Google continues work on replacing Assistant Reminders with Tasks

Back in September, Google confirmed our Insight that Google Tasks would replace Assistant Reminders in the “coming months.” We’re still waiting for this to launch five months later, but work is ongoing.

About APK Insight: In this “APK Insight” post, we’ve decompiled the latest version of an application that Google uploaded to the Play Store. When we decompile these files (called APKs, in the case of Android apps), we’re able to see various lines of code within that hint at possible future features. Keep in mind that Google may or may not ever ship these features, and our interpretation of what they are may be imperfect. We’ll try to enable those that are closer to being finished, however, to show you how they’ll look in case that they do ship. With that in mind, read on.

Google is currently rolling out a Material You redesign for Tasks on Android. Even before that, the native app was superior to the web-based experience that Google offered for managing reminders on a phone. One cannot overstate how laggy assistant.google.com/reminders is. In comparison, the Google Tasks app is smooth and supports list-based organization, starring, details, and subtasks.

The web-based Reminders experience can be accessed from the Google app by tapping your profile avatar. Tasks will also have that shortcut, according to this week’s Google app beta (version 14.6):

<string name=”googleapp_accountmenu_tasks”>Tasks</string>

This suggests a similar web portal to Reminders for those that don’t have the Google Tasks app installed.

If you’re in that boat for whatever reason, Google Tasks will also be available in Google Calendar. Development in that app continues:

<string name=”reminders_migration_force_completed_toast_completed_reminders_only”>Reminders are now tasks. Completed reminders turned into tasks for %s.</string>

<string name=”reminders_migration_partial_failure_toast_only_completed_reminders_migrated”>Completed reminders turned into tasks for %s. Some reminders are remaining.</string>

<string name=”reminders_migration_tooltip_with_keep_reminders_only_completed_reminders_migrated_remark”>”Completed reminders turned into tasks. Reminders created in Google Keep were not changed. They’ll be removed from Calendar, but you can still manage them in Keep.”</string>

Reminders created in Google Keep will remain there. The company told us last year that it will “continue to look for ways to make the Keep experience helpful for our users.”

Another thing to keep in mind is that this migration away from Assistant Reminders will be mandatory at some point (no timeline has been provided yet), with Google focusing on Tasks going forward:

We are continuing to invest in Google Tasks and expand its capabilities to help you capture, organize and accomplish all you have to get done. Moving reminders into Google Tasks is one step closer to helping people effortlessly get things done, and we are so excited to bring it to you.

These developments are being driven by the Google Workspace team. They should be a better steward of this productivity-related functionality than the previous one, which continues pulling back on nonvoice-related capabilities.

We first spotted signs that this was happening in June of last year. Hopefully, a launch is coming sooner than later. When live, you’ll see a “See reminders in Google Tasks” card in Assistant after creating an old reminder to start the migration process.

Thanks to JEB Decompiler, from which some APK Insight teardowns benefit.

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