Changelog

We are trilled to present Routine Desktop 0.23.

This release is a very important one as it brings together a large number of polished improvements that will make using Routine feel like a breeze.

📚 Journaling

Not everybody works the same! Some people are all about action and love Routine’s Agenda for its ability to summarize the whole day. But other are more about writing and reflecting.

This is why Routine is now equipped with a Journal screen.

The Journal can be used as an entry point for your day, to reflect on yesterday but also to plan by creating tasks or link your thoughts through references, effectively creating a digital brain.

NOTE: the previous Journal screen has been decommissioned in favor of the Agenda. Indeed, the Agenda’s past days now lists the completed/discarded tasks of the day along with the tasks you had planned to do but did not.

👱‍♂️ Contacts

Please welcome another brand new screen: Contacts.

Since the early days of Routine, our vision has been to combine tasks, calendars, notes & contacts into a single app.

Contacts had been left on the side for now. This is no longer the case even though a lot remains to be done. In the meantime, the new Contacts screen provides an entry point to all your contacts.

📝 Note editor

The note editor has also been improved with the introduction of callout blocks:

📅 Calendaring

We have been hard at work improving the calendaring experience, both in the Agenda and Calendar.

Below are some of the most important features, improvements and bug fixes:

• Set the attendance through the right click menu

• Switch between your calendars when time blocking by pressing TAB

• Week numbers are now displayed in the Calendar

• Event descriptions are now displayed in HTML

• Calendar hours are now synced with your working hours preferences, allowing to hide night hours for instance

• A sound notification is emitted 1 minute before every Agenda event (can be turned off in Settings / Preferences)

• Zoom in/out in the Calendar

• All-day event creation ghost is now displayed

• Draft events can be dragged around to be repositioned

• The Agenda’s dragging abilities have been greatly improved

• Multi-day events are better displayed in the Agenda

✅ Task management

Task management has also been greatly improved, providing core functionalities that were so far missing to get a complete experience.

Let’s take a look at what’s new:

• Drag tasks between sections (Overdue, Upcoming, Unplanned etc.)

• Drag tasks inside events & allocations in your timeline, effectively moving the task to another event/task

• Block time multiple times for a single task by pressing ALT and dragging an existing allocation

• Duplicate objects (tasks, events etc.) with CMD+D, right click etc.

• You can now scroll within the lists of tasks in the Calendar footer

• Won’t do has been renamed Discard and a Discarded section has been introduced

• Sections (Overdue, Upcoming etc.) and stars are now displayed in future days/weeks allowing you to better plan in the future

• Search results now display the status checkbox of tasks

• ALT+ENTER in the “Add task…” input field creates the task and puts focus right back in the input field

• ALT+ENTER at the end of a task in notes creates another Task block underneath

👉 Coming Next

The next Desktop release is due in about 2 weeks and should include:

• AI meeting recording & transcription

• Extending default types (Task, Event, Page, Person) with custom properties

• Spellchecking

• Floating table of contents in notes

Routine Android 0.3 is now on par with Routine iOS, providing a full-fledged experience arounds tasks, notes, calendars & contacts.

🍾 New Features

• You can now use Routine’s calendar on Android; everything is two-way synced with Google calendar and your other Routine apps
  
  This includes switching between layouts (3-day, 5-day, month), creating/editing/deleting events & meetings, opening the details etc.

• The Routine Android app now supports taking notes, anywhere, anytime!
  
  Be it for meetings, pages, tasks or else, Routine’s note editor comes with all the whistles you might expect to make your notes beautiful!
  
  Even more, you can now create tasks in your notes, allowing you to structure your action items more easily.

• You can drag a task onto your calendar to block time and make sure you will dedicate the time that task deserves

• Routine is blazingly fast on Android thanks to the offline mode and a few performance optimizations we’ve implemented for the experience to be flawless

• The main + button allows for quickly creating tasks, events & notes

• The Pages screen has been improved:

  • Quick access to the recently accessed pages

  • Expand/collapse the hierarchy of pages/subpages

  • Create tasks in notes

• You can configure your preferences: first day of the week, time display, theme etc.

🎯 Coming Next

We are currently working on bringing daily notes/journaling to all apps, allowing you to quickly take notes for the day.

Routine Desktop 0.22 has arrived, bringing a lot of features that you have been waiting for, for a long time!

🍾 New Features

• You can now create code blocks and highlight the code based on the language of your choice

• A new repeat user interface has been introduced that is easy to discover/use but also supports advanced rules such as “every 3 weeks on Monday, Tuesday, Friday”; along with natural language to go faster

• We have introduced a new global hotkey for joining the next meeting; particularly handy when jumping from one meeting to the next

  
  You can configure this hotkeys in Settings / Hotkeys.

• You can now configure Routine to launch at startup automatically
  
  Head to Settings / Preferences to manage all your preferences.

• The Overdue/Upcoming/Unplanned sections have been added to the Calendar

✂️ Improvements

• Whenever navigating backward/forward the scroll position is now restored

• The sections, panes etc. that you collapse/expand are now saved across launches

• Enabled lazy loading & pagination in the Agenda’s sections e.g Upcoming, Unplanned

• Enabled pagination in the inbox to speed up loading when there are many items

• The fact that some features were not accessible in premium has been fixed

• The Archive/Unarchive actions have been removed as we move toward custom types

• Added tooltips with the associated keyboard shortcut on some buttons

• Made actions in the right click menu, … menu etc. consistent

• Simplified bottom pane of Calendar to have a single height

• Fixed keyboard shortcuts for navigating in the menu when customized

• Improved note editor: bug fixes, highlight current block type in / menu

• Improved event/meeting management & Google integration

• Brought back the Linux installer

• Fixed the Notion integration that could sometimes not be set up

• Improved markup hyperlink detection when pasting a URL

🎯 Coming Next

We are currently working on things:

1. Collaboration: to allow teams to use Routine: for their business, non-profit or just within a group of friends/family

2. Integrations: to allow you to connect 50+ products & services to Routine

Secure your seatbelt, this is by far the biggest release we’ve ever done!

Routine is now officially a local-first app 🎉. Local-what???

People want their productivity app to (i) run super fast and (ii) work all the time (even in the subway).

Traditional apps (Notion, Todoist, Evernote etc.) all follow the same pattern: the app’s “brain” is in the Cloud along with your data. Those apps are known as Cloud-first. For the app to work when you lose Internet connectivity, those apps provide an offline mode that is quite limited (because the brain of the app is in the Cloud and therefore requires Internet connectivity).

We’ve decided to take another approach, known as Local-first. With this paradigm, the data and the brain of the app live on your device: desktop (macOS/Windows/Linux) but also mobile (iOS/Android).

The results?

• Increased privacy because your data is always accessible locally

• Improved performance because the data is close by

• Offline access, no matter if it is for a minute or a month

We're thrilled to unveil Routine Desktop 0.21, our biggest release so far.

⚠️ Note that you will need to upgrade your apps (macOS, Windows, iOS & Android) for your data to be migrated to this new version. It should be automatic. But if you run into any problem, just download the latest version of the app for your platform.

🍾 New Features

• Offline

  All the Routine apps are now offline ready. This means you can use Routine without an Internet connection. When back online, everything synchronizes automatically.
  
  NOTE: if you find some pages named “Orphan event notes”, do not worry, those are old notes from events that we could not put back in the appropriate events.

  Read more →

• Menu bar widget

  Routine now comes with a powerful widget that sits in the menu bar on macOS and Windows, always displaying the upcoming event.

  The widget, if clicked displays the events and tasks of the day along with task-specific timers that record the time spent in your calendar and a special Pomodoro timer.
  
  Read more →
  

  

• Customizable menu

  
  Not only can you now hide the menu items you are not using/do not want to see, but you can also pin objects (tasks, events, pages, people) for quick access from the app menu.
  
  Read more →
  

  

• MCP server
  
  The Modal Context Protocol (MCP) has recently become the de-facto standard for allowing AI models (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini) and services (Zapier, Cursor etc.) to talk to other apps.
  
  Routine now supports the MCP which you can connect to you favorite model/app.
  
  Read more →
  

  

• Launch at startup
  
  You can now automatically launch Routine when your computer starts.
  
  Head to Settings / Preferences and click the Launch at Startup toggle.

✂️ Improvements

In addition to those new features, we’ve been hard at work improving key components of the Routine experience.

• Plan action
  
  The Schedule and Postpone actions have been merged and replaced by a new Plan action. This new action is simpler to understand, has a beautiful user interface and supports natural language for the most advanced users.

  

• Agenda layout
  
  The Agenda has been reworked to improve re-planning your day. It now features sections for overdue, upcoming and unplanned tasks.

  

• Notes editor
  
  We’ve improved the notes editor quite a lot:

  • Many keyboard shortcuts to select blocks CMD/CTRL+A, SHIFT+click etc.

  • Normal click to open links (instead of CMD/CTRL+click)

  • More keyboard shortcuts for formatting CMD/CTRL+SHIFT+C, CMD/CTRL+SHIFT+S etc.

  • Add block above/below with the + button and keyboard shortcuts e.g ALT/OPT+ENTER

  • Improved hyperlink manipulation and keyboard shortcuts e.g CMD/CTRL+K

  • Support for emoji with : and /emoji

    

  • And many more bug fixes

• The inbox now features a discreet counter to indicates how many items are in there to process.

  

• The all-day events are now displayed in the Agenda’s timeline

• The drag & drop onto the timeline has been improved, in particular regarding early/late hours

• The Journal has been re-introduced (note that you can hide it thanks to the customizable menu)

• Pages can now be reordered in the pages hierarchy

• And of course, many bugs have been fixed, too many to mention…

🎯 Coming Next

We are currently working on the custom types, allowing you to create any type of items you want to manipulate, from movies, books, classes etc. to projects, tickets, bug reports, customers and more for professional uses cases.

The Android app is here 🎉.

This was the most requested and only missing platform.

Routine is now officially running on all major platforms: macOS, Windows, Linux, Web, iOS and Android.

This first version includes the Agenda (tasks & events of the day) and Inbox (tasks to be organized).

Events can be opened to consult the date/time, location & participants while tasks can be planned to another day or week.

Noteworthy is that:

• The app currently takes a few seconds to load. The offline mode (which is about to be released in 2-3 weeks) will make the app start instantly.

• If you plan a task for a week, the task in question will not be visible through the Android app since the Calendar screen (which lists the tasks of the week) is not available on Android yet

• The notes taken in a task or event are not displayed when opened

🎯 Coming Next

We are actively working on bringing the Android to par with the desktop version.

The next release will be the offline mode which will be made available on all platforms at once.

Then, the notes will be displayed, including a new Pages screen for you to access the content of all your pages.

🍾 New Features

• We have been hard at work completely reworking the note editor to bring you a state-of-the-art note taking experience.

  This is only the beginning; code and callout blocks are coming soon along with a new hierarchical structure.

  • You can now select text in between blocks

  • The / menu has been reworked

  • Hyperlinks have been improved:

    • You can now open hyperlinks through a single click

    • You can press OPT/ALT+click to position the caret in a hyperlink without opening the link

    • If you have a URL in your clipboard, you can select text and paste it (CMD/CTRL+V) to automatically create a hyperlink over the selected text

    • You can press CMD/CTRL+K to create a hyperlink on some selected text, the pop-up will appear for you to enter the URL

    • A new user interface has been designed for editing hyperlinks

    

• The Believer plan has been sunset in favor of a new Professional plan. More information on the pricing page.

  In addition, new Plan and Billing screens have been added to the Settings for you to easily manage your subscription.

  

• A new light/dark mode has been introduced which follow your operating system’s preferences.

  If you set up your operating system to automatically switch between light and dark mode depending on the time of the day, then Routine will do the same.

✂️ Improvements

• Routine freezing when opening a sub sub task has been fixed

• Automatic allocating time sometimes failed even though there were openings in your calendar. This has been fixed.

• Switching to the monthly calendar view had an issue, it has been fixed

• Routine now better handles birthday events in Google Calendar

• Taking notes in events you did not own stopped working on Desktop/Web. It is now possible once again.

• Meeting invitations stopped showing up in the inbox. We fixed it

• Copying & pasting notes could lead to a reverse order. We fixed it with the new editor.

• The keyboard shortcuts have been fixed for Linux

• The reference pop-up that extended outside the window has been reworked

• Resetting the zoom is now possible with the keyboard shortcut CMD/CTRL+0.

  Note that as a result, this keyboard shortcut no longer opens the inbox.

• It was sometimes not possible to put a whitespace in the title of a task or page

🎯 Coming Next

There will be a lot of news in the coming months.

More specifically:

• The offline mode is currently in its final testing phase. It should be released publicly in the coming weeks

  This offline mode will be made available on all platforms (macOS, Windows, Linux, Web, iOS and Android) at once.

• The note editor will continue to be improved with many small tricks to make your life easier, a redesign and the introduction of new blocks (code, callouts etc.)

• A bit later, the custom types should arrive, allowing you to define your data entities: project, milestone, ticket, candidate, epic, habit etc.

• We have started working on integrations in order to allow you to bidirectionally synchronize data with your other favorite services: Slack, Intercom, Todoist, Gmail and dozen more.

😜 Other

Several services have been launched for the community to better contribute:

• Feedback upvoting

• Roadmaps

• Help center

• Community hub

It’s been a few months since our last update. But for good reasons 😜.

This is mostly due to the fact we were working on fundamental pieces of the app. Having only 3 software engineers and the holiday season also didn’t help.

Now that the team is 7 engineers strong, we have a lot more capacity and we will be releasing more often, promise 🤞.

Without further ado, let me present you Routine Desktop 0.19…

🍾 New Features

• You can now search for your data anywhere in Routine, in titles but also in notes

  Note that Routine’s search will also work in offline.

• We have entirely reworked the way the app fetches data which drastically improves the app’s performance.

  The experience should feel a lot faster now.

  Note that we are working on improving the feeling of switching from one screen to another as it sometimes feels like it is blinking.

• We just launched the Routine’s marketplace 🎉

  Even though it is still in its early phase, it will give you a glimpse of Routine’s direction.

  Also, it is helpful to discover what views are already capable of.

  Oh, and you can upvote for your favorite integrations, something we will start working on in a few weeks.

• Finally, Linux is now supported

  Note however that it does not come with auto-update. You will have to automatically download and install each new version.

✂️ Improvements

• Calendars can now be displayed in views

• Clicking the Calendar menu icon (if already on the Calendar) will bring you to the current period (week/month)

• Event participants are now ordered by attendance: going, then maybe then not going

• Long list of event participants are no scrollable

• The progress line position on short events in Agenda has been fixed

• The keyboard shortcut to open the Inbox (CMD/CTRL+0) has been removed because it conflicted with reseting the zoom

• You can now type a / command followed by the main argument

  This is handy to do /view QUERY or /task TITLE

🎯 Coming Next

We are currently working on the following:

• Android app

• Notes editor

• Offline mode

• Custom types

I cannot say which one will come next but as mentioned we will now be back to a more regular release cadence even though what is coming are big pieces.

🌐 Follow us

Follow me and/or Routine on LinkedIn to get details about Routine’s journey…

First we want to thank you for your patience. We’ve been hard at work putting together fundamental pieces which will make Routine unique in the future.

We are very excited to show you what we have done so far, in particular in the form of views…

🍾 New Features

• We are very happy to introduce views.

  Views allow you to visualize data in a different way from how they are usually displayed in calendar, task management or note taking apps.

  To start using views, type /view anywhere in notes:

  

  In addition to the user interface, Routine comes with a powerful querying language that allows for more advanced use cases.

  Time for you to start customizing your workflow a bit more (a lot more to come), with the examples below for instance:

  • Tasks as a board:

    

  • Overdue tasks from yesterday (could be put in a daily recurring task):

    

  • Meeting notes of the week:

    

  ℹ️ For more information, please refer to the knowledge base which has more information about types and views, including many examples.

  Note that views can be resized horizontally:

  

• You can now reference (i.e link to another object within Routine) through the use of the @ or [[ symbols

• You can also nest/indent your bullet/enum points

• As many of you requested, you can now select note blocks by drawing an area with your mouse

✂️ Improvements

• The meeting notes were taking a very long time to load. This has been fixed.

• You can use CMD+A to (i) select all the text of a block (ii) select the block (if pressed once more) and (iii) select all the blocks (if one block is selected)

• The bug related to the calendar view shifting when starting on Monday has been fixed

• The issue related to copied note blocks being lost if a task is checked immediately after has also been resolved

• The calendar monthly display has been improved: dark mode, double click to create an event etc.

• Drafting an event without a title while changing its properties made the event disappear. It has been fixed.

• Calendaring has been improved in multiple ways: all-day events, recurring events, email notifications, performance when switching week/month/etc. and more

• Improved text formatting which is now more stable

• And many many more…

🎯 Coming Next

Most likely, the next release will be specific about performance optimizations.

But we continue to work hard on putting together the fundamental pieces that will allow for Routine to be highly customizable to your workflow.

• Custom types

• Notes editor

• Offline mode

For more information, do not hesitate to refer to the roadmaps and upvote for your favorite features.