Astrid

The to-do app with the friendly squid, four million users, bought by Yahoo and closed 96 days later

Shut down
19902026

Astrid was a task manager for Android, later iPhone and web, created by Tim Su and Jon Paris in San Francisco in 2008 and known for its cheerful squid mascot, reminders, shared lists and open-source Android code. It grew to about four million users. Yahoo acquired Astrid on 1 May 2013 and shut the service down on 5 August 2013.

Timeline [edit]

  1. 2008
  2. October 2008 Launch
    Astrid for Android

    An open-source task list for the new Android Market.

  3. 2011
  4. 15 July 2011 Funding
    About $400,000 from Google Ventures and angels
  5. 2012
  6. 25 September 2012 Peak
    Four million users

    30 million tasks a month.

  7. 2013
  8. 1 May 2013 Acquisition
    Yahoo acquires Astrid

    Service to continue "as is" for 90 days.

  9. 5 July 2013 Shutdown announced
    Astrid to close on 5 August

    Exports to Wunderlist, Any.do and others.

  10. 5 August 2013 Shutdown
    Astrid goes dark

The site through time

Browse astrid.com as it was, via the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine:

2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 Full archive →

Ownership [edit]

Todoroo Inc. 2008–2013 Founded Founded by Tim Su and Jon Paris in San Francisco
Yahoo 2013–2013 Acquisition An acquihire; the service was closed 96 days later

Key figures [edit]

MetricValueAs ofConfidence
Registered accounts ▲ 4 million 25 September 2012 Reported Users reported by Astrid in September 2012

Confirmed official figures · Reported media, cites a source · Estimated analyst or our estimate

Why it shut down [edit]

Official line: Yahoo acquired Astrid on 1 May 2013 for its team, said the service would run "as is" for 90 days, and on 5 July 2013 announced it would shut down on 5 August 2013; users were told to export their tasks to Wunderlist, Any.do, Remember The Milk or a spreadsheet. The Android app's code had been open source since 2008 and forks continued.

Our analysis: Astrid was one of the first good Android apps and one of the last independent to-do apps of any size, and it went the way most of them went in 2013: an acquihire by a company that wanted engineers, not a task list. Yahoo under Marissa Mayer bought dozens of small teams that year and closed nearly all their products. Astrid's users got a month's notice and its code lived on, which is more than most.

History [edit]

The squid

Astrid started as an open-source Android task app by Tim Su in 2008, when the Android Market was weeks old and needed a to-do list; Jon Paris joined and the two founded Todoroo in San Francisco to build it into a product. It was, for a while, the to-do app on Android: tasks with due dates and repeats, tags and lists, nagging reminders in a friendly voice, a squid mascot that appeared when you had done your work, and later shared lists, an iPhone app, a web version, and Astrid Premium. It raised about $400,000 from Google Ventures and angels in 2011 and Nokia's and Samsung's stores bundled it. By September 2012 it had four million users and 30 million tasks a month.

Yahoo

On 1 May 2013 Yahoo bought Astrid, one of the many small companies Marissa Mayer's Yahoo acquired that year for engineering talent, and said the service would continue as it was for 90 days. It did not last that long as a product: on 5 July Astrid told users it would go dark on 5 August 2013 and offered exports to Wunderlist, Any.do, Remember The Milk and Sandglaz. The team went to work on Yahoo Mail and other apps. Because the Android code was open source, community forks kept an Astrid-like app alive, and Tasks, an open-source Android app that descends from it, is still developed.

The domain today

astrid.com no longer resolves.

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Sources [edit]

  1. todoroo/astrid on GitHub GitHub 1 January 2013 [archived]
  2. Yahoo acquires 4M-user "to do" app Astrid, is now in a holding pattern for 90 days TechCrunch 1 May 2013 [archived]
  3. Yahoo acquires 4 million user to-do app Astrid, service to continue as is for 90 days The Next Web 1 May 2013 [archived]
  4. Yahoo's recently acquired task tracking service Astrid will go dark on August 5 TechCrunch 6 July 2013 [archived]
  5. Yahoo finally announces Astrid's fate: closing down August 5, 2013 Android Police 6 July 2013 [archived]
  6. PSA: Astrid task management service shuts down on August 5th Engadget 6 July 2013 [archived]

Last verified: 16 August 2026. Spotted an error? Suggest an edit (corrections with sources are reviewed and applied).