When comparing Task Coach vs GTDNext, the Slant community recommends GTDNext for most people. In the question“What are the best cross-platform task apps?” GTDNext is ranked 13th while Task Coach is ranked 22nd. The most important reason people chose GTDNext is:
All the “Get Things Done” lists you would expect: next actions, someday, waiting, and scheduled.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Free and open source
With access to the source code, savvy users can make under-the-hood tweaks to suit their work style.
Pro Unlimited nesting of items and lists
When things grow in complexity, their parts can be turned into discrete task items within a hierarchical structure.
Pro Tracks hours and budget
Task Coach allows you to track how long it actually takes to complete a task and can be used to analyze the resulting impact on billing and budget.
Pro Tracks percent finished
Pro GTD style lists
All the “Get Things Done” lists you would expect: next actions, someday, waiting, and scheduled.
Pro Automatic next actions
When it comes to choosing your next action, most to-do apps suffer from the same problem: All of your actions (sometimes hundreds in total) are visible to choose from. This can overwhelm users and cause them to give up on the system. GTDNext is different. In the "Next Action" view, only the very next action is shown for each of your projects. This results in a nicely consolidated view of only the things that need your immediate attention.
Pro Unlimited levels of projects and actions
In GTDNext you can set up an unlimited number of levels for your projects and actions, allowing you to plan your project and sub-projects in as much detail as needed.
Pro Areas of Focus
GTDNext supports the “Areas of Focus” methodology from Getting Things Done. You can filter all of your tasks to just show your work tasks, side project tasks, or personal tasks. There is also a global filter, so that when you’re hard at work you can focus only on your work projects and tasks.
Pro Option to visualize all projects and tasks in a single outline view
This is really useful because it prevents you from having to navigate through each project individually.
Pro Many keyboard shortcuts available
The number of keyboard shortcuts makes it easy to log or add tasks without removing your hands from the keys.
Cons
Con No updated package for recent linux distros
deb package available to download does not install app
Con Multiple users can access a file over a network, but there’s no web-based interface for straightforward collaboration
A task file may be opened by several instances of Task Coach, either running on the same computer or on different ones (on a network share for instance). When you save, Task Coach will merge your work with whatever has been saved on the disk prior. Conflicts are automatically resolved, usually by you winning the conflict.
This serves two use cases: 1) A single user opening the task file on several computers (work, home, laptop) and 2) several users working on the same task file.
The first case is the most common and the most secure. The second case may be dangerous. Most network disk sharing protocols do not support the kind of file locking that would make this 100% secure. A list of common protocols and their behavior can be found in the Task Coach help file.
Con No mobile app available
Con Web only
GTDNext does not have native apps for other devices, but it does work across PC/Mac/Linux on the web client.