TickTick

Welcome to Episode #86 of my very long quest to find the best Android note-taking app. A big welcome to neighbour Pat from Canada, thanks for subscribing to my newsletter!

Also thanks to Mike S. from the U.S. who asked for my thoughts on TickTick. I love getting personal notes and suggestions!

TickTick is built by Appest Inc. the same company that created GNotes which I reviewed in Aug 2022. I couldn't find much about the founder Zhimin Chen or their company back in August and I still can't. I'm not saying it's a problem, but it would be a risk for me to trust my personal notes to a company that I can't find much info on.

According to ChatGPT:

[Chen] received a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science from Zhejiang University in 2005. He then worked for several years as a software engineer at companies such as Yahoo! and Baidu before founding his own startup, Appest Inc, in 2012.

Appest received funding from several investors, including Matrix Partners China and Qiming Venture Partners. Qiming has raised USD 9.4B of capital and invested in over 480 companies including Xiaomi. I couldn't find how much either of them has invested in Appest. That's enough about the company, let me tell you a bit about the app.

TickTick is primarily a task app but also has built-in Markdown note editing. You can convert a task to a note or vice versa. It has apps for the Web, Android, iOS, Windows, MacOS, Linux, Chrome, Firefox Extension, and Apple Watch.

With 5 million downloads for the Android app and a 4.6* rating on Google Play, it seems to be doing well. The Premium version is USD 2.79 per month or 27.99 per year.

The free version is limited and the paid version adds full calendar functionality, custom filters, folders, lists, change tracking, progress tracker, premium themes, and the ability to add tasks from the lock screen.

What's odd about TickTick is that the description within a task does not support Markdown but you can convert a task to a note (or create a note) and use Markdown in the note.

There are 19 Android widgets and many of them look really useful. There are two for Pomodoro, one simple timer and one showing your statistics. Very cool!

TickTick is fast and supports Markdown, templates, tags on notes, themes, saving as an image, lots of integrations, and tasks - no kidding!

Read on for the ugly, the bad, the good, the great, and the awesome aspects of TickTick.

Screenshots

Quotes

An all-in-one productivity solution with to-do list, reminders, built-in Calendar, Pomo Timer, Habit Tracker, Note, Kanban, and so many more!

Meta

• Score 7/10
• Device: Samsung S20 5G
• Google Play rating: 4.6*
• Google Play
• Twitter: @TickTick
• Web: ticktick.com
• Privacy Policy
• Location: Beijing, China and San Francisco, U.S.A.

Ugly

• Not local first requires an account
• Found settings confusing, but there are a lot of them
• Backs up to Excel (from the Web), not Markdown files

Bad

• 1 image attachment per day for the free version and 99 per day for the Pro version
• When sharing as text, appends "- From TickTick www.ticktick.com"
• Tasks first, notes second - but, of course, makes sense!
• Puts the image at the bottom, not inline
• It does not show the image thumbnail in the list
• The trash in Android is hard to find, thought it was just me but no!
• Only 2 font sizes and 1 font
• No linking of notes

Good

• Text formatting: bold, italics, underline, strike-through
• Duplicate a note
• Folders
• Toolbar
• Tags on notes
• Bullet list
• Numbered list
• Undo and Redo
• 3 levels of headings
• Insert image
• Pin a note
• Quote and blockquote
• Priority on items: high, medium, low, none
• Share as text
• Share to email or any app
• Toolbar
• Dark mode
• Inline checklist
• Sort by date, title, priority
• Backup (via Web app)
• Highlight text

Great

• Markdown support
• Sync across devices
• Attach files
• Group sharing (Pro version)
• Save as template
• Subscribe to calendars: Device calendars, Google, Outlook, Exchange, iCloud, CalDAV, or URL
• Task List or Note List
• Save or share as an image
• Comments on items
• Calendar view
• Insert date and/or time
• Tasks
• Subtasks
• Group by date, priority, list
• Set colours on tags
• Include location
• Remind me when I arrive somewhere
• Remind me when I leave somewhere

Awesome

• Fast
• 41 Themes
• WYSIWYG editing
• 19 Android widgets
• History of task activities across a group
• Share user interface
• Save as image includes attached images
• Apps for Web, Windows, Mac, Linux, Chrome, Firefox Extension, Apple Watch
• Pomodoro timer
• Lots of integrations including Zapier
• Import from Microsoft ToDo, Todoist, Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa, Zapier, Wunderlist, Toodledo, OmniFocus, iCal
• IFTT integration
• Eisenhower Matrix

Thanks for reading to the end and have a great note-taking week ahead!