Microsoft To Do: Lists & Tasks reviews
What users love and hate · 500 reviews analyzed · ★ 3.5
A free cross-platform to-do list grown out of Wunderlist and wired into the Microsoft 365 ecosystem: it rests on instant phone-to-PC sync and a home-screen widget, while its hidden pain is that tying it to a corporate Microsoft account turns your personal list into a hostage of your employer.
What users love
The home-screen widget is the product, not the app
For a huge share of users the value isn't the program itself but the widget: they tick and add tasks straight from the home screen without ever opening the app. This glance-and-check-on-the-go behavior is what sustains the daily habit — a task lands in the list in a second, before the thought slips away.
best features, easy to use - the widget shortcut is extremely appreciated
Best to do app, without any ad or any clutter. It's just simple to use, not a very fancy UI. Helps manage tasks well, and get updates in the home screen, no need to open the app.
Giving 2 solely because of the widget. The widget is all buggy and I finally have to look for other options as widget is my main need than the app itself.
Instant phone-to-PC sync is the hook that keeps people for years
Seamless sync between phone and computer is what keeps people for years: jot a task on the PC during work, see it later on Android, and vice versa. For those living in Windows and Office it closes the loop as a one-stop tool — one list available everywhere, and it's that, not features, that retains the user.
This app is useful for me because it is also available on macbook. Although i have an android phone, yet i can add tasks, reminders, groceries to buy, etc on mac during work and see them later on my android phone.
I love the integration between mobile phone and my laptop. very user-friendly.
work really fine and laptop and phone has same things tasks making it easier to work with
Ad-free simplicity is what wins love, not features
The app wins not through feature richness but the opposite: a clean, ad-free, clutter-free interface and an instant learning curve. People name the absence of ads as the reason they love it and contrast it with bloated rivals. This is the segment that wants "just a list" — and the product hooks them precisely with its austerity.
simple, clean, powerful and lightweight. no ads, cross device.
I liked this app because there were no Ads and its simple to use
Just Awesome. Very user friendly and Clean design without unnecessary cluttering.
Nested lists and sub-tasks defuse the feeling of overload
A key behavioral benefit: keeping a "list inside a list" and breaking tasks into steps removes the feeling of having too much to do. It especially resonates with people who struggle to organize — such as those with ADHD, who flatly call the app a lifesaver. The hierarchy turns chaos into manageable chunks.
This let's me have To do list inside my To do list and not be overwhelmed. And it let's me pick out which task I will work on for the day.
.....a Must-have! Especially for an ADHD suffering person like myself.
I love that I can have sub categories for my goals, and share lists with others. I use this for everything from grocery lists to career goals.
Shared lists turn a personal organizer into a family and team tool
List sharing extends the product beyond the individual: families run shared shopping lists, teams split the workload, and this becomes its own reason to stay. From "my to-do list" the app grows into a shared coordination surface — and a shared list is harder to abandon because others depend on it.
Keeps me organized. Love to share my list with my family.
Excellent replacement and improvement on Wunderlist, definitely recommended as a shared list app.
so helpful for some one as scatty as me. mostly for work and sharing workload. amazing
Rich task notes turn the to-do list into a personal knowledge base
An unexpected strength: the notes-and-links field inside a task makes people use the app far beyond to-dos — storing appliance filter numbers, recipes, bill dates, gift ideas, brainstorming links. The extra detail on a task turns a simple list into a long-term reference system, and that retains harder than any "to do."
I keep a list of my various appliances and the #s of their replacement filters & bulbs. And gift ideas. And bill dates. Better thsn a spreadsheet because I can include links & notes.
Useful for keeping permanent lists, recipes and something for long term retention. Best feature is additional detail on a task.
If you're like me and need somewhere to jot down brainstorming and research links on the go, I highly recommend.
What users hate
Account binding makes your personal list your employer's property
The most trust-destroying scenario: the list is set up on a work or school Microsoft account — and when you leave the company the account is shut down, and years of personal lists (shopping, travel, books) vanish for good. The product quietly makes the user a hostage of their employer, and the data loss hits exactly the most loyal users who kept lists for a decade.
My previous account was through my Gmail, but of course Microsoft is stupid and forces you to use a work or school account to continue. I did, begrudgingly. But inevitably, I left the company. Lo and behold they shut down my account and now over a decade of checklists for everything from shopping, travel, book and movie recs are gone.
App does not combine tasks from multiple MS accounts. Hello! I have tasks in both work and personal lives.
I also hate that somehow my personal one is linked to my work one, which once my job started adding all these restrictions, I can't do simple things.
"My Day" starts empty every morning — you re-add tasks by hand
A deliberate product decision: "My Day" wipes itself every morning and doesn't pull in overdue or recurring tasks. On paper it's "mindful daily planning"; in practice it's manual labor — people re-add their routines every day, and yesterday's missed tasks must be hunted down in "Planned." A mechanic meant to focus you becomes a daily re-setup.
Not good enough, every day, I always have to re add my daily routines, it's more of a manual app
It would be nice if my day would include overdue automatically. Would be nice if my day only showed your tasks.
I also wish there were a separate overdue list that automatically includes previous days' missed tasks; navigating the 'Planned' list every time is tedious.
Categories exist on web but are cut from the app — the versions don't match
Different capabilities on web, desktop and phone break a single workflow: grouping by category (e.g. by school class) exists in the browser but is unavailable on Android — and it used to be there and was removed. The user configures a system in one place and loses it in another, and it's the unpredictability, not the missing feature, that destroys trust in the product as one tool.
The most useful feature from the web version is grouping Categories to view tasks from individual classes. I was disappointed to learn that the app doesn't share that *highly useful* feature, but even more disappointed to learn it used to but disabled it.
Web app groups by category, phone app does not have categories.
Very nice app. Please add categories in app. It is not available like web. It's very important feature for easy accessibility and management.
No bulk "delete completed" — the list becomes a junkyard
Completed tasks pile up forever, and there's no way to bulk-delete or bulk-uncheck. For reusable lists (shopping, packing, checklists) this is fatal: every cycle you manually clear or re-uncheck items one by one. Rivals like Google Tasks solve it with a single button — and users name this as their reason to leave.
Google tasks is the only app I've seen to actually implement an easy "Delete completed" feature. Every todo app this one included wants to keep every task around forever.
The 'Completed' list is a good view, but where is a "Select All" and " Delete" option?
It is quite tedious having to uncheck multiple items.
An accidental swipe destroys a task with no undo and no history
The swipe gesture and the handy "done" button right on the widget turn against the user: a shaky hand or a thumb misfire instantly marks and deletes a task with no confirmation, no trash, no history. People lose tasks without even knowing what they had "to do." The input speed the widget exists for becomes data fragility — it needs a trash bin and a way to disable swipe.
God forbid your hands shake, or you're using your thumb to check something. Swipe, gone for good. When will there be an option to disable the swipe function.
Home screen widgets are really buggy And ist extremally easy to mark task as done on widgets. So easy that I miss click all the time and they dissappear instantly so I have no idea what I have "to do", there's also no task history.
It needs trash folder for accidentally deleted notes.It is good application in structure and customization features.
Recurring tasks break on daylight saving and ignore the deadline
The product's core — recurring reminders — behaves unreliably: on a daylight-saving change the task shifts a day forward or back, and "repeat on weekdays" silently erases the due date instead of treating it as the end deadline. For a tool people rely on as their memory, unpredictable recurrence undermines the very reason to trust it.
Feedback: "Repeat on Weekdays" should respect the due date Currently, setting a task to repeat on weekdays completely removes the due date.
Does not repeat tasks properly, it also does not honour a daylight savings change so a task set to repeat every day at 08:00 am either fails or starts repeating at 09:00 or 07:00 am
Good but infuriating that repeat events every daylight savings change makes the repeat event one day earlier or later.
No calendar view and no link between tasks and the schedule
The product deliberately stays a flat list: no calendar view, no export of tasks to Outlook or Google Calendar, no time-boxing. For users who think in time rather than lines, that's a ceiling — they want to drag a task into a calendar slot and see the day's load, and they leave for Google, where tasks appear in the calendar on their own. The missing task-to-time bridge cuts off an entire segment of planners.
I finally decided to switch to Google Tasks and google products, and the experience is night and day. All of my tasks now integrate perfectly and show up right inside my Google Calendar without any hassle.
best to do.... but could be better incorporated into calendar (eg could drag task in to "time box" calendar on phone)
needs calendar sync, hard to visualize tasks
No search across lists — long lists become impassable
The heaviest users have dozens of lists and hundreds of tasks, and they're exactly the ones who hit the lack of search: there's no way to find a specific item in a long list. The paradox is that the longer someone uses the app and the more they invest in it, the harder this gap hits them — the product punishes its most loyal audience.
I have a lot of reminders in this app. A search function will be a very good addition.
works as expected. no search feature on the lists.. which would have been nice
Otherwise, a good replacement for Google Tasks which for some reason refuses to include a search feature. To Do has search
There's nowhere in the app to report a problem — feedback loops in circles
Users describe the same breakages for years and see that no one reads them: there's no in-app feedback channel, submission "goes in circles," emails bounce. This breeds the feeling of an abandoned product and nudges people to leave — it's not the breakage itself but the developer's silence that kills the loyalty of those who were willing to stay and wait for a fix.
Looking for a feedback channel via the app goes in circles it seems.
And I really love that widget on my Galaxy S23. Doesn't matter if it is stacked or stand-alone. And I can not find a quick & easy way to report the bug.
Multiple bugs in the Andriod and windows versions. No one responds to the Uservoice and Helpshift bug posts. Seems like Microsoft has not invested properly in the Dev team