I canceled three app subscriptions a couple of weeks back, and while I celebrated the space that opened up in my budget, I couldn’t help but feel worried.
Gemini’s scheduled actions have been a part of my workflow since the feature launched last year. Since then, it’s been slowly taking over the functionality I was getting from paid utility apps, at no additional cost beyond the Google AI Pro plan I was already paying for.
I’ve ended my subscriptions for IFTTT, Medisafe, and Todoist in favor of a feature I already have access to. But the longer my experiment runs, the less enthusiastic I am about the switch.
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IFTTT
The free tier became useless, and the Pro tier became redundant
When I first picked up IFTTT in 2019, it was a free service that sat somewhere between useful and a hobby project.
Setting up multistep automations across apps was novel at the time, and it became indispensable in my utility toolkit.
Over the years, IFTTT’s free plan went from a generous offering to a two-applet limit that’s not very useful for anyone doing more than one automation.
I moved to a Pro subscription, but instead of unlocking more features, it felt like a tax for being a consistent user.
Also, IFTTT has shifted its focus to smart home governance, and this doesn’t fit my use case.
I was still on Pro, but I used it for simpler tasks like morning weather and calendar briefing, tracking RSS feeds for news on topics I cover, recurring prompts for creative projects, and summarizing specific email threads.
Gemini’s scheduled actions handle all of those quite easily. It automatically runs prompts like:
Every weekday at 7 a.m., summarize my calendar, flag urgent unread emails, and give me a weather forecast.
Because Gemini connects to Gmail and Google Calendar, the output uses my actual account data instead of a generic summary.
For RSS tracking, I set up a weekly scheduled action that finds news on topics I follow and provides a digest every Monday morning.
IFTTT can import RSS items into a spreadsheet or send notifications per item, but it can’t read the articles, outline key points, and deliver them in one summary. Gemini does that with a single prompt.
Medisafe
I didn’t expect to put my well-being in Gemini’s hands
I hate taking pills and often forget to use my medication, so whenever I fell ill, Medisafe helped manage my meds and keep them on schedule.
It let me set dosage instructions and reminders for each medication, and track whether I’d taken them.
Medisafe served me well until it moved to a paid subscription model in January 2026. Now, the free tier limits you to two medications.
I often paid for premium as needed, so combining that with my Gemini Pro subscription felt unnecessary. Even users on Reddit have started looking for alternatives.
My medication schedule is nothing complicated, only a few daily meds at set times. I don’t need interaction warnings, caregiver alerts, or adherence reports. I need a notification that says “take your morning meds” at 8 a.m. and another at 9 p.m.
Gemini now takes care of that with two scheduled actions created using natural language prompts. They’ve fired on time every day since, and notifications show up on my phone just like Medisafe’s did.
Gemini only sends a notification at a scheduled time. It doesn’t track whether you took the dose, it doesn’t flag drug interactions, and it doesn’t alert anyone if you miss.
If you’re managing a complex prescription or if your meds have interaction risks that need monitoring, Gemini can’t yet replace a dedicated app like Medisafe or MyTherapy.
Todoist
This one was the easiest goodbye by far
Dropping IFTTT was hard for the kid version of me that loved tinkering, and moving my medication reminders over made me a little nervous. I didn’t think twice about canceling Todoist.
Google Workspace already handled all my professional scheduling. I had Todoist Pro for personal tasks, mostly as a holdover from when keeping personal and work systems separate felt important.
One thing I realized was that this had become a habit rather than a necessity. I didn’t do anything complex with it — just pull from a list of open personal tasks, prioritize them, and display them in a daily view.
And as someone whose entire personality is work, dropping Todoist was a no-brainer.
With Gemini, I set up a scheduled action that runs every morning:
Review my personal task list and give me the top three priorities for today based on deadlines and importance.
It pulls context from my Google Calendar and any notes I’ve left in previous Gemini conversations.
Having everything in one place meant I could see where work deadlines and personal errands overlapped, instead of checking two apps and hoping I missed nothing.
One ecosystem means one point of failure
The trade-off for a seamless workflow is a single dependency
Credit: Lucas Gouveia / Android Police
Part of the issue with these subscriptions was that I’d become attached and wanted to reward them for genuinely useful features.
However, something else I was already paying for worked just as well.
Canceling three subscriptions that cost me about $13 a month is a win, but only because I was already paying $19.99 a month for Google AI Pro.
Cutting costs was nice, but I was also tired of juggling multiple apps with overlapping functionality. Everything now runs on one ecosystem, and my daily workflow is more seamless.
But we know how fickle Google is when it comes to features popular with its customers. Just take a look at the now-deprecated Google Assistant Routines.
What I really feel weird about is the medication schedule. Google already has my emails, calendar, location, and search history, and now it has my prescriptions.
It’s not a legal concern, but having much of my personal data in one ecosystem makes it harder to leave.
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Three subscriptions down, one dependency up
I started my switch as an experiment to see how far Gemini’s scheduled actions could take me, and it’s been successful so far.
My mornings start with a Gemini briefing that pulls from my calendar and inbox, my meds are on schedule, and my personal tasks show up alongside work deadlines.
I used to have three separate apps from three separate companies, and if any one of them made a bad decision, I’d lose one tool and move on. Now all three workflows live under Google’s roof.
The convenience is worth it today, and whether it remains that way depends on decisions I don’t directly control.