Every once in a while Google remembers that it runs a to do list app. Last month, it would seem, was one of those times: the tech giant re-vamped the web version of the application, changing the main interface to resemble a kanban board.
I say “resemble” because this isn’t a general-purpose kanban board like what’s offered by Trello, or a custom view of an existing list, like what Todoist offers. Those tools are made with the assumption that you will drag things from left to right as you make progress on them. (For example, in my writing work I use a kanban board to track my ongoing projects. I have columns for things like “Outline,” “Writing,” “Editing,” and “Published,” in that order. I drag my project cards from left to right as I make progress.)
Google Tasks isn’t quite built for this this use case. The new interface simply presents all of your lists as columns as the default view in your browser. If you’re already using your lists to differentiate projects or categories of task, this won’t be helpful, unless you were really hoping for a quick way to move tasks from one list to another. But if you haven’t used multiple lists until now, you could use this new interface as a general-purpose kanban system—just name your lists after different stages of your workflow and drag away.
It’s worth noting that this kanban view is only offered on the web version of Google Task, which you can find by heading to tasks.google.com or by clicking the tasks icon in the top-right corner of Google Calendar. It hasn’t made its way to the mobile version yet.
Credit: Justin Pot
It’s worth noting that you can still find a different version of Google Tasks in the right-hand sidebar of both Google Calendar and Gmail; this view shows only one list at a time, as does the mobile app.
Credit: Justin Pot
Basically, it’s all a little inconsistent at the moment, which makes sense: It’s still a Google product. Maybe Google will add the kanban view to the app the next time they remember they own a to do list app (my guess for when that will happen: January 2026).