How to Add Groceries to Your Todoist Shopping List by Voice with Google Home
If there’s one place in my apartment where the Google Home shines, it’s in the kitchen. The smart assistant lets me set as many timers as I want, reads me recipes, offers information on the food I’m cooking, and even lets me make calls — all without making me stop what I’m doing to interact with a phone. It seems like the only thing it can’t do is let me add groceries to my shopping list of choice: Todoist.
Todoist is one of the most popular to-do list services in the world. Since I started using it in 2016, it’s become my daily driver for getting things done. I use it for everything from managing my writing to organizing my shopping list. While Google Home allows users to add Google Reminders out of the box, it doesn’t support adding items to Todoist directly without making you “talk” to Todoist, forcing you through several hard-to-navigate dialogs.
When you’re in the middle of cooking something, you often don’t have time to spend going through all these hoops just to add paprika to your shopping list. That’s why I started using IFTTT to speed things up.
Background on IFTTT
IFTTT (short for If This Then That) is a service that allows users to string together different pieces of software and hardware to work together in intelligent and creative ways. Google Assistant and Todoist are just two of the dozens of services that IFTTT is compatible with, but using them together helps unlock the full potential of both. Read below to learn how to create a routine to easily add items to your Todoist shopping list by voice with Google Home.
Creating the “Add to Shopping List by Voice” Routine
Adding Voice Input through Google Assistant
In IFTTT, go to My Applets in the bottom right corner. On the next screen, tap the + button in the top right corner.
On the if this then that menu, click on this and search for Google Assistant
After selecting Google Assistant, you’ll have a number of options to choose from. Each of these is good for a different use case, but for our needs, we’ll be choosing say a phrase with a text ingredient.
The next screen will present you with three fields where you can enter whatever voice command you want to use to make your Google Assistant add things to your Todoist shopping list. Just make sure you include a dollar sign in the place of the item you actually want to add. I recommend sticking to phrasing you’ll use regularly and that comes naturally when you’re cooking or in a hurry. For my routine, I say, “Okay Google, add pineapple to my shopping list,” and IFTTT recognizes “pineapple” as the variable in the place of the dollar sign.
IFTTT also allows you to customize your Google Home’s response. Get as creative — or as silly — with it as you want.
Click Create trigger to finish adding Google Assistant to the routine.
Importing the Task to Todoist
After you add your Google Assistant trigger, you’ll be taken back to the if this then that menu. Click on that and select Todoist as your service.
Once you select Todoist, IFTTT will give you a number of options to import your voice command.
Understanding the Todoist Import Fields
Which project?: If you have a dedicated project list — for example, a list named Groceries, this dropdown lets you select it to automatically add items to that list for easy access.
Task content: This field allows you to assign conditional formatting (bolding and italicizing) and tagging to the item you’re adding to your shopping list. Most people won’t need to enter anything here. The two links below the field offer guides on how to add formatting.
Note: Automatically add a comment to your item. I have mine set to comment “added from Google Home” so I know what’s going on when Google misinterprets what I say and I get “dock joy” instead of “bok choy”
Due date: If you want your item to show up in Today view, I recommend adding “today” into this field. If you have your items routing into their own project already, then it shouldn’t matter if you set a due date or not.
Priority: This field tells Todoist what level of priority this item is. Since everything you import with your voice will receive the same priority level, a good rule of thumb is to keep it low.
Creating the Applet
Once you’ve configured how you want your voice commands to import into Todoist, hit Create Action.
From the next screen, its a good idea to deselect the Receive notifications when this Applet runs unless you love getting notified every time you add something to your shopping list. You can also use this opportunity to rename your Applet something more unique than the automatic title IFTTT gives it.
Click Finish to complete setup, and your Google Home will instantly have access to the routine.
That’s it! You can now use your Google home to add items to your Todoist shopping list with just your voice. That means the next time you’ve got your hands full and need to remember to add more curry powder to your list, you can just tell your virtual assistant without having to put anything down.
The best part is that this same voice shortcut works on every device that supports Google Assistant. That means you can use it with the Google Assistant built into Android, with the Google Assistant app for iOS, or with any other smart speaker that include the assistant.
Do you use a Google Home for productivity? Let me know in the comments what you like using your Google Home for and what you still wish it could do to simplify your life.
