Productivity appsare a dime a dozen. A quick look in your phone’s app store or a Google search will reveal almost endless options for Android, iPhone, and browsers. Yet, finding the right one can be a bit of a Goldilocks situation. They are either too expensive, too complicated to use, too cluttered, or not capable enough. It’s rare to find that magical sweet spot of a well-designed app that offers just the right number of features without over-complicating things.
Trevor Tarakjian felt the same way and decided to do something about it. He’s currently developing theToodles productivity app, which was made available in theApple App Storeon June 10th. Despite only being available for less than a week, it has more than 600 downloads already. I spent some time chatting with Tarakjian to learn more about the app, the development process, and what makes it so great, and found myself eagerly hoping for an Android version sooner rather than later.
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Toodles is a productivity app that helps you manage daily tasks, plan projects, or just remember the little things. It offers a wide range of features, many of which are free, and a simple UX so you don’t have to sort through too much noise.
Toodles was a personal project
But it grew because of collaboration and community
“After trying just about every productivity app available for the past few years, I realized that there was always something missing,” Tarakjian explained. He’s a self-described productivity nerd with a background in productivity and even runs a productivity blog, so he decided to take that expertise and create something.
The project originally began as something fun for him to work on. “I wanted to get something up and running that I would be proud of,” said Tarakjian. It was important to him to create an app that he would enjoy using himself, so he focused on learning from apps that he uses on a day-to-day basis, considering what’s lacking and building off that.
“It’s all about saying goodbye to your tasks,” explained Tarakjian.
Beyond learning why he decided to create this app, I was also curious about where the name came from. For those too young to know, “toodles” is an old-fashioned way of saying goodbye. “It’s all about saying goodbye to your tasks,” explained Tarakjian. That’s reason enough to try it out, in my opinion.
When Tarakjian started working on Toodles, he also started documenting the process and sharing it on Threads. “I was posting every update I made to the app and was getting a lot of traction,” he said. “I was getting a lot of feedback from people in the industry about things I could implement.” As a result, he was able to build out features and tools that he knew others would find useful.
The public development of the app allowed him to “foster a community through active feedback and effectively build a better app because of the people who came together to be a part of the process,” Tarakjian explained.
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Toodles is a simplified yet efficient productivity app
A clean UX was essential
One of the main focuses for Tarakjian was the UX of his app and affordable pricing. So many to-do list apps out there are overly cluttered and confusing to use, and many are way too expensive. Toodles is designed to be different. “I wanted a clean, simple app at a low price point,” he said. Even though it’s simple, it is also customizable. “The goal of Toodles is to ensure the experience is simple enough for basic users but can be tailored to a more complex experience if you are a big productivity nerd,” he said.
The app is “designed to be fast, efficient, and effective.”
The app is “designed to be fast, efficient, and effective,” he explained. The app offers basic tools like lists, projects, and progress bars. But it also “offers some non-standard functionality such as toggling specific elements to be displayed in your list, a bookmarking feature to save links from the web, and a soon-to-be customizable dashboard,” Tarakjian said. A widget feature is also coming soon, which will allow for interaction without fully opening the app.
Toodles is also much more affordable than many productivity apps available. Many features of the app are totally free, in fact. You can create unlimited tasks, though you will be limited on the number of projects you can create without paying for a subscription. That subscription is only $1.99 a month or $19.99 annually.
Although he has only been working on the app for three months, Tarakjian has lots of plans to improve the app already. He said he has a list of features he’d like to implement, but for now, he is focusing on completing the UI instead of necessarily adding new features. “I want to build more polish before building something brand new,” he explained. Toodles is currently only available for iPhones, but he said he would like to create an Android version eventually and perhaps a web-based version. As an Android user, I will eagerly be awaiting one or both of those to help streamline my workload.
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