To-Do App Any.do 3.0 Adds Collaboration, Zoom And List Sorting Among 150 New Features
While the world is getting its first taste of what life will be like when you have a small wearable like a watch to direct you to what you should do next, one of the leaders in personal organization apps for smartphones is releasing a big update.
Context & Ripple Effects
Any.do spent early 2015 widening its footprint — it had just brought the app to desktop with its January Mac release — and this 3.0 update is the feature-side counterpart: collaboration, Zoom calling, and list sorting packed into a single drop of 150 additions.
The timing matters because rivals were moving in parallel: weeks later Wunderlist would open up with an API and early integrations with Slack, Sunrise, and HipChat, signaling that the to-do category was racing from solo checklists toward connected, collaborative workflows.
First-order effects
- Users of one of the leading smartphone organization apps get shared-list collaboration and Zoom calls built directly into their task flow, turning Any.do from a personal checklist into a small-team coordination tool overnight.
- The 150-feature scale of the release puts immediate pressure on Wunderlist, which was answering in the same window by courting third-party developers through its own API rather than shipping equivalent built-in features.
Second-order effects
- Competitors are pushed to compete on integrations and collaboration depth instead of core list mechanics — a contest Todoist later rejoined with its own major mobile, desktop, and web update adding sections inside projects.
- Collaboration features raise switching costs: once teams share lists and meetings inside one app, migrating means rebuilding shared workflows, which locks in Any.do's user base against lighter-weight rivals.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, task managers converge on being the surface where work gets done — not just tracked — a direction Any.do itself confirmed when it later shipped real-time sync, integrated calendars, and a personal assistant for select users.
The trend: To-do apps are evolving from solo checklists into collaborative, integration-rich work surfaces, with each major release pulling assistants and communication deeper into the task layer.