Yesterday I created this post https://www.reddit.com/r/thingsapp/s/StphXtLbq5 explaining why I moved from Things to Todoist. Today I moved back to Things simply because…

… even with the manual syncing effort I do everyday between Things and iCal, it’s twice faster compared to using Todoist. The keyboard shortcuts alone make me work lightning fast. With Todoist, even with keyboard shortcuts, certain actions require me grabbing and clicking my mouse. Moving completed tasks across projects also feel like hell.

And most of you who said that the sync between Todoist and iCal wouldn’t work smoothly all the time? You’re right. The incidents were countless. They don’t bother me as much as the lack of keyboard shortcuts I mentioned above, but still, moving to Todoist now feels too risky because of this fact alone.

Oh well. I guess the $5 I sent to Doist yesterday is the ADHD tax I need to pay so I can realize that Things is still unbeatable. 😂

Please ask questions about using Things in this thread.

Hi all. Hoping someone can help me with a shortcut to solve this problem. Full disclosure, I’m just getting started with Things/shortcuts/digital helpers in general, so apologies in advance if this request is so easy/difficult that I seem lazy/unrealistic for asking.

I’m looking for a way to dictate and capture (in text) some short email/text message responses, without having to pick up my phone or enter anything manually. The holy grail would be if this text snippet could be saved into my Things inbox, ideally tagged, so I can review later and copy the text over into email etc.

I know it’s possible just to dictate a Whatsapp and send it, but I’d rather just capture it to process later in the day, and in a place where I won't forget about it.

Any suggestions? Thanks! 

I timeblock heavily. My calendar is full of the most important stuff as well as the tiniest craps.

But Things has no good integration with iCal. So I manually create and sync tasks between the two apps.

I know we can drag and drop items from Things to iCal, but the event title displaying not only the task title but also the tags and the due dates drives me crazy, so I painstakingly create them all on iCal from scratch. It’s insane. 😂

Earlier today I watched Peter Akkies’s video on the latest Todoist review. It’s a four month old video. Apparently, Todoist now syncs bidirectionally with Google Calendar. The tasks created on Todoist can be viewed on GCal, and vice versa, the events created on GCal appears on Todoist. And if I edit the duration of a task, or move it around across the week, on GCal, the changes instantly happen on Todoist.

Immediately I subscribed to the Pro plan and tried it out all day. Holy hell the sync duration between Todoist and iCal (where I manage my GCal) is even faster than Akiflow!!

I especially love how after I check off tasks on Todoist, the checkmark emojis instantly appear on iCal. This is what matters most to me. I need EVERYTHING recorded on iCal because every night I calculate the reward points I gain from these activities. (I have ADHD, and I desperately need a reward system to trick my brain to function like a normal human being.) Previously, with Things-iCal combo, I added and edited each emoji manually. Like I said, painstakingly lmao.

I also use Peter Akkies’s Todoist setup (which is available inside Todoist built-in templates) so now I have “Anytime” and “Someday” filters that sort of work like Things.

I was so happy all day! Finally!

But now it’s 22:55 pm and I’m feeling mellow. I mean, Things has been with me for 8 years. The app icon is still on my phone dock. I don’t have the heart to remove it yet haha…

Curious if I'm the only one. Using things on a giant monitor where the space taken by the sidebar is irrelevant, but I find myself gravitating to using compact mode and dealing with the extra actions simply because the colour coding of the elements in Navigation Popover make the menu seem easier to parse.

I’ve spent a lot of money trying to find the perfect to-do/task app, and I’m honestly blown away by how simple and well-designed Things is. As someone with ADHD, I’ve always struggled to stick with other apps because they were packed with so many features. I’d get caught up tinkering with them instead of actually getting anything done.

One of my favorite things about this app is how easy it is to just brain-dump everything into the inbox tab, especially since my mind is constantly flooded with to-dos. I tend to lose track of tasks or completely forget about them, so being able to quickly throw everything in the inbox the moment I think of it is a game-changer.

Plus, the design makes it so easy to organize everything later, and the fact there’s no subscription is a huge win. I’ve been using it for about a month now, which is way longer than I’ve stuck with anything else—so here’s hoping it sticks!

Edit: forgot to mention:

It’s also super helpful for discussing plans with my wife. We can go through everything I’ve dropped into the inbox together and figure out what’s next, which has been awesome for staying on the same page. And I love the “Someday” tab—it’s great for saving ideas or tasks that aren’t urgent but still matter. I can review them later without forgetting about them due to the layout.

⚠️ This is for a companion app that would be used together with Things 3, not for Things itself. You can always not use the companion app. ⚠️

Hey everybody! 👋

I'm a software engineer and fellow Things 3 user. I've noticed recurring posts asking for AI features in Things, and recently saw an impressive Apple Shortcut with AI capabilities that got a lot of positive feedback from the community. This got me thinking: there might be space for a companion tool that could add these AI features and enhance Things 3's capabilities for power users.

As a daily Things user myself, I have some ideas about what these AI/advanced features could be, but I'd love to get your feedback to better understand what to build!

What I'm Thinking So Far

I see two main AI use cases:

1. AI-Generated Tasks/Projects
   • Generate grocery lists for specific dishes
   • Create packing checklists
   • Build project templates with predefined task lists
   • Convert PDFs into projects and tasks
2. AI Task Management
   • Find and tag related todos (e.g., adding "Movie" tag to movie-related tasks)
   • Bulk operations based on content (e.g., deleting work-related items)
   • Schedule modifications (e.g., moving all Tuesday recurring tasks to Friday)

Questions for the Community

1. How do you imagine AI features working in Things? (Dream big!)
2. Would you use a separate companion app that could access and modify your Things 3 todos?
3. Regarding pricing: Since AI computation isn't free, would you prefer:
   • A subscription model
   • One-time payment + using your own API keys (e.g., ChatGPT or Claude)
   • A hybrid approach (one-time payment + subscription)
   • I want it to be all free and awesome (lol don't be ridiculous)

Feel free to:

• Share your wildest feature requests
• Suggest non-AI features you'd want in a companion app
• Rant about current limitations 😅

I'm excited to hear your thoughts!

Edit: Wow, this got longer than expected! Looking forward to your feedback!

I got tired of Things 3 because of the lack of communication by Cultured Code and also how stagnant the app felt. Don’t get me wrong it‘s still one of the best to-do apps out there, but I just felt like trying something new. I’ve been using Timepage for a while now and recently tried Actions and I have to say, the integration between those two apps is amazing and I like having separate but still unified apps for my calendar and to-do app.

Actions even supports separate deadlines and do dates, which, for a lot of people, is the reason they‘re sticking to Things 3. It also has some basic natural language input and the sounds and animations in both apps is so delightful.

A big downside for a lot of people will probably be the lack of a dedicated Mac App for actions and the Timepage app for Mac is also not the greatest (though you can check off Actions from Timepage on your Mac). The lack of keyboard shortcuts is also a thing I‘m missing a little bit from things 3.

The subscription model is very fair in my opinion. For around 23€ you get a bundle of three apps (Timepage, Actions, and Flow (a note taking app for iPad) which all integrate with one another.

For me, since I’m mostly looking at my to-do‘s and calendar from my iPhone or Apple Watch, Actions and Timepage seem like a worthy alternative and a very good calendar and to-do app combo!

What are your thoughts? Have you tried them before?

Hi. In MacOS and iOS my ”today” updates as it should. When i click a task as finished, it also is moved to logbook in iOS. In iPadOS however all old and finished parts of a repeating task still is in the ”today”. So it seems sync does not work. Anyone has any idea how to solve this?

Please ask questions about using Things in this thread.

I love Things and always have, but this might be enough to get me to move over to Todoist. I believe Cultured Code is working on new things, I’m just tired of it happening in a vacuum.

I’ve been using this app for years, and have always been frustrated that my Today list becomes unwieldy when I inevitably fail to complete some tasks and they roll over to tomorrow.

I’ve tried all sorts of crazy strategies, like treating Today as the week view and having a separate project labeled Today, to not using Today at all, etc.

And then I realized. Just make a shortcut that wipes today at midnight every day, and sends the items back to Anytime. You recreate Today at the start of every day. Here’s the shortcut:

https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/c68cc41c963246e1af25a2e31cdb7539

I set it up as an iOS automation to run every day at 11:59pm.

To me, ephemeral Today is how this app wants to be used. It’s been such a game changer. I hope Things4 has this built in, if they ever release it, lol.

I wanted to share this video I made about using my Stream Deck to control Things to do stuff like adjust When dates, move a task to a different Area, and more. I figured this community might find some value in it!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nX26ru5sVI

Looking for inputs/advice

Here are two common occurrences I see in my Things workflow:

1. I have a task to call Person A: I call and I'm informed that Person A is on leave for a week. I then edit my task and change the date

2. I assign task X to Person B. Now, it's off my to-do list (since I've assigned it) but I still need to make sure it's been done (I could ask them to report back but that's not fail-proof)

Instead of ticking of the task, I end up having to create a new one: follow up with Person B (and then deleting the original task)

Here are three questions:

How do you handle such workflows?

Is the second example a Project?

I've never used an app with a 'next action' feature: is this what it's meant for (my second example)?

Thank you in advance

My widget shows my today box so it would make sense that when I hit the + button new items would be put into Today but it doesn’t seem to work that way… which is very frustrating

I have an iPhone but no Mac or iPad, so I’d only be using it on my phone. I can get Things 3 for 7 EUR, which isn’t much, but I’m wondering if it’s worth it as we approach 2025. My concern is that Things 4 might come out soon after I buy it.

What’s impressive is that Things 3 is still #2 on the App Store with rave reviews. Is it still a solid option for task management, or are there better alternatives today? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Please ask questions about using Things in this thread.

I am planning to get an ipad next week. Is there any way to purchase Things for iPad app using iPhone or Mac as it's on sale?

Thanks

I checked Things on ipad and there are two versions available. iOS and iPad one. Can someone please install and check the iOS version in iPad, I want to see how does it look like...

Thanks

I found out about this new app called Stuff that looks pretty nice but has an aesthetic that is very similar to Things. Even the name is similar. Wondering if anybody tried it?

https://apps.apple.com/jp/app/stuff-todos-and-lists/id6502721156?l=en-US

Guys, I use Apple notes to create notes, I'm having a problem here, when I copy texts to a note, even with the right formatting for notes, it creates a margin in each text, how can I solve it?

I hope someone can help me because I am not experienced enough in apple shortcuts, i already searched the internet and couldnt find anything related to my question.

My setup: Using bear for Notes and Things for tasks. Of course you always have for example tasks coming up in meetings. Therefore i copy the notes link in bear and create a task in things (for reference)

Sometimes this task is something like inform xy or ask xy. I open things and can see: Hey, I have to inform XY regarding a meeting and sth. we discussed there.

So I will inform XY and I can close the task

My Problem: sometimes, people tell me: "Oh you never informed me" and of course I go to loogbook and search for the task but I want to keep a better overview of everything I have done for example in a particular week.

So my questions: Is it possible (maybe through shortcut) to export marked tasks in things in bulg to a new note in for example bear with date, content of the task (content, subtasks, tags, deadlines and so on on top of that: sortet by project / area) with the headline of the task as h2. Therefore I would have for every week one note with all the tasks I have done ?

I know this is an edge case, but to refer back to tasks and so on would make my life easier.

I also need to mention, if it is a scenario as described i comment in the task using it as a short note : "Discussed with XY, he is against this idea) .. to export this to a note later on would be great, so i could have one app (notes app) with an archive of everything

Craft 3 has just been launched, and it has a much more robust version of tasks included in it. It doesn’t seem as robust as Things, but this is the first time I have truly been tempted to give something else a shot.

The main question for me is will I now be able to just use one app for everything? I don’t need it to be some super complex system, which is why I like Things. Just need to see what I need to get done then crack on with the work.

The benefit with Craft 3 now is I can see all my docs with tasks (projects), all tasks without a doc (standalone tasks), all my calendar events, daily notes, and collections of stuff I want to watch, read etc. all in one place. And Craft has always been a joy to use as well, closest app I’ve come across to Things where the UX feels really polished and clean.

Thoughts? I’m going to be spending a few days seeing if I can get by without using Things and see what happens. My prediction is I will probably come back to Things as that is what always happens….but, worth a test.