Ramble is a voice-to-tasks feature in Todoist that lets you quickly add tasks using your voice. Just speak naturally. Ramble listens, transcribes, and captures actionable tasks in real-time. This makes adding tasks on the fly fast and effortless, whether your thoughts are organized or not.
Note
Ramble is available to all Todoist customers with unlimited access. Usage limits for the Free plan will roll out soon. Share your feedback and help us improve Ramble.
To access the latest Ramble features (including label selection on mobile and upcoming in-app guidance), please make sure you're using the minimum supported versions:
iOS: 25.11.17
Android: 11962 (available once released)
Web: 9250
How AI powers Ramble
Ramble is built on Todoist Assist, our AI-powered suite of productivity tools. When you use Ramble, advanced large language models (LLMs) work behind the scenes to:
- Transcribe your speech accurately into text in real-time across 40+ languages.
- Understand natural language to extract actionable tasks from your spoken thoughts.
- Interpret task attributes like dates, deadlines, priorities, and durations from conversational phrases.
- Learn from context to distinguish between tasks, edits, and deletions as you speak.
Microphone access
Before jumping into Ramble, check if your microphone’s set up correctly:
- First use: You’ll see a prompt to enable microphone access. Approve to start dictating.
- Active microphone: In Ramble, you can see which mic is in use or switch to a different one, if needed.
- Denied access: If you’ve denied access, follow the on-screen instructions to enable it in your system or browser settings.
- No microphone detected: If no mic is found, connect one or check your system settings.
Add a task with Ramble
After your mic’s hooked up, here’s how to dictate and capture tasks with Ramble:
- Click the waveform icon in Quick Add or the sidebar. If you're using the desktop apps, you can also click the Todoist menu bar icon for macOS or app tray icon for Windows and Linux.
- Speak what you need to do freely. Ramble will capture tasks in a preview mode as you talk.
- Say phrases like “Actually, I meant…” to edit a task, or “Remove that” to delete a suggested task.
- End the session by saying “that’s all” or clicking Add tasks in the preview.
Tasks are added to your Inbox by default. You can select a different project before confirming.
Nina · Customer Experience Specialist
Try out these keyboard shortcuts! Use ⇧ Shift + Q to open Ramble quickly while in the app. To use Ramble from anywhere and without opening Todoist, use Option ⌥ + Shift ⇧ + R on macOS or ⇧ Alt + Shift + R on Windows. If this is not your default shortcut, you can update it in Settings → Desktop.
For iOS: Use Ramble as a widget, control, or with the Action button
Keep Ramble within reach by adding the Ramble widget to your home screen or lock screen, or as a control on iOS.
If you're using an iPhone that runs on iOS 17 or later, you can assign the Ramble control to the Action button of your iPhone:
- Open the System Settings app of your iOS device.
- Tap Action Button.
- Swipe left until you see the Controls option.
- Tap Choose a Control...
- Search for and select Ramble.
Task attributes
Ramble can add tasks with specific attributes. See the table below for a list of supported and unsupported attributes:
| Supported attributes | Unsupported attributes |
|---|---|
| Task name | Section |
| Description | Sub-task |
| Date and time | Custom reminder |
| Project | |
| Priority | |
| Label | |
| Deadline (paid feature) | |
| Duration (paid feature) |
We’re looking into supporting more task attributes soon!
If you’re on the Free plan, dictating a deadline or duration will be ignored when tasks are added to a project. Upgrade to a paid plan to use all the task attributes with Ramble.
Dates and deadline phrases
- Use date language (“work on it Thursday afternoon”) for when you plan to tackle it
- Use deadline language (“must be finished on Friday 8th”) for hard cut-offs.
Example Ramble session
Here are some real-world examples inspired by our user’s feedback and common user cases:
| When spoken: | Ramble will: |
|---|---|
| “Finish Q3 roadmap draft by Wednesday afternoon, priority one and in the Work project.Oh, also email the beta testers tomorrow at 8am - should only take 15 minutes.Actually, move that email to Thursday.” |
|
| “Buy groceries tomorrow, tag it as errands, make it a P3. Pay the electricity bill today, add it to finance, urgent, make it a P1.” |
|
| “Okay, I need to renew my passport, buy travel insurance, and check if my flight has extra baggage allowance. Oh, and remind me to tell Alex about the visa thing tomorrow morning at 9am.” |
|
| “Let’s see… Update presentation slides, order groceries, and clean up notes from yesterday’s call. Actually, skip the slides, they’re done.” |
|
| “Email the client the updated pricing doc, schedule team sync for Thursday 2pm, follow up with Jordan about budget approvals, and call Mum on the way home.” |
|
| “Add send invoice in the Acme project by Friday, update CRM after the 2pm call, and prep slides for Monday’s 10am meeting. Should only take 30 minutes.” |
|
| “Summarize feedback from client meeting, share next steps with design team, and book a check-in with Sarah next Wednesday afternoon.” |
|
Note
Your audio is processed securely, and is not stored or used for training. The resulting tasks and their details are the only data saved in Todoist. Check our privacy policy for more details.
Edit or delete tasks with Ramble
Ramble captures tasks in a preview mode as you talk. If you need to change or delete the task, use phrases like “no, I meant…” to edit the task, or “remove that” to delete the suggested task.
Best practices when using Ramble
Bring your productivity full circle with these best practices when using Ramble:
Speak naturally but signal tasks clearly
Begin with actionable cues like “I need to…”, “I want to…” or imperative verbs, such as “Buy milk”. This helps Ramble spot tasks instantly. Ramble isn’t optimized for assistance requests such as “Can you plan my trip to Japan?”.
Improve speech recognition
Speak more slowly, closer to the mic, and minimize background noise.
Pause between each item on your list
When rattling off several tasks (“For the trip: book flights, renew passport, buy adapter”), pause slightly between each item to give Ramble room to create separate tasks.
Use quick corrections
If you misspoke or need to make edits, just say “Actually, make that…” or similar. Ramble will update automatically – no need to stop or undo manually.
You can also delete tasks as you Ramble on. For a phrase like “I need to buy apples”, you can follow with “Scratch that, I already have some” or “Forget the apples”.
Troubleshoot issues with Ramble
Ramble is currently in beta, so there may be issues or bugs with the feature. If you're having trouble with microphone access, dictation, or general errors with Ramble, check if it's a limitation or follow these troubleshooting steps to resolve them.
Limitations
Ramble is quite the polyglot, and understands the following languages:
- Arabic
- Bengali
- Bulgarian
- Chinese (simplified and traditional)
- Croatian
- Czech
- Danish
- Dutch
- English
- Estonian
- Finnish
- French
- German
- Greek
- Hebrew
- Hindi
- Hungarian
- Indonesian
- Italian
- Japanese
- Korean
- Latvian
- Lithuanian
- Norwegian
- Polish
- Portuguese
- Romanian
- Russian
- Serbian
- Slovak
- Slovenian
- Spanish
- Swahili
- Swedish
- Thai
- Turkish
- Ukrainian
- Vietnamese
Ramble only works with an internet connection. Check if you’re online and try again.
There's currently no option to turn off or disable Ramble, but you can choose not to use Ramble while using Todoist.
Speech recognition issues
Ramble catches a lot, but might struggle depending on speed, volume, and noise. We recommend speaking more slowly, closer to the mic, and minimizing background noise to improve recognition.
Ramble also works better with a list of things to do (“I want to plan a trip to Japan”), rather than a brainstorm or assistant request ("Can you please plan my trip to Japan?”).
Language detection issues
Ramble might misinterpret tasks dictated in your own language. To troubleshoot this, speak as clearly as possible. Go slower, enunciate, and see if results improve. If you're still having issues, please share your feedback.
Microphone issues
If you're having issues with your microphone access, check your browser mic permissions:
- Log in to Todoist at https://todoist.com.
- Open the website settings. These are usually found on the left or right of the address bar.
- Make sure to allow microphone access for Todoist.
- Reload the web browser.
Errors in Ramble
The connection to Ramble may have temporarily dropped and show an error. Wait a few seconds and try again. If the error persists, please share your feedback.
Get in touch
If you’re having trouble using Ramble to dictate or capture tasks, get in touch with us. We – Marco, Summer, Nina, or any of our other teammates – are more than happy to help!
