I'm building an Android task management app called Yield as a solo project. This post walks through the "Basic Unit" β the free tier β and what's in it.
What is Yield
The core idea behind Yield is simple: capture things quickly via OCR or voice input, then turn them into Todos and sync with your calendar. Notes are treated as an "unsorted inbox" β you dump whatever comes to mind into a memo, then organize it into a Todo later.
The free tier (Basic Unit) is built around offline, on-device processing. Anything that requires a network call (AI-powered structuring, Gmail sync, etc.) is reserved for the paid tiers.
Basic UI
- Four tabs: Todo / Schedule / Memo / Calendar (bottom tab bar)
- Landscape mode can switch to a side-by-side layout (toggle in settings)
- When enabled, the four tabs collapse into three β "Todo/Memo", "Schedule/Memo", "Calendar" β so a memo pane is always visible alongside whatever you're working on
Three input methods
- OCR (on-device, free)
- Voice input (speech-to-text only, free)
- Manual typing
You can snap a photo of a handwritten note or a paper to-do list and have it turned into text right away, which cuts down a lot of the friction of getting things into the app.
Todo hierarchy and completion
Todos follow a 3-level structure: Todo > Group > Item (child entries). This is meant for cases like a shopping list β one overarching task with several smaller items inside it.
- Completion mode is selectable (group completion is the default)
- Group completion: items are display-only; you check off the whole group at once
- Individual completion: you can check each item, and the parent group auto-completes once everything underneath it is done
- A completed level shows as "All done: XX", so you can tell the status at a glance without expanding it
- If the same item name shows up in more than one Todo, checking it off in one place automatically completes the matching item elsewhere too (I deliberately scoped this to exact string matches only, skipping fuzzy-matching, to keep it something I could ship for free)
A handful of small but useful features
- Linkify: phone numbers inside memos or Todos are auto-detected and tappable to dial
- App launch detection: app names mentioned in a Todo are detected and can launch that app directly (you pick the linked app once, on first use)
- Google Maps integration: phrases like "go to ___" trigger navigation via the standard Android Intent
- Web search from a Todo: select a Todo and search the web for it directly β but results always open in the device's default browser, and SafeSearch is always forced on
Offline handling
ConnectivityManager watches the connection state. When offline, a banner appears at the top and only the features that need a network (Gmail sync, AI structuring, etc.) get grayed out. OCR, voice memo transcription, manual entry, and Linkify all keep working offline.
When the connection is flaky, the app retries up to 3 times with exponential backoff, and shows an in-between message ("Connection seems unstable...") if a request takes more than 5 seconds.
Sharing
- Standard Android share sheet: send text out to apps like LINE, or receive text from other apps straight into the "add task" screen
- A dedicated file format (
.yldtask, JSON) for sharing between Yield users β no AI re-structuring needed on the receiving end, so it's zero-cost and reconstructs the task exactly
Android Auto support
Android Auto integration is part of the Basic Unit, not a later add-on.
- Detected addresses hand off to Google Maps navigation (free)
- When there are multiple candidate destinations, they're ranked by distance from your current location
- On arrival, you just get a voice reminder β no auto-completion, since "arrived" isn't the same as "done"
- Detected phone numbers hand off to the standard Dialer
Where things stand
Everything above is already implemented. Next up is the "Advanced Unit" β Gmail-based AI structuring, splitting shopping lists by store, and so on. The goal for the Basic Unit alone was to make something that's genuinely usable as an offline-first task manager on its own.
I'll keep posting updates as this moves forward.
