PSA: Google Tasks now works in landscape mode on Chromebooks and it makes all the difference

As someone who uses Google Tasks on the daily to reflect and align my life toward my goals as a replacement for the todo portion of my physical bullet journal, I became quite frustrated when I found out that the app only opened on my Chromebook in portrait mode! Luckily, I have a Lenovo Duet which is more well suited to holding it as a tablet than, well, a clamshell device (that would be weird).

However, despite this, I found that sitting in the morning with my duet and no keyboard (none worth using, at least) was just not sufficient for planning my day. With the ability for Google Tasks to tie directly into Calendar nowadays, it felt odd to manage it all with the touch screen alone. I’m aware of the Full Screen for Google Tasks Chrome extension, but it felt less native to me, and the idea of managing all of my daily goals via the Gmail window felt awfully cluttered. What I’m saying is that nothing really beats the official Google Tasks app, and that’s why I’m pleased to say that it now opens up in landscape mode on Chromebooks!

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Whoever the genius was at Google that put their time into rectifying this seemingly innocuous issue has my undying gratitude. While it may not seem like a big deal to most, it’s something I feel completely transforms the Tasks experience. While there are other things about the app that I could complain about, the team has fixed many of the things that I disliked from its inception.

I don’t believe that the app has been fixed for very long since I use it daily and have been stuck holding my Chromebook like, well, a book since forever. I’ve given up trying to use it cross-platform in its native form until now, and simply managed everything on my tiny phone screen (do I get to complain about the size of the screen compared to my eyesight at 32 years old?) Regardless, it’s fantastic in full screen, but even better Chromebooks if you shrink the window down and align it with the left or right side of your screen.

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Pro Tip: If you name every list you create in Google Tasks after a personal goal of yours, it’s easy to see them all in one place!

Managing your Tasks cross-platform should also include doing so on your Chromebook. It should mean doing it without compromise or accessing those tasks with workarounds. It should mean being able to do it in dark mode! While I am ecstatic that this is finally all possible, I hope for a day when Google allows users to access their todo list in a native web app without Gmail or calendar attached at the hip with eye torching light mode (why exactly hasn’t Gmail on the web received a dark mode?) Even though I’m a pie person, I finally have my cake, and I’m going to eat it too.