Changelog

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.

🙏 Asks

We are on Product Hunt today 🎉.

We need your help to get Routine to the #1 position:

1. Go to https://www.producthunt.com/posts/routine-ios

2. Upvote by clicking the red ▲ Upvote button

3. Leave a comment to let other users know what you feel

❤️

🍾 New Features

• Notifications (a.k.a event reminders) are now being sent to your iOS device 10 minutes before an event starts

✂️ Improvements

• It now takes less than a second to open the Routine app on iOS, allowing you to start creating a task, note or event as the app continues to load.

  Note that the calendar events may take a bit longer to appear because Routine needs to fetch the information from Google Calendar’s API. But do not worry you can capture as events continue loading.

  This will later be improved when we roll out the offline mode.

• The bug making the keyboard disappear when launching the app has been fixed

• Dark mode switching on iOS 17.0 has been fixed

• Fixed the inbox not loading when empty

• Improved widget refreshing speed

🎯 Coming Next

• We are working on supporting references so you can link your objects (events, tasks, people, pages etc.) in notes

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

🤗 Shout Outs

andrew, justin.yeaman, jesse, limelord_, gabiiarca, elliot.j.brodie, prettylittleanna, discodipfred, dhananjay.sahai, Yousuf Ali C., Shaurya L., donggyu.shin, lincoln, jason, nasserboulaich, smtnr, diederik, s3902243, elessar6171, Pierre B., donkapetra

We are very happy to introduce two new layouts for the calendar: 5-day & monthly.

Both new layouts are available exclusively to Believers.

🍾 New Features

• The monthly view features a date picker in the left pane for you to more quickly navigate through time

• The 5-day view (weekly without weekends) has been requested quite a lot.

  Some of you even developed Arc plugins 🙂. It is now available!

✂️ Improvements

• Because it has been some time now, we are making the right click menu available to everybody (not just the Believers) to enjoy for free

  The right click menu allows operating all objects in Routine: tasks, events, people, pages etc. including in the notes.

🎯 Coming Next

In a few weeks will come:

• References

• Nested bullet/enum points

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

🤗 Shout Outs

jamali2258, .jyotir., smellsworth, smtnr, Andrea T., Lucid D., perfectlyrational_14358, rimar11, leoonx, APM, Michelle T., Oren, tom_cnf, ade.j, nanopang, vigramvasi, Diogo M., Wallerand, elessar6171, Eva D., Brenton H., riclib, brokenmelancholy, iroshandezilva, nilansanjaya, poojanbabu, chris, velenc, qwervy, John G., Rohan M., parth2, Mehdi B., shambhavi108, anonymous.testr,

I am very happy to present you Routine Desktop 0.16 which comes with a new powerful mechanism called contextual capture.

🍾 New Features

• A new powerful contextual capture mechanism has been rolled out to make it easier to capture information in your work environment: websites, text, content in apps and more.

  • Selected text/item

    Select text on any website/app and open the dashboard. The console will now offer to save the context the information is coming from.

    If possible Routine will also save the URL, allowing you to easily navigate back to the original item e.g Web page.

    This can be used on any app to capture text from Slack, Discord, Apple Notes, VS Code etc. but also on Spotify, Notion etc. if you select an item. Basically any app that supports copying information.

  • Website

    With browsers, you can even open the dashboard without selecting/highlighting text and Routine will fetch the website’s title and favicon, allowing you to bookmark Web pages in a fraction of second.

  For tasks, the context (app, icon, possible URL) will be displayed next to it. For notes, an hyperlink will be added at the end of the saved information.

  Note that:

  • It is only available on macOS for now

  • Firefox is not supported because the community is still waiting for a fix (it’s been 22 years)

  Check this guide for more information on how to activate the contextual capture integration.

✂️ Improvements

• The console has been improved to support creating multi-line notes

  Open the dashboard, start typing and press SHIFT+ENTER to create a new line at which point the console will switch to multi-line.

  ⚠️ Be careful, pressing ENTER will submit the creating of a note while SHIFT+ENTER will create a new line.

• The console can now create notes along with bullet and enum points when redirecting

💡 Tips

The contextual capture mechanism can be used to turn your emails into tasks, notes etc. This is particularly useful until the Gmail integration is opened up to the general public.

🎯 Coming Next

Next are coming functionalities to improve the ability to visualize information, link information together and take notes; more specifically:

• References: to link objects together and use backlinks

• Custom types: this will allow you to define more object types

  Particularly useful as it will be possible to create and capture contextually objects of different types through the console

• Filtered views: allowing you to query your knowledge graph and display information through various layouts

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

🤗 Shout Outs

thorbar, romap0, gavin, juice, William W., jabulafia93, pqseags, niklassternberg, renanalves, carljust, mike.cozart, IceIceIce, nommermon, lcx979, adrienfillon, p.andreasberndt, maye.alexandre, singh, Sairam11, alex, Jan De W., Jürgen B., Tom N., miguel.costa, blendt3c, xela1712, Felix, smtnr, john, elessar6171, .fxf., nathanmoorby, t3mccann, rexx.0569, mochakitkat, tom_cnf, simon, jennifer_oloff-lewis, Tran P., xneom, André M., nick, damokles_, Fredrik B., arturo.b, Ayham, Thiago P., sathwikc, david, Gustavo F., MV B., linskling, Andrea Tseng (Lucid D., Nidhin M., jenniferxvu, paulhugopalmeostudio, dg2mrk, danidcd, Kishly C., wolfgang1013, sara.walker, m0rdi0, real_saitama, amb1305, Olivier V., Kian H., loller02, dodge, vigram.personal, kim007dus, worldmain, Abdelhalim S., John G., Eva D., JT, niklas

We’ve been busy for the past couple of months perfecting the experience around many areas of the app.

🍾 New Features

• Following your feedback, we have launched a yearly Believer plan

• The inbox now lists:

  • Unanswered meetings

  • Untitled notes

  • Unplanned tasks (as before)

  The inbox has also been moved to the top of the menu.

• Recurring tasks everywhere 🎉

  You can now create recurring tasks anywhere in your notes through the same natural language’s keyword already available in the console:

  • every

  • starting

  • until

✂️ Improvements

• Recurring events have been reworked to allow for more control

  • You can now choose to edit/delete this, the next or all occurrences of a recurring event

  • You can now specify an end date for all-day events

  • Daylight saving time is now properly taken into account when creating recurring events

  • Regular events can be converted into recurring events (and vice versa)

  • You can now set a custom frequency for recurring events

  • Your time preferences (first day of the week, time format etc.) are now taken into account when setting a custom recurrence

• Recurring tasks have been greatly improved as well

  • You can overview all your recurring tasks through the new Recurrences tab in the Tasks screen along with their status (running or paused)

  • You can now delete recurring tasks

  • Future occurrences are now automatically deleted when stopping/deleting a recurring task

  • Finally, the notes of a recurring task now acts as a blueprint

• The keyboard shortcuts have been further improved:

  • The associated keyboard shortcut is now displayed in the tooltip

    

  • Keyboard shortcuts are also displayed in the ... menu

    

  • You can now quickly add a task in the current screen by pressing CMD/CTRL+N and the focus will be put in the Add task input

  • In the dashboard’s console, you can now use ALT+ENTER to submit and reset the console’s input, allowing you to create several objects quickly

    

  • You can now control the Calendar’s left/top/bottom panes with the keyboard shortcuts CMD/CTRL+SHIFT+LEFT, CMD/CTRL+SHIFT+UP and CMD/CTRL+SHIFT+DOWN respectively

  • Keyboard shortcut are now properly displayed with CTRL in the Windows app

• Events in general have also been improved

  • The calendar name is now displayed instead of the associated email address

  • Hour formatting is honored when using natural language processing

  • When creating an event, pressing ENTER in title will submit the creation

• Notes have also been through a bit of a relooking:

  • Pressing ENTER will put focus in the selected block

  • When viewing notes, UP/DOWN selects the last/first block

  • The / command menu has been redesigned to display both the command and associated Markdown shortcut

• The Ignore action on tasks has been renamed to Won't do

• Likewise, for Hide from Agenda and Show in Agenda which replace the previously sometimes obscure terms

• The current day is now displayed in the menu’s agenda icon

• The Help menu has been reworked to allow re-downloading the apps and upgrading

• And many bugs got fixed:

  • Dashboard when Notion is out of service

  • Notion never loading with accounts that have a massive number of users

  • Stack overflows when deleting recurring tasks (in some conditions)

  • Dashboard’s dark mode

  • etc.

🎯 Coming Next

We are currently working on:

• A brand new console with a powerful contextual capture mechanism

• The monthly calendar layout

• References to link your objects

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

🤗 Shout Outs

stein, rohan.shah020, Mikael T., infos26, K X., kitennis, aaron, shawizir, theqwervy, carla_48006, Stephan van de V., hi, Miguel C., Nauris D., chrisnoshad62, Lily C., aradhnamangla, pamela1, olafwilloughby, molliem, Scott R., ckny.coaching, hutiumisuicaohaivat, multimiljonair, Sylvain M., welindstrom, joe, gui.barbieri87, dioneadeable, jerzygangi, dennis, audrey, irobot98, patelheet30, rjs, frittenfred, shreya.purohit002, jacopo, mirkobucan, Jonathan C., muhamedzeema, simon, mendya770, saxenaakash, ratboyluna, yannickhs123, Bob G., Greg B., John G., hellosoumyaj, Sergey Z., Collin P., hello, Arnaud G., William W., marilynjeanspafford, Lennart O., Jürgen B., sam, tyler, heidi.muller.1, will6tay, schmetti, albert92214, katwoodham, Sharon B., danichkaz, mobester16, August C., Charles P., jerry, pharmdeez, paracomet, runawayrunaway, mdionyss, Ryan, nddsgn, lcmambi, aclutter4, andre, xela1712, zaherhoulayhel, jaytheaffiliate, brittany, ade.j, carolicity, jason, Ethan H., Robbe L., sanjit.j55, Tim K., mw, aumkar11, dinosaureyogourt, velenc, joebplus12, peter, filipasoares, riya_83966, imorpha, shantanu, JT, incognit.0, jricooyola, clamzatron, Cameron T., Simon B., grandjouanf, Shan, musaddiqgamer, andrew, tweaqwtx, wzrdjr, michelle, imran.saki, Akash P., RobM, dyutin333, fei, pamela1_, Alexey G., naturalichi, smtnr, nicolaumartynyuk, lindehemmer2006, philip, vortal07, bunnygoyal, billyashida, adryder, transitional, .fxf., oliverchamoun, Chris S., .adlerz, lukasz_26977, romain, ruwdy, Arch Andrea F., Naomi R., usrivas1996, Brock K., warishess.m, Sunshine210, warishco, JP S., noli, Andrew Z., Clite T., werkwerkwerk, mrwildenfree, gallophobia, jp_123414, André M., aguizar6, Keith, Kishly C., vitvar.f, Kacper P., sssionnn, Teemu K., qarix, taylor.facen, rimar11, gayoungmoney, chelsea, imsychen, fg, tyana, mattoney93, brokenmelancholy, hananarialkalay, maynard62, chris38545, Alejandro G., poojanbabu, Felipe Vasquez C., geraud2108, beetales, jrleggett, Julien B., pacgn84, patrick.zhao327, andyjsiegel1, fantastic_mask, minnapauliinakoskela, d.r.b., alex, Thiago P., Michael W., Tim, John H., Nigel, carlosemilioaboytes, ovaury, visualgaze, david.hammer18, mrshow, tableeghijamaat, ashraf, dana.kroplick, Steven A. T., jamie, rexx.0569, Elliot J. B., ej_2021, Electronic Old M., kim007dus, roi, elliebellie_, Jack E., jimmyphones, dorelljames, johannes0392, ethanqb7, Nick R., Michal S., bastienderoy, Guillaume C., jerry.ovo9, tipsy_tapir, elessar6171, elliott, Victor H. A., Andrea T., lcx979, ct324, tarikaktas, valentino777, yotins, joaocrisostomoabel, jb, mobilemassey, augustebalsanel, laurafranke, gary.lewis, moixatsrif, nam, pgsimas, lewis_albert, rdlmckelvey, routine.696tr, Sree Anirudh B., Andrew C., Diogo M., Lynda N., itsnotchrizzz, Timur, kaya_d_98, paultravaglino, Shane M., pqseags, kanedodgson, olof, nagesh, Oren, Yaroslav C., mc24, doncarrato, fnabdou, hans.pinckaers, fredrikbeckstrm, saeedkm, brendoneurope, pratheek, Sebastian O., yecayeca, perfectlyrational_14358, btreed62, theshsurveys, Mustafa Ö., will, Lance C., Heidi M., Yousuf Ali C., brenton971, sayodin, nastyrasty, shos.james, sarah.lim.7777, weehongkane, light.wave, jgentes, 14023972245, shan, leonardo.ssz, cjprobst, kacper.porembski, tsandor, Jameson T., Olivier V., bakoind, Ivy, Evan P., ngomarfil

The iOS app has been completely rewritten from scratch and is now equipped with all the key features you have on desktop. And even more…

🍾 New Features

• The app has been designed with a drawer at the bottom that can be extended to display more information: the tasks of the day/week, inbox etc.

  Note that it can be hidden if you prefer by swiping it down.

• The iOS app now supports taking notes, in pages but also in tasks, events and people

• The Agenda displays a snippet of the notes in the current event, allowing to easily glance at your meeting notes

• A new Calendar screen has been introduced which supports several layouts: 3-day, week and month

• Events can be created by dragging a calendar area or using the + button.

  Note that the current draft can be held at the bottom, allowing you continue browsing your calendar.

• The + button at the bottom allows for creating tasks but also events and notes

• The + button can be dragged and dropped on two areas to go faster when either (i) creating a task for today or (ii) saving a task in your inbox

• Tasks can be dragged onto your agenda/calendar to block time

• The inbox has the same filtering mechanism as on desktop.

  However, the inbox does not yet display the unanswered meetings and untitled notes.

• The pages screen now lists a preview of the pages you use the most

💡 Tips

We know that many of you are waiting for the Android app. It will come early next year with all the functionalities you can see on iOS.

In the meantime, we wanted to share some workarounds for you to at least capture your tasks, thoughts and ideas easily on Android.

There are two approaches:

1. Use another mobile app and connect it to Routine through Zapier

   We’ve put together a tutorial to achieve this with Google Tasks.

   The same can be done with other apps like Todoist, Notion etc. depending on which mobile app you use the most on Android.

2. Build your own Web-based interfaces and connect it to Routine through Zapier

   Here are tutorials to achieve this with some tools:

   • Zapier Interfaces

   • Tally

   You can do the same with other apps that allow building interfaces such as Airtable, Retool, Typeform, Google Forms etc.

🙏 Asks

There are still a few bugs that we need to fix on iOS.

If you encounter a strange behavior, please help us by reporting it and share the logs with us: tap the avatar at the top left corner of the app, go to Advanced and then Developer logs.

🎯 Coming Next

The next version should come with:

• Event reminders

• Faster launch time

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

🤗 Shout Outs

Thiago P., roror88, Mark J., Nakul J., mirkobucan, ej_2021, Joshua K., kmswannack, Charlie F., yotins, fungibletaco, 14023972245, cren09, alexlozanoes, surajpkn, Nick W., jason, hangandaniel1, Tim L., arshiamoghaddam93, Sylvain M., bastiaan, canineaggression, sherifsamy0006, Victoria C., davidklaw, Tara H., Wesley L., gavin, Subhajit R., joebplus12, filipasoares, sayodin, simoncreates, yanin g., light.wave, philipbhaworth, chuck, panglossy, oren.mizrahi.inc, jesse, slkoehler, jentimbrell, socks, mona, Michelle M., sylvain.min, whon26, krutesh08, chan1537, pralad.prasad, mdjr3, samfurie, John G., codennise07, pqseags, Lance C., ryanb3676, mudsir, Timur, biohzrd, toplchris, leonegod69, max, william h., bruce, binni.skariah, Tim, Kamila N., satya2608, Edgar F., johnwx, skylarshelton, Eryk K., andrew., Pablo A., klugejamesd, Yousuf Ali C., Dawn J., muscogulus, holmes.cmf, joshua.kehrer95, JT, sathwikc, m0rdi0, Michelle, apl, djkidox, zhengyangluo180, jteitloff, Franz M., shira.sneg, charlie, perfectlyrational_14358, ftr.dsgn, lcx979, Johannes G., .fxf., Werner, Subhash, burkhalter2, patelheet30, Cathy B., Chris_Atlanticus, Brock K., diego-andres5, haroonazizi

Routine Desktop/Web 0.14 is here with a brand new organization to help you find your information more easily.

🍾 New Features

• The Agenda and Calendar have been reworked to display, in each day, the tasks you completed and ignored

• A new Tasks screen has been introduced which includes tabs to access your unplanned and upcoming tasks.

  Soon another tab will be added to access your recurrences while the Upcoming tab will be improved to include the postponed tasks.

  Note that the Journal has been moved to Settings for now.

• Another screen has been introduced, named Notes, which centralizes all your notes. For now it includes your pages and the notes you take in events.

✂️ Improvements

• The designs for input fields, selected states, icons but also empty states have been improved

• The bug preventing the Agenda from automatically switching to the current day at midnight has been fixed

• Notes added to an event for the first time reverted in some conditions; it has been fixed

• The settings could reset when the app was put to sleep during login. It is no longer the case.

• And many more bugs which have been fixed.

🙏 Asks

The support we’ve received in the past month has been great! Please continue supporting us through the Believer program.

Note that by becoming a Believer today, you will secure the discounted price ($10) of your future Professional plan.

🎯 Coming Next

• We will improve the new screens as mentioned above:

  • Recurrences tab

  • Improved Upcoming tab

• We are focused on squashing the remaining bugs to make the app rock solid

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

🤗 Shout Outs

Because of the holidays, we have been a bit slow to answer emails and chat messages. Sorry about that. A special thanks to audrey, kmswannack, fungibletaco, t.krupnik, nakul.jilka, bonny, timurbogautdinov32, ekijkindevegte, Tara H., Nick R. J., wu790616, philipbhaworth, folyum, yanin g., Lukasz, prhelms86, bigchungus_bruh, joshuaemorycarter, brockamer, Richard C, alex, Virginie D., kcbusayong, nddsgn, bruce, gemlouisem, timkrupnik, hello, brokenmelancholy, Or G., mikael2900, Fabio A., clancummings, leonegod69, bcklein1, dave, jeremyhokyilee, y.lee, josef.schn7, johvinn, satya2608, Lionel S., orgilan1, Lance C., Albert, mobilemassey, Steven K., geojcg, John G., zoltan_o, vinomeister, yotins, f3f3b3, .fxf., Kevin C., Mia R., williamwong09, Robert A., vino, nowilljohn, ryanb3676, yurizambarakji, jairsian, cameron, simoncreates, mike, asmart99, jeylani, keithaltomare