Ok so this is a overdue catch-up changelog 😅

The last update here was December 26, and since then I’ve shipped a lot across Ellie on web, desktop, iPhone, iPad, integrations, and the API/MCP side.

Some of it is very obvious. A lot of it is the boring-but-important work around recurring tasks, timezones, rollover, calendar sync, timers, and tasks mysteriously ending up somewhere they shouldn’t.

Here are the five biggest updates:

Ellie now has a real Week Calendar on iPad. You can see the shape of your week at once, keep the day you are planning in view, and move between the calendar and your tasks without shrinking everything into an iPhone-sized layout.

It makes the iPad feel like a proper weekly planning surface instead of a stretched mobile app.

You can now start a Pomodoro directly from a task. Choose your focus and break lengths, then keep the session visible while you work. On web and desktop, it can stay in Ellie's floating timer or the Mac menu bar.

Your active session is restored if Ellie reloads or briefly goes offline, so a refresh does not erase the work you already put in.

Quick Capture now works like a small standalone desktop window. Open it with a global shortcut while you are in another app, type the task, and save it without opening the full Ellie window.

You can include a date, label, list, or time estimate as you type. Ellie's keyboard shortcuts are also customizable now, including the shortcuts for showing Ellie and opening Quick Capture.

Task and template notes are now proper rich text across web and iOS. Add bold, italic, underline, or strikethrough text, links, and bulleted or numbered lists. On the web, familiar Markdown shortcuts work while you type; on iOS, the formatting toolbar stays close to the keyboard.

You can also duplicate a task. On web, you can save an existing task as a template, which makes repeatable workflows much faster to set up.

MCP / API Access is now available as a beta Power Feature. Ellie gives you a secure URL you can add to an MCP-compatible client, plus the existing API key used by integrations such as Zapier.

This is the beginning of making Ellie useful from more of the places where your work already happens. Because MCP access is still in beta, please send anything that feels off to chris@aloa.co.

Thanks for continuing to use Ellie and for sending such thoughtful feedback. A few of these changes came directly from the feedback board, and there is a lot more I want to improve next.

More soon—and hopefully the next changelog will not take eight months 😅

— Chris

Good news, I built a system to take my code changes and generate change logs faster 😮

Connect your Todoist account to sync tasks between Ellie and Todoist. Filter by projects, sections, labels, and priorities to import exactly the tasks you need.

Create reusable task templates that you can quickly drag onto your calendar to create new tasks. Perfect for recurring workflows or common task types.

Configure how tasks created from Slack behave—set default dates, lists, and enable AI Auto-Fill for tasks created from Slack messages.

A new floating timer on mobile devices lets you track time on tasks without losing sight of your work. Start, pause, stop, and complete tasks directly from the timer.

Choose which page Ellie opens to when you launch the app. Set your preferred starting point in Personalization settings.

Events on your calendar now display in a cleaner column-based layout, similar to Google Calendar. Overlapping events are arranged side-by-side for better visibility.

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The entire drag-and-drop system on iOS has been rebuilt from the ground up:

The shutdown ritual now uses a temporary drag-and-drop system—move tasks between "completed" and "missed" columns before finalizing. You can also add tasks you forgot to log and toggle between Lists and Task Templates in the sidebar during planning.

Your filter selections, date ranges, and chart settings in Analytics are now saved and restored between sessions.

When you navigate to a date that wasn't previously loaded, recurring tasks are now automatically generated for that day.

Minutes now display with leading zeros (e.g., "05" instead of "5") for a cleaner look.

Clearer messaging for subscription status, easier access to invoices and plan changes through the customer portal.

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So my promise to keep this updated was... a lie 😅 (IM SORRY)

But a lot has happened over the last few months!

To be honest I'm definitely forgetting things but here are the highlights:

Ellie has a brand new AI assistant on both mobile and desktop. (more info). This has been incredibly useful if you want to do bulk actions on tasks. I'm personally using it the most on my iPhone because it has built-in dictation 👀

Just a start, very excited to keep building this out!

This is a very interesting one! You can now make templates, which you can drag into the Kanban or calendar, and they will stay in position in the templates column.

This is great for people who have regular tasks that they don't want to make into recurring tasks. More info here.

More info here! Very requested feature, but you can now do this and it can even stay in sync!

Kind of embarrassed how long this took, but you can now search for tasks in the iOS app! You can access this by clicking search at the top right :)

Too many to count, but here are a few:

Ok so I said I was going to update the changelog a lot more and ended up not posting an update in over a year 😅

(I now have a recurring reminder to update it at LEAST once a month 🤞)

If you've been following a long on Twitter/Youtube you know I've been making updates to Ellie almost every single week 👀 so let me share some highlights for anyone who thought I abandoned Ellie:

This first of (hopefully) many Ellie integrations 👀

More info here!

Added new tables (replacing the old pie charts), CSV export and a new "Current work week" date option.

This isn't fully out yet, but if you would like access please email me directly! (chris@aloa.co)

More info here.

More info here.

Behind the scenes video of making this feature for those interested :)

Holding "Shift" and selecting a task now lets you bulk drag and drop items or change the label/delete :)

Video of this here.

iOS subtasks have been overhauled to just "feel" much better to use, from a completely new drag and drop experience to haptics 🕺

Link to video preview!

For example, revamped animations for key things like expanding/collapsing lists (before -> after video), speed improvements (especially to calendar loading) and SOOOOO much more

First, I've been pretty bad in terms of updating this changelog 😅 I know I said this a few months ago but I promise I'll try to be better moving forward (have a lot of awesome things planned!)

There have actually been a ton of awesome things released but I want to announce the release of 3 major things:

You can now connect your Outlook calendar to be able to view Outlook events in Ellie or use the 2-way sync to add Ellie tasks to Outlook!

This feature is available on both desktop and iOS ✌️ Check out this help center article to learn more about how it works!

Ellie supports 3 different types of widgets on iOS so you can quickly see things like tasks/calendar events at a glance. They work on both iPhone and iPad!

You can read more about these widgets by checking out this page on our help center!

Also check out these videos if you want to see some behind the scenes of building this feature 👇

You can now send tasks directly into Ellie from Slack!

You can head over to Settings -> Integrations and activate this to get started.

Read more about it in this help center article!

Also check out this video if you want to see some behind the scenes of building this feature 👇

Special thanks to everyone who requested all of these things and helped test them!

If you're on the Mac, Ellie now automatically adds a menu bar item at the top right of your screen so you can quickly glance and see upcoming calendar events.

If there is a Zoom or Google meet link attached to the event, a button to join the meeting will also appear.

You can read more about it here!

Apple calendar for web/desktop is now live :)

To access simply go to Settings -> Calendars and link your Apple calendar account

I've also created this resource page to help walk you through the feature.

This feature was SUPER complex so if you notice any issues or bugs please report them 🙏

Thanks for everyone who helped out with this!

We've also added a few other views like (2,3 and 4-day view), the ability to zoom and hide/show declined events directly through this new menu :)

To use it, go to Calendar mode and you will see a new "Week" button at the top. Clicking that will expand all the new views.

Ever deleted a task you didn't mean to? Well now you have a few seconds to undo it!

You can now auto add labels to tasks created directly on your lists :)

There is a new setting when creating/editing a task to map it to a label

If a task is created without any label, this label will be applied.

Note: Tasks dragged into the list will NOT have the label applied. Only tasks created directly will

I've been pretty bad about keeping the changelog updated (last update 4 months ago 🫢) so let me catch you up!

We've recently launched a new help center/guide to help you get the most out of Ellie. Check it out here!

The biggest change to Ellie since the timebox was added. You can now create lists within Ellie (think of them as multiple brain dumps).

We've also added an option to "show all lists" on the sidebar for power users who plan on using lists very frequently 👇

If you want to learn more about lists (and why/how to best use them) read about it in our new guide.

You can now search for tasks within Ellie. This is great if you ever wanted to refer back to any notes or see when a task was complete!

If you want to learn more about search, read about it in the guide.

This opens up a lot of doors to new desktop-specific features. It can be downloaded directly here.

You now have the option to add Ellie tasks to Google calendar (and have them synced). You can read more about it here, or watch this explainer video below 👇

I can't even list the number of things that were changed here, but just know that a TON of things were fixed and improved. Please believe me 🙏

Have emails you need to respond to later? Deals that you want to remember to redeem?

You can now forward them to Ellie and they will appear in either your Braindump or Today sections 🤯

Check out this demo below 👇

(thanks for the suggestion on this James!)

We've made a few improvements to analytics so they are more helpful. Time is now displayed in hours instead of minutes.

You can now also toggle between # of tasks and estimated time as your unit of measurement

(thanks for the feedback Arunas!)

3 big updates for you!

You can now view things like...

A lot of people have been asking for this one: a view that only has "today". You can now do this by clicking "Focus" on the Kanban or clicking "SHIFT + T"

You can now track time spent on a task in Ellie!

You can click the "Play" button on a task or by clicking the "Start timer" next to "Actual time" in the task modal (demo below👇)

You can also use our new analytics feature to see your actual vs estimated time 👀

Time tracking will be coming to iOS in the future!