Can a task app work with no account?

A task list looks harmless. Look at yours: there’s probably a medical appointment, the name of a lawyer or a therapist, something to do with money, a thing you’ve been putting off for six months and haven’t told anyone about. It’s an intimate document.

Why almost all of them ask for an account

Three reasons, and they’re very different. The first is legitimate: syncing between your phone, your computer and your tablet requires a server, and so an identity. The second is commercial: a subscription needs to know who’s paying. The third is more questionable: an account allows measuring, segmenting, and sometimes reselling.

The trouble is you can’t tell the three apart from the outside. An app can ask for an account for the best of reasons and change its policy two years later, after being bought out.

What a local app changes

An app with no account and no server can’t lose your data in a breach, because it doesn’t have it. It can’t change its mind about what it does with it. It can’t shut down and take your list with it. And it doesn’t ask for “consent” from dozens of partners, because there aren’t any.

It’s also faster, as it happens: nothing depends on the network, everything’s instant, and the app works on the train, underground.

What you honestly lose

Automatic syncing across devices. That’s the real trade-off, and it shouldn’t be dressed up: if you want your list on your iPhone and your Mac, updated in real time, you need a server.

Automatic backup too. A local app can export a file — and it’s up to you to do that, now and then, and store it somewhere. Like a photo of your ID documents: nobody does it unprompted, and everybody should.

The questions worth asking any app

Can you use it with no account? Where does the data live — on the device, on a server, whose, in which country? Are there trackers (the App Store listing tells you, under “Data Collected”)? What happens if the company shuts down: can you export your data?

And one common-sense question that applies to everything else: if it’s free and there’s no subscription and no advertising, where does the money come from? An app can perfectly well be free because it’s small and its maker earns a living some other way. But the question is worth asking.

Common questions