App of the week: Handle

Welcome back to our weekly spotlight on helpful apps. We focus on a variety of products that are useful for work, personal use, or both, providing our own thoughts on the apps and what you can do with them. This week we create to-do lists and set reminders directly from our inbox with Handle.

An intro to Handle
Handle is a really handy app for desktop and iOS devices (with an Android version due to be released soon) that allows you to organise your inbox and create to-do lists, reminders and calendar notes all in one place.

The app integrates with iOS’s inbuilt personal assistant Siri, so you can turn an email into a to-do list item using your voice. When you create a task from an email, you have the option of messaging a receipt to the sender so they know their request has been added to your list.

From there, you can re-organise your to-do list based on priority, create a calendar note of the due date and set yourself multiple reminders. You can even group items related to the same project so you can focus on one thing at a time.

Our review
Handle is great if you’re not a fan of switching between apps just to create reminders for yourself. The only downside at the moment is that it currently only supports Gmail – not exactly ideal if you use another provider, but there is scope for the developer to add functionality for other sources.

It’s especially handy if you receive an email and want to let the sender know you’ve added it to your list but don’t have the time to type out a response. It saves you trying to remember to action it later when you’re free. This became very useful for me when I was out of the office all day at meetings but was still able to check messages on occasion.

The verdict
As I say with virtually every free app I review, Handle is definitely worth trying out. If it works for you, great. If not, at least you haven’t spent any money on it. But I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised by its functionality.

To download Handle, visit handle.com