Probably my least favorite thing about creating tasks is scheduling. I always end up with a giant task list filled to the brim with todos all scheduled for tomorrow or, worse yet, yesterday. I never take the time to schedule tasks because all that scrolling and figuring out what day of the week July 30 falls on is such a pain.
Swipes has that sewn up, making scheduling a simple swipe and tap. There’s lots more to this great to-do app though, including tags and task history. All that, and it looks pretty fine, too.
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Swipe It Good
Your main task list is available under the funny “S” up top. Add a new to-do by tapping the plus sign and entering a short description. Hit the yellow carrot next to the text entry field when you’re done, but if you’re adding a laundry list of tasks, tap Next on the keyboard to quickly enter more todos. A good task manager is more than just a list of the things you need to do though, and Swipes gives you a bit more control over your tasks. Double tap a task to add notes, add a reminder or enter some tags. Back in the main list view, select a few similar tasks at once to add tags to all of them or even delete them.
Add a bunch of tasks or edit just one.
It’s probably not surprising that an app called Swipes uses some gestures to control your tasks. Swipe a task to the left to schedule it for tomorrow, the next couple of days, a week out, a specific date or no date in particular. Setting your task to an unspecified date tells Swipes that it’s not due today and pulls it off of your main task list, so you can focus on only what’s important right now. Scheduled (and unscheduled) tasks aren’t lost, though; you’ll find them on the scheduled tasks screen, available in the upper left. Reschedule any task for today, moving it back to the main Swipes task list, by swiping a scheduled task to the right and releasing when it turns yellow.
Schedule a task easily.
Complete a task by swiping to the right. The task turns green and moves to the completed tasks screen, found under the checkmark to the right. All of your completed tasks are there, sorted by how recently you marked them off of your list. If you need to start over on a task, swipe to the left until it turns yellow to schedule it for today or keep swiping until it turns orange to set it for further out.
Review all of your completed tasks.
After you’ve created a bunch of tasks, it might be hard to go back and find just the one you’re looking for. This is especially true if you need to find a completed task from a few days or few weeks ago. Luckily, Swipes has a handy search function for just that eventuality. Either search for a keyword from within the task itself or filter tasks by one or more tags. The ability to filter tasks turns Swipes into a much more powerful task manager, giving you the ability to create multiple to-do lists. Use one tag for work and another for each project, and then sort out your tasks based on those tags.
Things to Improve
There are a couple of things I’d like to see in a future update of Swipes. The first is editable tags. I’m not talking the tags associated with my task, because those are easy as pie to change. It’s as simple as selecting a task and selecting or deselecting a tag. The problem is that once you’ve created a tag, it’s there forever, even if you delete the tasks with which it was associated. A project-specific tag is permanent, even if the project was completed months ago, and that tag just junks up your tags list forever. That’s not as big an issue as misspelled tags. Accidentally label a task “wok” instead of “work,” and sure, you can re-tag that task, but now you’ve got a wok tag permanently chilling in Swipes.
Your can’t rename your tags, and the search could be improved, but both still work great.
My other gripe is that when I search my tasks in Swipes, I can only peek in the task titles; the search doesn’t reach the notes associated with each task. I can’t imagine searching notes in addition to titles would yield a lot of false positives, and if so, that would be a nice toggle to stick in a settings screen. While it’s not a deal breaker, it would certainly be nice if all those notes I went to the trouble of tapping out helped me pinpoint a miscatergorized or badly scheduled task.
Final Thoughts
I’m always looking to be able to sync my task list, and I want to get it on the web if I can. That’s not available yet, but the developer says it’s on the way. In the meantime, Swipes is a dishy friend keeping all of tasks sorted just so. The tags are an insanely useful way to arrange everything, creating lots of different lists or a single bulletin just for today.
Scheduling is the standout in Swipes — it’s just so easy. A couple of taps, and of course a swipe, and you can quickly set a date for your task. A few more taps, and you’ll get a more specific date or push your task further out. The comprehensive history and search are going to come in handy when I least expect it, too, I can just tell. Swipes is full of great features, even those I didn’t know I was looking for.
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