Tablets / Organizational Apps

[Hank Scorpio]

I've been thinking about purchasing a tablet and either mounting it to a wall, or to my fridge. I'd like to use it strictly as an organizational tool.

What I have in mind is, ideally, having the main/home/lock screen being a daily agenda type thing, which will display the following:

- Shit I need to get done that day. Some of which will be recurring weekly.
- My schedule for that day, with maybe a toggle to change it to weekly.
- Reminders about things that are upcoming that week (and are maybe flagged important)
- Again, I'd like all this info readily available with a screen or button tap. I don't want to get into having to open and close apps on the tablet.

Other uses would be for shopping lists, recipes, etc.

I'd like to be able to update it from my iPhone, but would like the tablet not to be an iPad, because iPads are a lot more expensive. I'd put a budget number on this at about $200. Less is good. More is okay if it's really worth it - but I don't want to get close to iPad price ranges.

Anyone here ever done something like this, who could recommend a good tablet, and some good apps/software to do it?

 

[Max Power]

I don't know about the software, but you can get an 8th gen iPad for like $100 on eBay and it can still run iOS 18.

 

[AlNipper49]

I run Home Assistant on a Rasberry Pi and throw it fullscreen on my mounted tablet. It works well - it has a little bit of a learning curve but Home Assistant is one of the most supported open source softwares out there.

 

[cgori]

I have an (old) Amazon fire tablet wall-mounted for home automation purposes - if you go that way make sure to get the ad-free one, I erred when I bought this one at first. I tried de-bloating it, but it still does some dumb stuff and kicks out of the main app I am running about every day / every other day requiring me to press something on the screen to get back to what I want it to display. I think I even paid to remove the ads after the fact and it does some of that stuff still. Rather annoying. They are cheap though - mine is a fire HD 8 which was $49.99 when new (and apparently still costs the same 7 years later for the newest iteration).

Mine is running Action Tiles as a front end to samsung smarthouse stuff - if I had that to do over again I think I'd run home assistant as Nip has, and I would probably use Sharp Tools as the app. I think that Sharp Tools can do some of the calendar / todo list stuff you want (and Action Tiles cannot, it's kind of a weird app and I'm less excited about it over time too).

@AlNipper49 - do you think the HA could run alongside on a Pi I'm already using for a DNS black hole? I think mine is a Pi4 with 4GB. It would be nice to have them both on one box, but I dunno what the resource demands of HA are.

 

[AlNipper49]

I have an (old) Amazon fire tablet wall-mounted for home automation purposes - if you go that way make sure to get the ad-free one, I erred when I bought this one at first. I tried de-bloating it, but it still does some dumb stuff and kicks out of the main app I am running about every day / every other day requiring me to press something on the screen to get back to what I want it to display. I think I even paid to remove the ads after the fact and it does some of that stuff still. Rather annoying. They are cheap though - mine is a fire HD 8 which was $49.99 when new (and apparently still costs the same 7 years later for the newest iteration).

Mine is running Action Tiles as a front end to samsung smarthouse stuff - if I had that to do over again I think I'd run home assistant as Nip has, and I would probably use Sharp Tools as the app. I think that Sharp Tools can do some of the calendar / todo list stuff you want (and Action Tiles cannot, it's kind of a weird app and I'm less excited about it over time too).

@AlNipper49 - do you think the HA could run alongside on a Pi I'm already using for a DNS black hole? I think mine is a Pi4 with 4GB. It would be nice to have them both on one box, but I dunno what the resource demands of HA are.

I bet it could, but I honestly am not sure exactly what they are recommending these days. I have mine running on old laptops and it's 100% fine. I'd probably give it a shot. I think it even has a plugin to actually run DNS backholing within it, which you may want to consider as they have a pre-built sd-card thing for folks running on Pis or whatever (I think, it's called HAOS)

 

[Scott Cooper's Grand Slam]

I've been thinking about purchasing a tablet and either mounting it to a wall, or to my fridge. I'd like to use it strictly as an organizational tool.

What I have in mind is, ideally, having the main/home/lock screen being a daily agenda type thing, which will display the following:

- Shit I need to get done that day. Some of which will be recurring weekly.
- My schedule for that day, with maybe a toggle to change it to weekly.
- Reminders about things that are upcoming that week (and are maybe flagged important)
- Again, I'd like all this info readily available with a screen or button tap. I don't want to get into having to open and close apps on the tablet.

Other uses would be for shopping lists, recipes, etc.

I'd like to be able to update it from my iPhone, but would like the tablet not to be an iPad, because iPads are a lot more expensive. I'd put a budget number on this at about $200. Less is good. More is okay if it's really worth it - but I don't want to get close to iPad price ranges.

Anyone here ever done something like this, who could recommend a good tablet, and some good apps/software to do it?

A recommendation from left field: have you tried Todoist? The functionality you describe is available in the Todoist app. I love the natural language input. (i.e., I can type "X next Tuesday at 9" and it just gets it). I love how it differentiates between "this is the deadline for X" and "this is when I want to see the task X/this is how I want reminders for it." It's trite, but it just works. It's really helped unlock something in my brain for task/information management.

It syncs across all platforms. The Apple apps are great (iPhone, iPad, Watch) but I use the web app for Windows a lot. Syncing is easy and instant. The widgets available on all of these platforms, and the way it surfaces relevant info at just the right time means that I don't need something like a wall-mounted iPad.

 

[B H Kim]

I have one of these and I think it's great as wall-mounted calendar/reminder device, but it's considerably smaller than a typical tablet.



https://usetrmnl.com

 

[Hank Scorpio]

A recommendation from left field: have you tried Todoist? The functionality you describe is available in the Todoist app. I love the natural language input. (i.e., I can type "X next Tuesday at 9" and it just gets it). I love how it differentiates between "this is the deadline for X" and "this is when I want to see the task X/this is how I want reminders for it." It's trite, but it just works. It's really helped unlock something in my brain for task/information management.

It syncs across all platforms. The Apple apps are great (iPhone, iPad, Watch) but I use the web app for Windows a lot. Syncing is easy and instant. The widgets available on all of these platforms, and the way it surfaces relevant info at just the right time means that I don't need something like a wall-mounted iPad.

I’ve seen Todoist recommended elsewhere, and it might be something I wind up using. I haven’t really figured out how to use or setup widgets yet on my phone, because I’ve never needed them. Or at least never realized that I’ve needed them. My phone is kind of a mess of apps that I reorganize every few months.

I do have an app that reminds me to water plants, but it has the downfall of reminding me at specific times rather than having the reminder persist in a prominent location until it’s done. Would love to have other apps integrate with one master to-do list, if that’s something Todoist can do (because my plant app knows how often each plant should be watered).

I’m way behind on the tablet game. I have an iPad, but it’s an iPad v1, maybe 2… and it’s been sitting in a box in a closet for years. Last time I charged it up, it was barely functional. Not sure when I bought it, but it would have been before 2014.

 

[Scott Cooper's Grand Slam]

I’ve seen Todoist recommended elsewhere, and it might be something I wind up using. I haven’t really figured out how to use or setup widgets yet on my phone, because I’ve never needed them. Or at least never realized that I’ve needed them. My phone is kind of a mess of apps that I reorganize every few months.

I do have an app that reminds me to water plants, but it has the downfall of reminding me at specific times rather than having the reminder persist in a prominent location until it’s done. Would love to have other apps integrate with one master to-do list, if that’s something Todoist can do (because my plant app knows how often each plant should be watered).

Two recommendations:

1) Delete all of the home pages on your iPhone. Everyone has too many apps on their home screens and can't find anything. Nuke it all and start over. You can use the App Library to find all of the apps on you phone when you need them. The only apps that belong on your Home Screen are apps you use daily (perhaps twice a week). I have 13 apps on mine. One is Tododist. Everything else I access when I need it using the App Library. Every once in awhile I'll drag an app out of the App Library and put it on my Home Screen temporarily if I know it'll need my attention for a few days (i.e., airline apps while flying).

2) It'd be easy to recreate your plant-watering schedule in Todoist. "Water the ficus 2oz at 9:30", "water Y every other Tuesday." It's easy. You wouldn't need sub-list apps. Todoist can do it all. Give it a try. It's free.

 

[Hank Scorpio]

Two recommendations:

1) Delete all of the home pages on your iPhone. Everyone has too many apps on their home screens and can't find anything. Nuke it all and start over. You can use the App Library to find all of the apps on you phone when you need them. The only apps that belong on your Home Screen are apps you use daily (perhaps twice a week). I have 13 apps on mine. One is Tododist. Everything else I access when I need it using the App Library. Every once in awhile I'll drag an app out of the App Library and put it on my Home Screen temporarily if I know it'll need my attention for a few days (i.e., airline apps while flying).

2) It'd be easy to recreate your plant-watering schedule in Todoist. "Water the ficus 2oz at 9:30", "water Y every other Tuesday." It's easy. You wouldn't need sub-list apps. Todoist can do it all. Give it a try. It's free.

As to the first, I do wind up dropping most apps into groups… streaming services, social media, shopping, etc… but I need to re-work it a bit. I’m going to give what you said some thought on next re-org though.

For the second, I’m willing to try it, but one thing my app does is take time of year into consideration, so no plant really has a set schedule. I have one that is twice a week in the summer, and goes to about once every two weeks in the winter. So that might be a bit more complicated.