Google Tasks is preparing a long-awaited “sort by deadline” option that organizes your list by due date, according to an APK teardown of the latest Android build.
Intro and context
Google Tasks is apparently getting a smarter way to arrange your to-dos by deadline, based on code strings and feature flags in the 2025.11 Android release. For people juggling work and personal lists across Gmail, Calendar, and the standalone Tasks app, it is a small tweak that could have an outsized impact on what gets attention first.
What the APK teardown shows
Strings and feature flags in Google Tasks for Android (version 2025.11.17.833092473.0‑release) reference a new sorting option labeled “by deadline.” The teardown suggests the option is already wired up on the back end and can be enabled, which usually signals active internal or limited public testing.
As with any feature uncovered in an APK, there is no guarantee it ships broadly, but the presence of UI text, behavior logic, and consistent ordering strongly implies it is close to finished. This sits on top of the recent addition of deadlines themselves in Tasks, which let you assign a specific date by which something must be done.
How deadline sorting appears to work
When deadline sorting is enabled, tasks are arranged from the earliest to the latest due date, while items without any deadline are pushed toward the bottom of the list. That default makes triage straightforward: today’s or overdue items rise to the top, while evergreen or backlog tasks remain visible but no longer dominate your immediate view.
This mode joins existing options such as sorting by title, date, “starred recently,” and custom order, so it is more of an extra lens than a replacement. If you already star tasks to create a lightweight priority queue, you can keep that workflow and simply hop into the deadline view whenever you want a clean, chronological agenda.
Imagine a list with five dated tasks sprinkled across the week and two undated items: the Wednesday item would appear before the Friday one, with the undated todos grouped beneath them. That kind of predictable ordering is ideal for quick passes before a meeting or when wrapping up at the end of the day.
Why this matters for focus
Because Tasks shows up almost everywhere in Google Workspace—the Gmail sidebar, the Calendar panel, and dedicated web and mobile apps—even small refinements ripple through millions of daily workflows. A deadline-first view also mirrors how teams already triage issues in tools like Jira and how people manage personal lists in apps such as Microsoft To Do, Todoist, and TickTick, all of which support due‑date‑based ordering.
Productivity research often points out that clear sequencing reduces cognitive switching costs and helps counter the planning fallacy, where people underestimate how long work will take. Turning a flat, mixed list into a time-ordered agenda lowers the friction of choosing what to do next, especially for users who capture everything in a single list and rely on views for focus.
Gaps that still need attention
Right now, Google’s deadline implementation only lets you set a date, not a specific time, which limits precision for tasks tied to calls, deliveries, or hard submission cutoffs. Competing task managers generally allow both date and time, often with time‑zone handling and tighter calendar integration for truly time‑bound work.
Two upgrades would significantly raise the ceiling here: time-based deadlines with smart notifications, and quick filters like “today,” “next 3 days,” or “this week” layered on top of the sort. Natural language capture—typing or dictating something like “submit brief Friday 4 p.m.” and having Tasks parse it automatically—would further cut down on taps and make the feature feel more fluid.
Rollout and platform expectations
Because Tasks is tightly integrated into Google’s ecosystem, new list options tend to arrive across Android, iOS, the web, and the side panels in Gmail and Calendar rather than staying siloed. These changes are typically guarded by server‑side flags and roll out gradually as Google tracks stability and engagement, instead of all at once.
There is no official timeline yet for “sort by deadline,” but the depth of references in the current build suggests a public release is likely on the horizon. Workspace admins probably will not need to change anything, since sorting behaves as a per‑list preference that individual users can toggle on or off.
Bottom line
Deadline sorting is a modest tweak that nudges Google Tasks toward being a true daily command center instead of a simple dumping ground for reminders. If Google follows through with time-specific deadlines and richer filters, Tasks could close a meaningful usability gap with specialist to‑do apps while leaning into its biggest strength: deep, native ties to Gmail and Calendar.
