By Kieran, Slate & Serif
Android planner listings can describe quite different products: a PDF, a template for another app, or a planner with its own pages. Before choosing the cover, find out which one you're looking at.
We take the third approach with Slate & Serif. If you want typed planning on an Android tablet without first choosing a note app to open a file in, it's the planner I'd recommend. It's its own planner, used in the browser, with daily, weekly and monthly pages, projects, notebooks and monthly finances already built in.
Three questions to ask any planner listing
Ask each listing these questions directly.
What exactly am I buying? With Slate & Serif, a planner with its own pages: you sign in and type into it, rather than opening a file in another app.
What else do I need? Some planners need a particular note app before they work. Slate & Serif needs a current browser and a keyboard you're comfortable typing on, whether on-screen or attached.
How will I put plans in? If you want to draw and handwrite freely with an S Pen, Slate & Serif isn't that kind of canvas. It's built for typed entries, so dates can connect and numbers can add up.
A listing that answers all three plainly is easier to judge than a long compatibility list.
Do I need to download an app?
No download is needed to start. You open Slate & Serif in your browser and sign in. Try your usual screen orientation and keyboard setup before you commit a routine to it.
Move one small routine first: Sunday meals and shopping
Here's a fictional routine that's easy to move and quick to judge.
Sunday evening. Open Quick Menu and fill in the weekly meal plan. You're working a late shift on Thursday, 2 pm to 10 pm, so Thursday is leftovers. Add the shift to Thursday's schedule as an event. It appears on Daily, Weekly and the Monthly Calendar, so the week you're planning shows it.
Monday. Add a to-do for the weekly shop on Monday's Daily page. You can find it on Daily, Weekly and the Monthly Plan task list, and mark it complete when it's done. The Daily page also has a meals space if you want to note what you actually ate.
After the shop. Enter the receipt amount in the Expense Tracker under groceries. Monthly Finance adds it to the month's grocery actual, so you can see it against what you planned to spend. There's no bank feed. You type the amount, and the sums happen for you.
Wednesday. The shift moves to Friday. Edit the event once, and the shift moves to Friday on Daily, Weekly and the Monthly Calendar. Thursday dinner is no longer leftovers. That's a meal plan to update, not three pages to rewrite.
A week of that tells you more than a feature list. You'll know whether typing on your tablet suits you, whether you can find what you put in, and whether the totals are useful.
Keep the structure, change the look
You aren't starting with a blank system to design. The pages already exist. Core keeps the default Slate & Serif look. Premium adds themes, covers, bindings, paper and backgrounds, plus the font, size and color of the text you add and your own photos and stickers. The headings and navigation keep their structure either way. On phones, bindings and backgrounds aren't shown, so the pages get the room.
Before you move more
Bring across a few weeks of upcoming plans, not an archive. Slate & Serif doesn't import an existing planner PDF or annotations.
Google and Microsoft calendar connections and private browser-notification previews aren't available yet, though you can set reminder choices on entries.
If you have a laptop or desktop, the Premium sample lets you look around without an account or card. Use fictional entries, because it resets after its displayed 24-hour period.
Add Slate & Serif as a preferred source on Google. It's a personal setting that only affects what Google shows you.