How to Automatically Move Completed Tasks to a Different Section in Todoist

If you use Todoist to manage projects with multiple stages, you’ve probably wished tasks could move themselves when you complete them. For example, you might have a reading list with “To Read”, “Reading”, and “Finished” sections. Or, a content pipeline with “Ideas”, “In Progress”, and “Published”. Both workflows make sense but since Todoist can’t move tasks automatically, you end up doing all the admin work moving tasks.

So, in this post, we’re going to look at how you can set up automatic task movement in Todoist using Doify. By the end of this post, you’ll have created a rule that moves tasks to a target section the moment you complete them, with no manual steps required on your part outside completing the task.

Working Around Todoist’s Lack of Automation

Because Todoist doesn’t natively offer a way to move tasks in response to events, users often have to change their workflows to reduce the manual work required.

Take the reading list example from earlier. Ideally, you’d have three sections: “To Read”, “Reading”, and “Finished”. But, maintaining that means manually moving every task twice, once when you start it and once when you finish. So, most people simplify. They drop the “Reading” section and lose visibility into what they’re actively reading through in the name of reducing admin work.

So, while the workflow becomes easier to manage it also becomes less useful.

And, even with a simplified setup, manual task movement still has its problems. Manual actions are easy to forget. Miss a few and your board’s sections fall out of sync with reality. Once that happens, trust breaks down and people stop relying on the board because they can’t be sure a task is actually where it should be.

In this situation, the right fix isn’t a simpler workflow. It’s removing the manual actions entirely which is where Doify can help.

How Doify Enables You to Move Completed Tasks Automatically

Doify lets you listen to events in your Todoist account and run actions in response to them. We call these triggers and actions .

For this use case, we can pair the Task Completed trigger with the Move Section action. This means when you complete a task, Doify automatically moves it to your target section with no extra input from you.

Configuring a Doify Rule for Moving Completed Tasks to a New Section

1. Sign up to Doify , the free plan is fine for this guide. During sign up you’ll connect your Todoist account, which is how Doify is able to listen for events and move tasks on your behalf.
2. Create a new rule. Rules are the core of Doify’s automation functionality, each rule pairs a trigger with an action to complete when the trigger fires.
3. Choose the Task Completed trigger. This tells Doify to watch for task completions in your Todoist account and run the rule when one is detected.
4. Choose the target project you want the rule to run in. The rule will only fire for tasks completed inside this project, allowing you to keep rules scoped to where they’re relevant.
5. Choose the Move Section action. This is the action that will run each time the trigger fires moving the completed task to your chosen section.
6. Choose the section you want completed tasks to move to. This is the destination section, so pick whichever one makes sense for your workflow.
7. Save your rule. Doify will start listening for task completions in your chosen project straight away.

From this point on, any task you complete in your target project will move automatically to your chosen section.

Recap

In this post we’ve looked at why Todoist’s lack of native automation forces users to simplify their workflows and accept manual admin work. We’ve also looked at how Doify can solve this issue with a simple rule that moves tasks automatically when they’re completed.

If you have any questions about Doify or this workflow, get in touch and we’ll be happy to help.

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FAQs

Can Todoist Automate Task Movements Inside a Project?

Todoist’s native automation is limited. It doesn’t support event-driven actions like moving a task when it’s completed or when a label is applied. For these kinds of automations, you need a third-party tool like Doify.

Can You Move Tasks Between Projects Automatically?

Not natively. But, Doify has a Move Project action that enables exactly this. It also lets you choose where the task lands in the destination project, such as a specific section or under a parent task.

Can You Move Tasks Between Sections on iOS?

You can manually move tasks on iOS, just like you can on the web app. But, neither platform has automation features to move tasks in response to user actions. However, because Doify runs separately from the Todoist platform, the rules you configure in Doify will work regardless of whether you complete tasks on iOS, Android, or the web.