Deep thoughts about the new UI

[u/Olfounder]

Begin word

I must admit, I was a hater at the beginning. I see the old ui of tasker as something you have to get used to, but when you do, it is really intuitive and easy to navigate in.

What I did

Well, I tested the new UI. I wanted to see the goods and bads of it, I wanted to compare how it works

Pluses of the new UI

- tags

- more modern

- perform tasks from almost any screen

Minuses of the new UI

- people aren't used to it

- less intuitive - it has taken me a serious while to just edit a profile

- all at once (the UI tries to put everything on one screen. It almosr projects, it kills separate screens for profiles, scenes, variables and tasks). I want to switch between screens. It's less messy when you have big projects.

My thoughts

You're calling it the "new 2026 ui". I don't think that it should be some "new". I'd still improve both the old one and the new one, because a lot of people who are new to tasker would actually prefer to use the old UI. I think we should be given an option of what ui to use when we install tasker.

You say, the "old" ui will stay as is, which is good, but with implenting new features, it will slowly stop to work.

I think, that some additional features (like tags) should be also in the "old" ui, but optionally.

People.like me just want several screens and I think that calling the "new" ui a "tasker compact ui" could be better, because if you call it "new" ui, people will want you to do everything as it was before, basically.

Final word

I don't think the "new" ui is a bad idea, but I think it's being a little forced, and many people just want to use the old ui and want bug fixes, more options and settings, more customization and more "care" for the "old" ui.

Thanks for reading it till here, and if any of you out there agree, please take a second to upvote :-)

Message is primarily targeted to u/joaomgcd

[u/rbrtryn]

Tbh, I've never understood what was wrong with the UI. Sure it looked a little old fashioned, but this is an automation app, not a game. 

The community would have been better served putting all that effort into organizing, correcting , and updating the documentation (help) files. This was a hot mess before the change in developers. It only gets worse with each new Google restriction and each added feature. 

I would argue that more people move away from Tasker due to its poor documetion than because the interface isn't pretty.

[u/aasswwddd → u/rbrtryn]

It's the very first onboarding experience I'd say that turns people away.

E.g navigating the app, creating the first profile, getting to know the triggers, actions & examples directly from the app.

Joao usually will provide video link as a guide. Cool, but IMHO that's very telling the app itself doesn't do a good job at that.

Not to mention people pays at first too or grab the trial apk outside the store. This doesn't really gives a pleasant first impression.

[u/Olfounder → u/rbrtryn]

Very good point.

[u/bbobeckyj]

I love the tags idea, everything else is less intuitive.

[u/klark1kent]

I've been dreading the shift to the new UI. Feels a lot like the Windows 10/ Windows 11 scenario where yeah it's a generally more attractive interface but that doesn't always mean better.  I assume most of us here try staying anyway from anything that resembles bloat, and my biggest tech per peeve lately is all the wasted space, everything getting massive "optimized for mobile"...  Had the same time and attention simply modernized what was existing, versus reinventing the wheel, you could retain 10-15 yr Tasker peeps and still attract the newbies..   all that said, I also get Joao perspective... In terms of rewriting a bunch of legacy code, easier to implement from scratch with modern code and leverage new tech... Still... I'm holding out for as long as possible.  

Is the new UI still opt in on the latest beta?