Google Tasks vs Pokobot
A list beside your inbox, or a message wherever you are.
Google Tasks is the quietest productivity tool Google makes, and that is mostly praise. No projects, no labels, no priorities, no karma score. A list, a due date, a checkbox. If you live in Gmail, it is already there in the side panel, and turning an email into a to-do takes one click.
It is also the tool most often described as “I put it in Tasks and then never saw it again.” Not because it is badly built, but because of where it lives. Tasks is furniture in a room you leave at six.
The short answer
Google Tasks is a to-do list built into Gmail and Google Calendar, and Pokobot is a reminder that arrives as a WhatsApp message. Tasks is genuinely good at the desk: an email becomes a task in one click and keeps its link back to the thread, dated tasks turn up on your calendar, and the whole thing is free and free of clutter. What it is not is portable in the way a reminder has to be. Its home is a side panel next to your inbox, its alerts are Google notifications, and its unit is a due date rather than a moment. Pokobot has no inbox, no lists and no sub-tasks. It has one advantage, which is that it reaches you in the thread you read on the bus, at dinner, and at 9pm when the tablets are due.
Head to head
| Google Tasks | Pokobot | |
|---|---|---|
| Turning an email into a to-doGoogle Tasks | One click in the Gmail side panel, and it keeps the link back to the thread | Nothing. It has never seen your inbox and cannot |
| Showing on your calendarGoogle Tasks | Dated tasks appear in Google Calendar on their own | Can put an event on your Google Calendar when you ask, but reminders live in the chat |
| Sub-tasks and orderingGoogle Tasks | Indent a task under another, drag to reorder, keep several lists | One flat list, in the order the times fall |
| Away from the deskPokobot | There is an app, but the habit lives in Gmail and does not travel with you | It is a WhatsApp chat, so it is wherever your phone is |
| The alert itselfPokobot | A Google notification, and only for tasks you gave a time as well as a date | A WhatsApp message, which is a thing you open rather than clear |
| Saying whenPokobot | A due date, with a time as an extra step in the form | Written into the sentence, and a time is the default, not an extra |
| Repeating faster than dailyPokobot | Daily, weekly, monthly, yearly. Nothing shorter | Any interval down to minutes, with a window so it sleeps overnight |
| Chasing somebody who is not youPokobot | Not really its job. Lists are yours | Poko messages their WhatsApp, once they have agreed to it |
| Free foreverGoogle Tasks | Yes, with any Google account, and no upsell anywhere in it | No. 7 days free, then a small subscription (from ₹59/month in India) |
What Google Tasks does that this cannot
Tasks is small on purpose and it does its four things well. Two of them have no answer here at all, and one of those two is the reason most people opened it in the first place.
If this list is your working day, Tasks stays.
- Email to task in one click, with the thread still attached. Pokobot has no idea your inbox exists.
- Dated tasks appearing on your Google Calendar automatically, next to your meetings.
- Sub-tasks, several lists, and dragging things into the order you will actually do them.
- Being already installed. It is in Gmail and Calendar with nothing to set up and nothing to pay.
- Working with no signal, and staying free forever.
The reminder has to leave the building
Tasks is anchored to the place the work was created. That is a real strength between nine and six with Gmail open in a tab, and it is why the tool feels good on the day you set things up.
The obligations that get missed are almost never the ones you were looking at in the side panel. They are the 7pm one, the Saturday one, the one on the day you were not at a desk at all. That is where the anchor becomes the problem, because the list stayed at work and you did not.
Pokobot is anchored to you instead. It is a WhatsApp thread, so it is on the bus, at dinner, in the queue. And it can nudge at a pace Tasks has no setting for: 35.8% of the reminders people set here go off more than once a day, which is the shape of every real chase, and each one can carry a window so it stops overnight.
follow up on the quote every 3 hours between 10am and 6pmsubmit the timesheet every Friday at 5pmtake the tablets every day at 9pmA due date is not a time
This is the quiet mismatch at the centre of Tasks. Its unit is the due date. You can add a time, but it sits behind an extra tap in the form, and most tasks never get one because the date felt like enough when you were typing.
A task with only a date has no moment attached to it. Nothing can fire, because there is no instant to fire at, so it becomes a line you will see if you open the list. That is a checklist, and checklists are pulled, not pushed.
It also explains the most common complaint about the tool, which is people saying they get no notifications from Tasks. Often the notifications are working perfectly and the tasks simply have no time on them, so there was never anything to send. The tool is doing exactly what it was told.
Tasks is a side panel, and side panels close
Where a tool lives decides what it is good for. Tasks lives beside your inbox and inside your calendar, which makes it excellent at desk work: the thing you were emailed about, the thing that came out of the meeting, the thing you will do before Friday.
The mobile app exists, but it is not where the habit forms. Almost nobody opens the Google Tasks app for pleasure, and a list you do not open is not reminding you of anything. So the reach of the tool ends up matching the reach of the browser tab.
Pokobot does not have a home in that sense, which is the entire trick. It has no app to open and no panel to close, because the place it lives is a conversation you already check dozens of times a day for reasons that have nothing to do with your to-do list.
The cost of being minimal
Tasks is deliberately thin, and that is a genuine virtue next to apps that want you to score your own productivity. Nothing to configure, nothing to learn, nothing to feel behind on.
The thing minimalism cannot buy is persistence. There is no way to say “keep telling me until I have done this”, no interval shorter than a day, and no way to make a reminder more insistent than one notification. For a shopping list that is correct design. For a medication at 9pm or a payment that lapses on Friday, one soft alert into a busy tray is not enough weight.
That is the whole argument on this page, and it is a narrow one. Not that Tasks is bad, but that its lightest touch is lighter than some obligations need.
chase the invoice every day at 11amlistcancel 2If you live in Gmail all day
Then keep Tasks, and do not let this page talk you out of it. The email-to-task click is worth more than anything here, and a second tool that does not know about your inbox will not replace it.
The split most people land on is by time of day rather than by type of thing. Work that lands in your inbox stays in Tasks, where the thread is one tap away. Anything due after you shut the laptop, and anything that has to repeat faster than the list can handle, goes to WhatsApp.
Two tools, two clearly different jobs, and no importing. You do not migrate a list to try this; you send one message about the next thing you would otherwise miss.
Questions, answered
- Does Google Tasks send notifications?
- Yes, but only for tasks that have a time as well as a date. A task with just a due date has no moment to fire at, so nothing is sent, and it simply sits in the list. That catches a lot of people out, because adding the time is an extra step in the form and easy to skip.
- Why am I not getting Google Tasks reminders on my phone?
- Three usual causes, in order. The task has a date but no time, so there is nothing to notify about. Notification permissions for the Tasks app were switched off, often during a phone cleanup. Or the alert did arrive and went into the notification tray with everything else and was cleared without being read. The first two are fixable in settings. The third is about the channel rather than the setting.
- Can Google Tasks repeat something every few hours?
- No. Its repeat options stop at daily. If you need something every two hours, or every thirty minutes between set times, Tasks cannot express it. Pokobot can, and takes an active window so a fast repeat goes quiet overnight rather than waking you.
- Can Pokobot add things to my Google Tasks?
- No. It does not connect to Tasks at all. It can add events to your Google Calendar once you have linked it, and it can book a meeting from a message, but your task lists are untouched and stay where they are.
- Does Pokobot work with Gmail?
- No. There is no inbox integration and no way to turn an email into a reminder automatically. If that click is central to how you work, Google Tasks is doing something here that this does not attempt.
- Should I stop using Google Tasks?
- Almost certainly not. It is free, it is already in the tools you use, and it is good at desk work. The question worth asking is narrower: what have you missed in the last month, and did it happen while you were at your desk? If the answer is no, that is the handful of things worth moving to a channel that travels with you.