In the wake of the preview launch of its new To-Do app, Microsoft has announced plans to eventually say goodbye to Wunderlist. There's no firm timeline involved, but as development on To-Do moves forward and it absorbs the best of Wunderlist, Microsoft says Wunderlist will be retired.
In its blog post announcing the To-Do Preview, Microsoft says:
Today's To-Do Preview would not have been possible without the support and input of Wunderlist fans over the last six years. In the coming months, we'll bring more of the favorite elements of Wunderlist into the To-Do experience, adding features such as list sharing, apps for Mac, iPad and Android tablet, as well as additional integrations with other Microsoft services. Once we are confident that we have incorporated the best of Wunderlist into To-Do, we will retire Wunderlist. While the name and icon may change, the team that brought you Wunderlist continues on. We look forward to making To-Do even more useful, intuitive and personal.
Microsoft acquired Wunderlist and its developer 6Wunderkinder in mid-2015, reportedly paying somewhere in the neighborhood of $100 million to $200 million. While Wunderlist later released a Windows 10 app, it was unclear what Microsoft might choose to do once word surface that it had begun work on its own To-Do list app, known as Project Cheshire at the time.
Though the move to retire Wunderlist might ruffle some feathers in the short term, it's good to see Microsoft is taking its time to make sure the best aspects of Wunderlist make their way to To-Do before that happens. For now, you can continue to use Wunderlist or check out Microsoft To-Do by grabbing both at the Windows Store.
Download Wunderlist from the Windows Store
Reader comments
Microsoft plans to eventually retire Wunderlist in favor of To-Do
not a good new... but they will provide exporter and importer right? It's just stupid not to.
Thats really very stupid by MS!! I as many other people around here like my 950DS, but social networks such as wunderlist require to be able to support solutions used on the other 99% of platforms, i.e. cross platform solutions, not isolated todo list apps (which there is still no shortage even in Win app store).
Does axing Wunderlist mean MS wants to replace Facebook, Twitter & Instagram too, with their own little standalone solutions?
"In the coming months..."
That brings back some bad memories of Windows Phone days, when that always seemed to be the statement of choice. In a lot of cases that turned out to be vaporware months.
oh microsoft.. always reboot. that's what destroying windows.
******* stupid idea. They release a barebones app which they intend to have the same features as Wunderlist in the long run. Why not just slap on whatever new features they wanted to have the the app they already had? FFS, out of all the apps they bought and changed, Wunderlist is the one that pisses me off the most.
I just saw both was the same app, To-Do being a renamed Wunderlist
Another dumb move by Microsoft. Been a windows phone and surface user since the HD2 and they continually alienate us. Ill cancel my Wunderlist subscription and move elsewhere, just like i finally did with my phone. I guess I am fully switching over to an iPhone, iPad and Macbook.
While I liked the concept behind wunderlist, I found it less than useful and somehow ended up using it way less than I intended to.
I for one am glad to see it go, especially in favor of something that seems to work better.
FINALLY! The Productivity apps that Microsoft acquired to recall all of their old office apps have taken over...W00t 😜💖🗽
Wunderlist is still very bare bones, recurring options are terrible. To-Do/Cheshire actually has good recurring options available. To-Do finally connects to my Outlook.com tasks, which only took a few years... :|
Inevitable, but still a ways off. Until To-Do includes the shared lists function of Wunderlist you aren't going to see it disappear. I checked out the app, the bones are there, but a lot of flesh needs to be added before it can replace Wunderlist. Even MS isn't tone deaf enough to kill Wunderlist till To-Do reaches parity. I expect you will see few to no updates of Wunderlist moving forward and regular updates of To-Do as features are ported over.
Nonsense! Wunderlist has shared lists (our family grocery list, and kids chores assignments). That is the only thing that makes it stand out from the 5000 other "todo" lists. You could write your own version of this crap in a couple hours!
Why even buy it if you are just going to create something new and rename it. Microsoft is the king of ******* money away.
Miss the part where the team behind Wunderlist created this neww app from the ground up to support multiplat?
lol i've been using wunderlist daily between all my devices , i just hope the new app is just as good
Not a surprise as Microsoft may be retiring it's windows phone fans soon.
Good, gimped OS' are stupid and there is no reason to fragment the Windows Ecosystem
Nooooooooooo! Wunderlist is very important in my workflow :'(
Im a massive user of GTD and was interviewed by WUnderlist, they are sooo far behind Todoist. Microsft are plain stupid. Instead of buying and shelving companies just buy the number one leading list manager...Todoist..and be done with it, then integrate into services instead of trying to to thier own half assed approach. Whatever they do willl be a shadow of the Todoist functionality.
I've been a beta tester for the now new preview app and I actually really like it. It feels a lot snappier which is nice, but as stated feature parity isn't completely there yet (like subtasks for example). The outlook integration is a great change from wunderlist through.
Have you used Todoist?
the interface just feels so much nicer too. Wunderlist's UI just never felt that great on Windows Phone. And now, the apps pretty much have feature parity across iOS, Android, Windows Phone, and the web. Granted, its not feature parity with Wunderlist, but I like that every platform is pretty much equal right now. It'll be interesting to see how that plays out in the future...
Edit: I wonder if they're using any of their Bridges or Xamarin technologies to do this...
Well, this makes sense in the new Microsoft. It's all about subscriptions and Wunderlist users are not shackled to Office365. ToDo becomes an O365 exclusive and MS thinks that will drive more people to subscribe.
its not an O365 exclusive though...
Ahhh, I was reading the Office Blog and they mention Office 365 NUMEROUS times. I wonder when it leaves preview if they are going to attach it to O365.
https://blogs.office.com/2017/04/19/introducing-microsoft-to-do-now-avai...
i think that's talking about the business side of it because i see a bunch of people asking about it rolling out to their admin centers.
The best part is that this integrates with Outlook Tasks. At least for me, this alone makes the app superior to Wunderlist, as Outlook Tasks are far more complete and I can now add tasks from W10M.
My sentiments exactly. At least when I enter something in tasks from the Outlook desktop client (which I have open all day for work) it can now show up on my phone. Now I think I can get rid of a couple other 3rd party todo/task/reminder apps that I've been trying out. I've been really missing outlook task integration. I came from blackberry and even with their bb10 OS their remembers app had outlook task integration.
This is HUGE. I didn't realize that....
Youre mixing two things:
1) professional todo lists, preferably accessible via outlook: MS didn't deliver yet to w10m, but to ios.
2) a privately shared todo list, mostly of simple things, e.g. shopping, shared with family members, club members, friends, etc. this is wunderlist to me.
btw: success of android & ios could be explained by not frequently chopping essential elements from (once) smooth workflows, thereby driving ppl away from platform, but rather adding features thereby offering alternative better workflows and an overall improvement of platform attractivity.
I bet they retire Wunderlist without the replacement Service being remotely on the same feature level. There are so many examples in the past, even recently, and MS seems to not learn and it always takes them years to get at least feature parity.
Maps for example is still a joke.
To be fair, they havent retired the skype desktop app yet so there is hope that what they wont retire wunderlist before making to-do feature comparible.
Lol, they'd have a civil war on their hands if they canceled the desktop app. I still have to fall back to it once in a while when the Store app flakes out
Maps is loads better than HERE. That was one of the biggest reasons my wife left for Android. HERE Maps and Navigation was a joke at the time compared to Google. The navigation now is loads better.
Not in Australia, HERE maps was the bomb. Microsoft Maps is terrible at finding landmarks and businesses, it always sends me to the wrong place.
A app with a bit of project neon?
Typical Microsoft behavior, getting rid of software that really has potential and making awkward decisions! I mean C'MON guys Wunderlist is a killer organizer app!
the wunderlist team are the ones working on this app. they're slowly integrating features from wunderlist into to-do. they started from scratch, yes. is that necessarily awkward? no. assuming they retire wunderlist *after* the features they planned on absorbing are completed.
It does make one wonder why Microsoft spent $100-200 million acquiring Wunderlist just to kill it off (i.e., clearly they didn't care about the brand name) and have the developers start from scratch making a similar app. Did they just want to acquire programmers? Or just absorb and try to retain some of Wunderlist's users? Either way, that seems like a lot of money to spend on employee or customer acquisition for something that their other products already kind of did (Cortana reminders, Outlook Tasks, OneNote checkists, etc.).
at a certain point, that is how various larger companies acquire developers. they're probably able to collect the telemetrics of the users and use that in a variety of ways. and yeah, they may be hoping that wunderlist users will come over to To-Do. it's not a huge amount of money in regards to acquisition. At a certain point, that's the primary method of expanding business, just buying others.
It looks like Cortana integration is coming, as well as probably tasks from other services. This looks to also completely replace Outlook Tasks in some form. The app looks identical to Wunderlist and though I'll miss the name, To Do will also be fully integrated with Micrsoft accounts/Office 365, something wunderlist isn't. maybe they have to kill wunderlist to achieve that.
They bought the developers and the patents. It is the patents that costs the most money .
What patents does 6wunderkinder own? I tried a basic patent search, but nothing came up.
I hope this gets regularly updated. Never seen a single update for Wunderlist since MS bought it.
PIle of stinking poo poo....updates before MS bought them were few and far between, not addressing ANY of the main issues users wanted fixed or introduced. Perfect example of ignoring user base.
Ignoring the user base is what made it perfect for MSFT to aquire. 😁
It crashes, i know it still in beta. Like windows central app
I really "wanted" to like/love Wunderlist, but not being able to "delete" past to-do's was totally rediculous! The new To-Do by Microsoft looks like a blatant rip-off of "Todoist." BTW... Todoist is a great app, have it on my 950XL, desktop, and can access from any browser. Has great notification features and you can enhance it further using IFTTT or Zapier.
Hi sir :-D
You can delete past To-Dos in Wunderlist. Right click on PC and Press and Hold on mobile.
Yes, you can delete past to-dos, but it's very cumbersome. I'd love to see a multi-select, and a 'delete all completed' functions added.
So far it feels like a stripped-down Wunderlist. There's no subtasks or sharing, but it's still pretty fluid and it is still a preview. I could see myself using this.
Figures. I just started using Wunderlist and its Cortana integration. Happens all the time... I start using something and it gets changed or dumped entirely. At least functionality between ecos should remain in teh new to-dos
Please buy few Android phones, hopefully Android starts getting same treatment.
Jokes aside, I do like the Cortona integeration and now don't know how long MS will take to bring this functionality :(
I've been using the Cortana integration for a long time. It's nice when you're in the kitchen and can say, "Hey, Cortana, add peanut butter to my grocery list." Boom! My wife picks it up on her way home from work. Between Cortana integration and shared lists, Wunderlist has been an integral part of my every day life.
Don't switch if you share lists....it doesn't support that yet. The best feature of Wunderlist....
Yep. Me and my wife use it for grocerys. I know when I get a bunch of notifications I should stop by the store on the way home. Its a great feature :). As far as to-do lists go as well, Todoist is actually really good. It will be hard for me to leave it for To-Do. Wunderlist is different enough that it fits different situations. I dont get it.
Same here, I will wait until the new product is feature ready before I migrate all our lists and stuff over - As I'll need to show her the new app and stuff too
...for you. it wasn't necessarily the best for everyone. i never shared lists so i don't mind that its not here yet. what i think one of the best features that's missing though is sub-tasks.
I see shared lists. It grabbed my previously created Rooms and they are shared. Not sure if they actually work though. Will test later with my wife's account.
EDIT: Nope, sharing isn't currently working. I see the name of the old Room in my list, but that doesn't show up on my wife's app. I only see the rooms I created and not the rooms I am part of. So, I assume sharing shouldn't be far behind if it is finding my OneNote/OneDrive info.
I wonder what the backend is using. OneDrive, OneNote....? I miss Rooms :(
Me too. Was by far my favorite WP feature. Had quite a few rooms going. Dang I miss it. :(
I hope it's vastly different. Wunderlist is unnecessarily complicated for a to-do type of app.
it is. i've been using cheshire for a bit now. it does things a little differently. whether it works for you or not though really depends on how you approach to-dos. right now its not as customizable in its approach as others, but hopefully that will change. i really want them to integrate sub-tasks sooner rather than later.
I never downloaded Wunderlist, so I can't say if To-Do is less complicated, but it sure seems pretty simple. I downloaded it today on my Lumia, launched the app and it had already had me signed in and already had my credit card due dates listed, which is both incredibly convenient and incredibly frightening. Not sure where they pulled that data from.
I find its dead easy, idiot proof. Plus, it is used by groups e.g. to create a houshold shopping list by defined members. So MS needs to provide a solution that works on pc, mac, ios, android and w10m (which seems the hardest) first, and then some arguments why to change to different solution.
Sad day.
Why?
Wunderlist was butt, this is definitely a good day
I am not opposed to them changing in favor of, if it works as well as Wunderlist. I use it every day all day and love it.
How was it butt? I use it and love the Wunderlist import features from email and I use a lot of third party extensions to broaden its reach. Outlook and wunderlist parser help a lot! I hope they won't retire it before they add those features.