Phenquestions
Keeping track of certain tasks can sometimes be difficult. While it is usually no problem if you complete tasks regularly, say once a week, it gets difficult if you only do so occasionally.
Examples are changing oil on your car, dusting your PC, cleaning the fridge, medical appointments or changing smoke alarm batteries.
While some of you may be able to track those without any helpers, others may have a hard time remembering when they completed a task the last time.
The Android application WhenLast is a simple application that helps you out with that. It does not require any special permissions but is not available on Google Play currently.
It has been created as part of Donation Coder's NANY 2015 event and is available for download on the website.
The app displays groups at the top and all items filed under that group when it is selected. Each item is listed with a descriptive text, edit and now buttons, and the last time the task was recorded.
When you hit now, the current time and date is added as a record.
New items are added via the plus icon at the very top of the screen. All you need to add is the name of the task and a group you want it to be listed under. This can be an existing group or a new group.
Editing tasks works similarly, but you get three additional options here:
- Delete the task to remove it completely.
- Flag it as hidden so that it is not displayed at all times.
- Clear the date history of the item.
The settings allow you to customize the app somewhat. It allows you to change the list style for example from the default bar at the top to a sidebar display or a display based on the device's orientation.
Hidden items and sections are not displayed by default but you can change that here so that they are displayed in the interface.
You may notice overflowing text depending on the screen size of your device. I had to change the orientation to avoid that.
Closing Words
WhenLast is a helper application to keep track of tasks and activities. It is rather bare bones at the time of writing and additional features such as options to configure notifications when tasks reach a certain threshold in days would certainly be useful.
I'd also like to see the interface optimized to use the available space better. The edit or now buttons could be removed for instance with either option being replaced by a long tap on a task instead.
It is a promising start all in all though.
