick tick and although it's not a separate section it is kind of in the same spot here in the left navigation Pane and then below that um in todoist is my projects and in TickTick is list the only thing we haven't covered yet is search so search is play slightly different um in the two apps search is in the main navigation menu and todoist whereas search is in this uh kind of a narrow far-left navigation menu in tick tick but it's funny to me how similar they are and I guess that's why they get compared a lot because they are so similar let's try creating a task and see um see the differences there so I'm going to scoot this over just a little bit more and you'll notice that when I do that the left navigation pin collapses now if I make the tick tick a little bit smaller uh the left navigation collapses so even when we're making them smaller they uh they both behave similarly so let's go ahead with tick tick and add a new task so I'm going to make a task called Write the report now with tick tick this task box is kind of plain I mean it doesn't give me any options although I do see a calendar over here on the far right side which I can use to set a due date and so I'm going to set that for Friday December 8th and then if I want to set anything else I can hit this down arrow over here and I can set a priority or I can um add it to a specific list all right so those are kind of my options in tick tick now if I come over here to to-do list and do the same thing at a task right away I notice I get a few more options let's type our task in here again write the report and right from here I can add more description and it's pretty clear that the due data is set here it's letting me know that todoist now has task duration which is good that's similar to tick tick uh tick tick also has task durations okay so I'm going to go ahead and select the eighth again Friday and also from here I can see that I can easily select the priority that I want looking at the priorities they're exactly the same red orange blue and none uh I can set a reminder from here just letting me know that I could have done that instantly by putting an exclamation point let's see what these three dots do so I can add labels and location and so that is just a little bit of a slight difference over here on the tick tick side right we don't have any options to set the tag or the location and just FYI if you're not familiar labels is what todoist calls tags not sure why they didn't go with the more familiar term of tags but they give me the option over here in Todo us to set a label and so when I click this option it comes up here to the task name and puts an at symbol which I guess has the shortcut to adding a label and I don't have any labels in my to-do system right now but let's see if it prompts us to add it so it does say label not found create do later and so right from here I can create the the label or the tag now over here on the tick tick side we don't have that option right it doesn't give us any option to add a tag by default now now I can if I know the secret shortcut which I do right which is the pound sign so if I know that then I can add the tag directly and I can create the tag here in tick tick as well so one of the things you might have noticed over here in tick tick it lowercased all my letters whereas in todoist it's easier to see um this is do later um over here in Tik tick I might think this is dollat which doesn't mean anything to me so let's talk just a minute about one of the major differences or perceive differences between todoist and tick tick and that is that todoist looks nicer it's more userfriendly and I would say just by doing this short exercise I can agree with that already one thing that uh I see that sticks out in tick tick is this narrow left navigation pane so you can never get rid of this and it's always there taking up screen real estate and it doesn't really look the nicest in my opinion now I understand there's some use for it because it's how you get to some of the other functions within tick tick like the Eisenhower Matrix or the Habit tracker and things like that but certainly there might be another way or somewhere else to put those links um if you're not using those types of things the other thing that's here is the search um maybe search belongs somewhere else and for sure I don't need to see these three icons down here all the time to be honest I never click on these um so they're just down here taking up screen real estate and over here in to-do list right we don't see any of that and it just makes the overall look of the app a lot cleaner a lot nicer maybe crisper is a better word and then when adding the tasks you can tell that todoist is just a little more user friendly now I'm a simple guy and I usually like simple things so I actually don't mind the way tick tick has this box uh more of a minimalistic style and all we can see is the calendar and a down arrow and a lot of times I'm not adding a priority or moving it to a folder when I'm adding the tasks especially when I'm adding things to my inbox a lot of times I'm just getting things out of my head as quickly as possible and that way I think tick tick is better um but we can kind of see some of the user friendliness um you know especially if you're new to the app how userfriendly todoist is giving all the options right here and it's pretty clear and then finally the tag I mean I don't understand why tick tick would lowercase um all of my letters I don't know if there's a reason for that now probably what I would do if I was going to add a do later tag and tick tick is I would use it underscore but it would be nice if we could use capital letters as well all right so let's go ahead and add these tasks to our system here and to doist we just hit this red save button and in tick tick fashion we don't have any button over here so we just have to know that we need to hit the enter which is pretty self-explanatory in my opinion now if we look at the way the tasks look in the two systems again I think to-do us looks just a little bit nicer I mean I agree with that it does look nicer so let me add just a few more tasks to each system and that way we can kind of get a feel for how the inbox would look if we had you know several tasks in it all right so now we have several tasks in each system I added the same tasks to both and I just want to look at the options that we have uh within the list itself so uh again we're probably familiar with tick ticks options up here we have a group buy and sort by options and so we can Group by you know date tag priority or custom and same with sort uh but also title is in there as well as an option and we're also free to move these tasks around however we want to so let's take a look at to-do it I can move the tasks up and down looks like um if I come over here let's see the view options so we have grouping looks like we have one additional option in the grouping in todoist we have date added um let's take a look at the Sorting options and again we have the date added in the Sorting options in to-do list so the other thing you'll notice is you can show completed tasks and you can also look at this in a board or calendar view now over here in tick tick uh you have to to go over to the three dots and then you can either show the completed tasks or you can change the view to conon which is the board view or timeline view which is kind of similar to calendar or we could also go to the real calendar view here by clicking over on the left side so again these are very similar apps so let's take a look at some of these other things over here in todoist we have comments so this is something different between the apps right it looks like I can add a comment directly to a list so I can add a comment to the overall project in most cases I wouldn't think you would use this in the inbox normally but it looks like that you can so let me just try it out and down below it looks like I can add an attachment I can record audio which is also something slightly different than we see in tick tick uh we can insert an emoji and add an extension all right so let me go ahead and add this comment and so now I have a comment within my inbox and looks like I have to go up to that comment section in order to see it but that's okay I have a bit of a workaround that I do in tick tick to kind of do something similar but it would be nice if that option was there and finally let's take a look at the three dots on the todoist side so we can add a section so the section looks very similar to tick tick I'm just going to drag my write the report task down to that section but the one thing you'll notice over here in tick tick if I go to my three dots I can't add a section to the inbox now if this was a different list then I could add a section So speaking of other lists let's go add a list to both apps and see what the differences are there so I'm going to expand the left navigation menu on both apps and in tick tick they're called lists and in to do us they're called projects so in tick tick let me just hit the plus button and add a list and again you're probably familiar with this if you use tick tick like I do I'm going to give it a name I always like to give it a little Emoji to give it a little uh personality uh we can give it a color here we can choose a default view for the list so our options are list View combon and timeline view we could put the list in a folder if we wanted to and we can choose what type of list it is whether it's a task list or a note list so I'm going to go ahead and add this new list all right so now we have a personal list uh it's colored green and it's just the regular list view let's go do that same thing into Tod do real quick so it looks like I hit the plus button next to my projects again very similar to tick tick I can give it a name now looks like I can't add an emoji here so what I might do is just uh right click and use my emoji that way I can choose a color did I choose it yeah it's it's chosen doesn't really let me know which color I've chosen here which is interesting I can choose to add the favorites and I can choose my view so list View Board view or calendar view looks very similar I'm going to go ahead and add this and so now I have a personal task list in both systems so let me just add a few tasks to each of these projects so I've copied and pasted a list of five tasks from chat GPT tick TI asks me if I want to batch add those tasks uh so I can just click add and it will add all five tasks let's see what happens over here in todoist I hit contrl + V to paste and it does the same thing right do I want to add five tasks or just one task I want to add all five and now I have the five tasks I do notice that a couple of these have due dates on them so that might just be a setting that I have different between each system you know whether the system tries to automatically generate a date out of what I've typed in as the task but otherwise again very similar so I do want to go check out the calendar view and to-do list let's take a look at that so I'm going to change this personal task list to a calendar view and so I see I have a task repeating every day begin a daily gratitude Journal I also have plan a outing with friends or family to reconnect on Friday it looks like if I click this icon over here I can show my tasks without a date and let's see if I can drag them onto my calendar here yes I can although this part isn't necessarily that smooth I can drag them onto the calendar so that's nice I can move back and forth between the months so how does this compare over to tick tick well this is most similar to our calendar view in tick tick so if I click over here in tick tick I get an option since I'm in a smaller window to look at just 2 weeks but I can also look at the month here as well now our calendar view and tick tick is looking at our whole system so it's not looking at just my personal list it's looking at my personal list plus my inbox plus if I had any other lists but I think I can filter it to just my personal list if I come over here to the expand option and instead of all I come down here here to just my personal list and check that so right now I just have my personal list showing on the calendar but we don't see any tasks because none of them had a date set on them automatically but let's go over to the three dots and click the arrange tasks button and so here I can see my personal list and if I didn't want to see all again I can come up here and filter to personal and then I only see my personal tasks and I can drag these as I see fit onto the calendar which does work a little smoother and tick tick I think than in todoist but the calendar view in todoist is beta right now so it's brand new and they're asking for beta feedback right now so they're probably planning to improve this uh calendar view and to-do as things go on all right let me go back to the personal list real quick and let's also check out the con Bon view while we're here so I'm going to switch this view over here to combon view in tick tick and over here into doist I'm going to select the board View and again this looks very similar I can add a section in both and I can move a task over here to my new section so very similar not not a lot of differences really so let's switch back to the list view on both and let me just click on a task and I just want to see the task view the single task view if I want to open up a task and see what my options are so I'm going to click on research and enroll in a local class or join a gym so a window pops up which pretty much takes up the whole screen so it's nice nice sized uh I can add a description oh I guess I got to click the save button before I can go change anything else uh I can add a due date set the priority add labels add a reminder I can add subtasks and looks like they also have description and all the same characteristics of a regular task and I can also add comments on the task and I can also add an attachment to this type of comment as well click the comment button I can open up that PDF if I want to okay so let's take a look at tick tick real quick I'm going to click on the same task it opens up on the right side again going back to how todoist gener looks better and feels better I would say that this is also a case like having a full screen window or or a big window that pops up taking up the the a big middle portion of the window is a lot better than this side task over here and I like that to do is presents all of my options right here I mean when I'm going to edit a task chances are I'm going to you know edit some of these things so put those front and center whereas tick tick puts the description front and center taking up most of the space and some of the options are clear like I can clearly set a due date and I can clearly set a priority but where do I set the tag at and how do I input a subtask I would have to know that I need to come down here to these three dots in the lower right corner in order to add a tag or add a subtask and if I'm not familiar with tick tick I might get easily confused with this checklist option up here as well is this a subtask I'm not sure do I have two subtask sections this is a bit confusing and I think that tikti should probably get rid of this checklist option uh it's not good to keep both especially when it's not clear um on my task where I even create a subtask at uh the comment section although not as prominent as todoist is uh fairly easy to get to I can't add an attachment to my comment the comments in tick tick are strictly comments but I can add an attachment Again by going to this more menu I would have to know that again and click the upload attachment option all right so the last thing I really want to look at is how the tags and filters look in both systems so you'll see if I expand this navigation menu over here in to-do list there's a filters and labels section so I don't see any filters or labels over here in the navigation menu at all um looks like I have to click into this filters and labels section so let me go ahead and do that and there's my label do later um so I didn't see that on the navigation menu so that is slightly different than tick tick so if I come over here and I'm just going to go back to the task screen and expand my left navigation menu so here in tick tick I have a tag section and if I expand it I see both of my tags that I created right here on the navigation menu um but let's say that I do want to see this do later tag or label on my left navigation menu so let's look at this more labels option so looks like we can add to favorites and if I add to favorites a new section shows up in the left navigation menu called favorites and my tag is there now let's see if I can add some other things to favorites can I add a project to favorites looks like I can and what about filters let me create a real basic filter here just so that I can see if I can add it to the favorite um let's see this isn't very user friendly right it asks me for a query and I have no idea how to put that in um I'm going to try to type in personal uh it does look like I can add it to favorites so let's go ahead and and add this I'm really unsure about the query part filter query isn't quite right it says our magical filter engine was unable to recognize personal and personal so let's go take a look at some of these filter examples let's just try using our tag for now since this is a basic query that we're trying to set up let's say we want to use that do later tag and now it shows me a preview down here so I can see it's probably going to work this time so I'm going to go ahead and click the save button and I do see the basic filter there and if I expand my left navigation menu I now see the basic filter under the favorite section as well so I can add pretty much anything to my favorite section now Tik tick has something similar right with pins so you can pin stuff that is your favorite so right now I can pin this personal list and it goes up to the top I could also pin a tag and and I could create a basic filter over here in tick tick now this is one area where tick tick looks much better in my opinion um I just couldn't understand my options over there in to-do list when I was creating a filter but over here in Tik tick it's pretty straightforward I mean so if I want to filter on list I can just select the list if I want to filter on tag I can just select the tag so this is much easier over here in tick tick and let's save this basic filter and then again I can pin this up to the top section which is similar to the favorite section in todoist so that part is slightly different the filter section is definitely different I would say and kind of expanding on that filters topic you know the other thing that Tik tick has is the more advanced filtering option which is slightly more complex which is what you would expect but I think it's still more straightforward than what I saw over here in todoist let me go back into the filters here in todoist and I'm going to expand this it just it doesn't I guess you would have to go read The Help um to understand what you would want to write in your queries if you want to use and logic or or logic or both or things like that so there is a question mark up here in the upper right and it looks like if I click this I can find out more about filters so I could click this and get an introduction to filters I can watch a video but from a userfriendly standpoint I'm going to say that tick tick wins that category on the filters all right so did we answer the question of which one is better tick tick or todoist you know I think I agree with a lot of folks that todoist does look better I'll be honest it does look better than tick tick does that make it a better app possibly but when I look at both apps side by side they're almost identical it really is is Coke better than Pepsi or is an iPhone better than Android you know at the end of the day you have the same apps on both phones they're very similar they both get you to the internet they both get you to Instagram you can check your email on both same is true with tick tick and todoist you know from the basic functionality you have your lists you have your tasks you have your tags your priorities comments it's all the same there are some peripheral differences like todoist has Ai and tic tick has a lot of other functionalities that we didn't discuss today that todoist doesn't have things like the Eisenhower Matrix uh the focus timer uh Habit tracker but to be honest I use tictic as a task management app so I would probably be fine with it if tick tick decided to take some of those features away and strictly just have the task management system but we still haven't answered the question which one is better you know I read online some time ago someone asked the question what's the best exercise to do and I thought the best answer given to that question was the best exercise to do is the exercise that you do so if you like playing basketball that's a great exercise for you or if you like running that's a great exercise for you and I think that's an appropriate answer to this question the best task management app is the one that you use and for the last several years I've used tick tick and I don't plan on changing just because to-do us may look a little nicer in some areas I think there's something to be said for picking a tool and using it for years and really getting to know that tool and really having it become part of your workflow and so that's what I've done with tick tick over the last several years I've really tried to learn the tool and make it a part of my workflow now I'm not saying I'll never switch from tick tick if there was some compelling reason to switch to todoist like if I really wanted that AI functionality well then maybe I'd switch but right now there's not a compelling reason for me to switch especially having seen how similar the apps are from their basic functionality So my answer to the question and you might have guessed it the best app between tick tick and todoist is Tick Tick because it's the app that I use but let me know in the comments what you think well that's all for this video thanks for watching have a good one

Channel: Joshua Best

Views: 5,705

Keywords: Productivity, Apps, TickTick

Id: B4AKG0zPbfc

Length: 25min 45sec (1545 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 07 2023