Everything stays in Google Tasks
Tasklens adds the view and writes changes back. There is nothing to migrate or export, and Google Tasks keeps working exactly as before.
Our own product · 2026
Tasklens: search, plan and tidy Google Tasks™ in one window.
Tasklens is a web app and a side panel for Gmail and Google Calendar that work with Google Tasks. We designed it, built it and run it. It is the clearest way we know to show how we work: a real product you can open and judge for yourself.
- Web app
- Live, free
- Gmail & Calendar side panel
- In testing
- Languages
- EN · UK · LT
- Servers of ours that see tasks
- None
The brief
For people whose Google Tasks outgrew a plain list.
Many lists, an old task to find, a week to plan across lists. We set three rules before the first screen was drawn, and every later decision was checked against them.
No server of ours in the middle
Task data travels only between the user's browser and Google. The web app keeps its copy in the browser; the side panel keeps it in a hidden app-data folder of the user's own Google Drive. No ads, no analytics, no tracking.
Honest about the limits
Google does not let apps see or set a task's time of day, star, deadline or repeat. Tasklens says so in every open task, instead of guessing.
What we built
Search that forgives, views that plan, edits that are safe.
A desktop web app with the full set of tools, and a lighter side panel inside Gmail and Google Calendar. Both read the same tasks from Google.
Search across every list
Titles, notes and list names, open and completed tasks, in all lists at once. A word matches inside a longer word, quotes find a phrase, and −word leaves a word out.
Typos and the wrong keyboard
Words of four letters or more also find tasks that differ by one letter, shown apart as “Similar”. A query typed with the wrong keyboard layout is searched again in the other one, and letters with and without accents match.
Views and saved filters
Today, Upcoming, All, No date and Completed. Filter by list, by date, or by whether a task was assigned from Google Docs or Chat, then save the set as a view of its own.
Plan and tidy in place
Set a date, move a task to another list, add subtasks, drag rows into your own order, or act on several tasks at once. Edits, moves, new tasks and deletions can be undone.
Quick add and the keyboard
Type “Order oven gloves fri #Workshop” and the date and the list are picked up. Ctrl+K opens a command palette, and shortcuts follow the physical key, so they work on Ukrainian and Lithuanian layouts too.
Inside Gmail and Google Calendar
A side panel with the same tasks next to mail and calendar, now in testing. It turns an open email into a task: the subject becomes the title, a link to the email goes into the notes, and the message body is not copied.
Decisions behind it
The parts a user never sees.
Most of the work went into behaviour that only shows when something goes wrong: a change made somewhere else, a permission, a limit of Google's API. We would make the same decisions in a client's system.
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Ask for the least access first
Signing in asks only to view tasks. Permission to change them is asked the first time the user changes something, not before.
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Never overwrite a change made elsewhere
Before it saves an edit or a move, Tasklens checks that the task was not changed in the meantime. If it was, nothing is overwritten: the user chooses Keep mine, Take Google's or Merge by hand.
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Delete only what is known to be safe
Google does not tell apps which tasks repeat. So Tasklens deletes only a task it knows does not repeat, a subtask or a task with subtasks, and sends the user to Google Tasks for the rest.
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Warn before Google drops data
When an app saves a date, Google Tasks keeps the day and drops any time stored with the task. Tasklens warns before it saves, so nothing disappears without the user knowing.
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Nothing in the background
Tasklens changes tasks only when the user asks, and only the tasks they act on. Nothing is written in the background, and no other task is touched.
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One core for two products
Search, sync and these safeguards live in one shared core with no outside dependencies. The web app and the Gmail and Calendar side panel both run it, so a fix reaches both at once.
How it was made
Built the way we build for clients.
Design proposals are judged side by side with Google Tasks' own screens before they are built, and a defect list is kept from the moment anyone notices a problem. More than 1,300 automated tests cover search, sync and the writes to Google, and releases are also checked on a real Google account.
Speed was measured, not assumed: in our performance test, a search with a typo across 10,000 tasks takes about 11 ms (median, in Node on a development machine).
We use AI in development, including implementation, code review and test preparation. We review and test the changes before they ship. Tasklens itself has no AI features.
Where it stands
As of 25 October 2026.
Stated plainly, the same way the product states its limits.
- Web app
- Live at tasks.add-ons.dev (opens in a new tab) in a desktop browser. Free, no ads.
- Google verification
- Google has not verified Tasklens yet, so Google may show a warning before sign-in.
- Gmail & Calendar side panel
- In testing. Not yet available to install from Google Workspace Marketplace.
- Languages
- English, Ukrainian and Lithuanian. The Lithuanian text has not yet been reviewed by a native speaker.
- Details
- What Tasklens does (opens in a new tab) · Privacy policy (opens in a new tab)
Google Tasks is a trademark of Google LLC. Tasklens is not made by Google and is not affiliated with Google.
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