The new year approaches, and with it arrive dreams of being a more productive you – which of course involves choosing the perfect task management system for your needs.
In a timely move, Moleskine’s elegant task manager, Actions, was updated today with a new Reminders import feature, so you can instantly migrate any or all of your Reminders lists and tasks into Actions. The update also supports two new iOS 13 features: shortcuts featuring parameters and context menus.
Reminders import works just as you would expect: upon hitting the Import button in the sidebar menu, the app displays all of your Reminders lists, and you can choose some or all of them to import into Actions. Each full list gets added, along with its reminders and their metadata, assuming that metadata is supported by Actions. For example, due dates, repeat patterns, and attached notes all transfer over, but images don’t because Actions doesn’t offer the ability to attach images to tasks.
If a Reminders list matches the name of an existing Actions list you have, those tasks will be added to your existing list rather than creating a duplicate. Another nice touch is that Actions matches the list color found in Reminders as closely as possible, so if your Reminders lists are purple, light blue, and orange, the newly created lists in Actions will adopt these same colors.
Actions has also updated its Shortcuts support for iOS 13 and parameters. This enables new flexibility in creating actions that get your tasks from a certain list, or your completed tasks, pulls up your Daily Briefing for a given day such as today or tomorrow, opens a specific list, and more. With parameters support, each of these different actions can be populated with data pulled directly from the full Actions app, they can be run within Siri in conversational mode, and are ultimately easier to work with than before.
Besides updated shortcuts, Actions’ other iOS 13 update involves context menus. When viewing your schedule or a given list, you can long-press on one of the visible tasks to have it pop out into a detail view that shows you more information and provides key actions you can take. For example, long-pressing will reveal any notes saved with the task, and offer buttons to Complete or Delete the task, or open a link it contains. This latter options works with multiple links at once: if a task’s note has several links, tapping the ‘Links & Shortcuts’ button in the context menu will then present a second menu level containing all the links you can choose from.
Actions is one of the most visually unique task managers on iOS, but highly functional as well, especially when paired with Moleskine’s Timepage app. Reminders import makes it easier to get started with Actions, and updated shortcuts enable more user-friendly automation than before; it’s the simple but meaningful implementation of context menus, however, that will likely benefit users’ everyday interactions with the app the most. The extra layer of data and actions offered by a context menu, across both iPhone and iPad, works especially well with Actions’ tasks-as-cards design.
