Dictate to add tasks with Ramble

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.

Warning

Ramble is currently in beta. It's available to customers on paid subscriptions and who have turned Experimental features on. Share your feedback and help us improve Ramble.

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:

Select Platform:

Click the waveform icon in Quick Add or the sidebar. This opens Ramble.
Speak what you need to do freely. Ramble will capture tasks in a preview mode as you talk.
Say phrases like “no, I meant…” to edit a task, or “remove that” to delete a suggested task.
Preview the tasks Ramble extracted from your speech. Deselect tasks you don’t need, or select the project where tasks will go.
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

Use ⇧ Shift + Q to open Ramble quickly.

Supported task attributes

Ramble can add tasks with these attributes:

Task names
Descriptions
Dates
Priority

If you're on a paid plan, Ramble can also suggest or remove:

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 submitted 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

Finish Q3 roadmap draft by Wednesday afternoon, priority one.

Oh, also email the beta testers tomorrow at 8am—should only take 15 minutes.

Actually, move that email to Thursday.”

In the scenario above, Ramble will:

Add “Finish Q3 roadmap draft” for Wednesday afternoon, as a P1 instantly.
Add “Email the beta testers”, due tomorrow at 8 with a duration of 15 min.
Edit the second task, shifting its date to Thursday.

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 the Todoist 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.

Ramble doesn’t support setting a project, labels, sub-tasks or reminders for each individual task yet. We're looking into how to extend support to more task attributes.

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