Google accidentally teases more powerful Tasks sidebar

You might actually want to use it now

Google Tasks doesn't get a lot of attention, and it's not hard to see why. It has very little functionality, and Google Keep can do everything it can do. Tasks might be getting a little more useful, though. Google recently outed a new version of Tasks sidebar in a blog post, and it has a few handy additions.

The Tasks sidebar is available in products like Gmail and Docs. The new interface, spotted by 9to5Google (above), doesn't reinvent the wheel. Rather than a single list of items, you can have all your lists visible at once. To help you focus, the updated sidebar has an option to collapse any lists you don't need staring you in the face. Adding tasks and creating lists also make a little more sense—they're going to be prominent buttons at the top of each list and the bottom of the panel, respectively. For reference, you can see the current Tasks UI below.

There's one last new feature visible in the screenshot: favorites. At the top of the sidebar, you'll see two tabs. There's one for all your lists and a second one for items you've marked as favorites. There's no favorite functionality in the current version of Tasks, so we can only speculate about how it'll work. We'll have to wait to know for sure. We aren't seeing the new Tasks live anywhere, and Google has yet to officially announce it. We'll keep an ear to the ground.

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