I think others have reported the same thing so I’ve merged your post into that thread where you can vote at the top.
Thanks,
Larry
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thanks Larry!
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Based on my discussions with Asana, it does not seem like this specific issue will be fixed in the short term, I hope it gets prioritised at some point.
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Ah, I see the problem. Tasks will stack horizontally… until you give them subtasks. Then things get messy.
Personally, I don’t think subtasks should appear on the timeline at all. They are individual parts of a task that require digging down into the detail. The timeline is for an overall view. Please remove subtasks from the timeline view altogether, as they seem to cause more harm than good.
At the very least, there should be an option to turn them on or off. Asana, please make this a standard for new features. Things don’t always work out in practice as well as they do in theory.
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years of custom requests down the drain 
joke aside, tons of people wanted it. Well, to be fair, we didn’t know it would break the design like this ^^
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Be careful what you wish for, I guess 
In any case it would be best as an option, rather than an enforced change.
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Maybe. Asana tends to not have options, you can see there are barely any customisation, making the tool easier to understand/onboard on, but less prone to provide a tailored experience.
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It is a bit lacking, yes. But within timeline in there is “dependency management options”, and there’s usually “customise”.
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Hi , is a date known for a fix for this? moving my whole team to asana from a competitor. this is making me take a retake whether we should reconsider.
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It seems as though this thread has lost momentum. I find the fact that I can’t “snug up” tasks with subtasks extremely frustrating, making projects that have subtasks close to unusable when the team has to scroll so much back and forth to be able to review/compare task timelines.
For our workflow, it is especially important that certain tasks be aligned in the same row to understand that particular sequence of tasks.
Has there been any progress on this? I can spend hours cleaning up a project and then one small move creates TONS of new vertical lanes, destroying all the work instantly.
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There has to be a way to simply move the arrow to be contained WITHIN the task, just before the title of the task.
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Hello @Dave_Olverson, I don’t have an update on this request at the moment, but I will update this thread as soon as I do!
Hi @Dave_Olverson , have you tried the new Gantt view? You can add it to your project as a new tab along the top.
It doesn’t solve your problem to have tasks along the same line, but you (and others) may find it more useful than Timeline, in some cases.
@Richard_Sather - I have taken a look at Gantt view and quite frankly, it kind of does the opposite of what I am trying to accomplish. With every task on a separate line the vertical scrolling it takes to evaluate tasks is unmanageable.
We have a weekly meeting where we look at timelines and make adjustments. It happens all the time that we extend one task, which has a cascading effect of pushing back subsequent tasks. It does a great job of filling in unused space when this happens, but with the “subtask arrows” it means that a TON of tasks get “too close” to each other all at once and the view just explodes vertically, consistently undoing work to keep the project timeline organized.
To be clear, the reason we need to not have too much vertical scrolling is to see tasks in relationship with each other without scrolling up and down to hunt for them just to compare them to another task that we have to hunt for after that.
Understood @Dave_Olverson . As I said, I didn’t expect Gantt to solve your issue, but it could be more useful in certain cases. And I guess that sorting the Timeline by Start date won’t work for you either, since you don’t want waterfalls, and instead prefer your tasks in-line.
For what it’s worth, I agree that this 'design flaw 'should get resolved. The arrow on the left of the tasks should clearly not be treated as a ‘day’ that creates a gap and pushes things around. I had proposed the same as you, once this had launched back in Jan '23, here. 
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Hi @JFrentz , I was thinking of creating a new post in Product Feedback but I wanted to check with you in case your post here is essentially asking to solve the same thing… or not!
I think what we are all essentially asking in this post is for Asana to basically move the 
expand button for subtasks and relocate them within the task’s bar, correct?
If so I would like to modify the title of your post to describe that (primarily to include the word ‘subtasks’). If your post is regarding just the issue with stacking, then it’s no problem to leave as is and I can create a new post with the below:
My suggestion would be for Asana to follow the same design and user experience as in the Board view. The expand arrow is within the card, neatly next to the subtask icon which is very simple and intuitive.
Current Board view, subtasks collpased:
Current Board view, subtasks expanded:
I suggest that Asana apply the same principle to the Timeline view too, so that the expand arrows no longer take up a ‘day’ in the timeline. This will allow tasks to be positioned in line and back-to-back without any gaps, as we all used to be able to do, before subtasks could be viewed in the Timeline view.
Proposed Timeline view, subtasks collapsed:
Proposed Timeline view, subtasks expanded:
Let me know what you think.
Thanks.
Pinging @lpb on your thoughts too 
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I like it! I wonder why the Asana designers chose not to do it when the pattern had already been used in Board view.
Two potential issues:
- There’s precious little space in that area, and maybe they felt they couldn’t spare any more room there, or
- Might this lead to another case of icon buttons being too close together on mobile, which you just recently complained about (albeit in Discourse)
But even so, on the surface it seems like a design that has more pros than cons; nice work!!
Larry
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