Google still working to replacing Assistant Reminders with Tasks

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

About APK Insight: In this “APK Insight” post, we have decompiled the latest version of an app that Google has uploaded to the Play Store. When we decompile these files (called APKs, in the case of Android apps), we can see several 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. However, we will try to enable those that are closer to completion to show you what they will look like if 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 better than the web-based experience Google offered for managing reminders on a phone. One cannot overstate how slow assistant.google.com/reminders is. In comparison, the Google Tasks app is slick and supports list-based organization, stars, details, and subtasks.

The web-based Reminder 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):

Tasks

It presents a web portal similar to Reminders for those who do not 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 application continues:

Memories are now tasks. Completed reminders turned into tasks for %s.

Completed reminders turned into tasks for %s. Some reminders remain.

“Completed reminders have changed to tasks. Reminders created in Google Keep have not changed. They will be removed from Calendar, but you can still manage them in Keep.”

Reminders created in Google Keep will stay there. The company told us last year that it “will continue to look for ways to make the Keep experience useful 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 continue to invest in Google Tasks and expand its capabilities to help you capture, organize, and accomplish everything you need to do. Moving reminders into Google Tasks is one step closer to helping people get things done effortlessly, and we’re so excited to bring it to you

These developments are driven by the Google Workspace team. They should be a better steward of this productivity-related functionality than the previous one, which still pulls back on non-voice-related capabilities.

We first saw signs of this happening in June last year. Hopefully a launch will come sooner rather 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, which some APK Insight breakpoints benefit from.

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