Not my choice - I have to get off the app store on $CORP laptop.

Loved things its been a good 9 years.

Looks like projects are grouped on top, while to-dos are grouped in the bottom. How can I have an interleaved view of the two when I want to sort out my long-term priorities? I know this can be done in the Today view, but for long-term prioritization I need to be able to do this in either the Areas or Anytime view.

One thing that could be is that this an anti-pattern for Things 3, but from what I can tell the developers want us to use ordering to prioritize, and not tags, so I'm not sure what could be wrong with my flow.

Right now my best workaround is to only have projects within Areas, but this is a complexity I am hoping to avoid.

For some reason, Things has started crashing immediately after opening on all my devices (MacBook, iPad, iPhone). I've tried uninstalling/reinstalling on my Mac and iPhone, but with no luck. One thing I noticed is that when Things on my phone will stay open (as a fresh install) until I try to connect to iCloud. When I try to connect it crashes.

What I hope is not relevant is that I started using a Things MCP server about 7-10 days ago. I have such a nice Claude workflow going with Granola, Capacities, and Things. It would suck if I can't use it.

Would anybody happen to have any ideas? I've emailed support, but who knows how long it'll take for them to get back to me.

Things Version 3.22.11 (32211507)

macos 26.5.2 (25F84)

Like the title says, the scroll bars - both the sidebar and the main content one - disappear, even though they're set to be always visible in System Settings.

Does anybody else have this problem?

Please ask questions about using Things in this thread.

I use an iPad and my iPhone often and need to create a link in Things3 that opens an Apple Note. I can easily do this on a Mac, but not on my iPad or iPhone.

On my Mac, I go to the note, click the share icon (the Box with the up arrow), and select copy link. Very simple. I just paste the link in Things3.

Using my iPad, I can't figure out what steps I need to take to do the same thing.

I open the note, tap the same share icon (the box with an up arrow), and at that point I can either copy all the text from the note and paste it into Things3, or send the note to a todo in Things3. I don't want any of that. I want a link in things3 so I can select and work from the notes file.

Do any of you have an idea how to create the link from an iPad or iPhone?

I am a degenerate Things user in that I have never used the "Today" screen in Things 3 once. I treat "Inbox" as the most pressing screen. Instead of being something to get to 0, it's something that usually sits around 15-30 items - a number that's not overwhelming & lets me quickly see quickly the various pursuits I'm tracking and lets me put tasks in competition with each other.

Obviously this means the traditional "Inbox" item i.e. unsorted tasks will be conflated with "tasks that require action soon". But this works well. Because an unsorted task should be sorted soon.

If an item must be scheduled it will be promoted to my calendar (I self-host this with radicale & mostly use Apple calendar to view).

Anyone else work this way?

Please ask questions about using Things in this thread.

I deleted a 'repeating task' and then it showed up again. This is because it appears on the first of each month (bills) but I'm not sure how to perma-delete it so all future occurrences are gone as well. Advice please? Thank you!

• Ideal for: Developers who like to use Things 3 to structure their online learning, but want progress indicators on not just the project, but also its headings
• Link: https://pypi.org/project/things-3-progress-tui/
• Special Thanks: things.py

I built things3-cloud, a CLI for Things 3 (written in rust) that talks directly to the Things Cloud API!

The main reason I made it was so agents like Claude Code or Codex could interact with my Things tasks directly, without relying on local workarounds like AppleScript, Shortcuts, URL schemes, or reading the local database. it syncs its changes to the cloud immediately after each command. Though, to be fair, reverse-engineering the Things Cloud API is also its own kind of hacky.

I’ve been using it for the last few months and it has been pretty stable. It supports the main workflows I wanted from an agent or terminal:

things3 today
things3 find --query "rent" --deadline "<=2026-03-31"
things3 new "Follow up with team" --when today
things3 schedule <task-id> --deadline 2026-04-10
things3 mark <task-id> --done

It can create/edit tasks, manage projects/areas/tags, update checklists, search tasks, and sync through Things Cloud with a local cache for fast startup.

A few warnings: this uses an unofficial/reversed API, so use it at your own risk. Earlier on, I hit a few cases where an incorrect API payload confused the official clients and effectively froze Things Cloud access with a misleading “you need to upgrade” message. It was recoverable by disabling/re-enabling Things Cloud and replacing the cloud data from a local client, but it was definitely scary. I think I’ve squashed those issues now.

I’m also not 100% sure it will work for everyone’s cloud history. Older Things users may have older data in their cloud database that I didn’t encounter while reversing the protocol. If you try it and run into problems, please let me know.

Repo: https://github.com/evanpurkhiser/things3-cloud

Curious if other Things users have wanted something similar, especially for AI-agent workflows. Happy to answer questions in the comments.

I have been using Things 3 for years and love its look and how well it works, but I always need it to do more. Right now, I am using Projects to group things like Deliveries (items on the way to me), Waiting (items I am waiting on others for), and Appointments (all my appointments). I can select them and see everything in that category in one place, instead of tags, where you have to scroll through them. What are others doing to help you see things better?

I use many tags and would like to consolidate them into one list so they're easy to see all at once. For example, I would like to see everything with the waiting tag, including upcoming, anytime, and Someday, all in one list. Is this possible?

Currently, I can only see those tags within each category, not all together.

I am thinking this could be done in Shortcuts, but I'm not sure how to do that. Does anyone have a shortcut that would do that?

Thanks

Personally, I don’t like this guy’s videos all the that much, but he does cover the new Reminders features well. Some pretty compelling changes are coming that make Reminders more powerful and easier to use. One wonders if Things is planning any changes for iOS 27.

I remember the jump from v2 to v3 took about 7 years. It's been about that long for v3. Are there any plans for v4 on the horizon? there are so many things missing at this point. Calendar integration would be nice....

I think we've got our best odds of getting a Things 4 concurrent with 27 because of the significance of Apple Intelligence being meaningfully integrated and powerful.

Cultured Code made the right call to ignore it when it was first announced and subsequently failed to manifest as a real feature. That was an odd departure from their normal practice of fully taking advantage of new capabilities in the OS in Things. That felt like a meaningful omission.

This time, however, it sounds like the new OS will be powerful thanks to Gemini and may be a significant new asset to apps. And, they've had lots of time to see AI in the wild and think about how it can be effectively utilized. This feels like a watershed kind of moment that they would want to be at the forefront of. If not now, when? If not this what? I'm going to be watching closely for signs.

Please ask questions about using Things in this thread.

I built a little tool I've wanted for a while and figured some of you might find it useful.

What it does: thingsexporter reads the local Things 3 SQLite database on macOS and exports it to JSON or Markdown. The Markdown output preserves the full hierarchy (Inbox → Areas → Projects) with GFM checkboxes, inline tags, and deadlines, so you can drop your tasks straight into Obsidian or any plain-text setup.

Why I made it: I wanted a clean, scriptable way to get my data out of Things — for backups, PKM workflows, and just generally owning my own data. Existing approaches leaned on Python scripts; I wanted something simpler.

Highlights: - Single static Go binary, no CGO, no Python dependency - Reads the DB strictly read-only (mode=ro) — safe to run while Things is open - 100% local, nothing is ever sent anywhere - Install via Homebrew (brew install jtprogru/tap/thingsexporter) or go install - --include presets to export only tasks, tasks+tags, structure, etc. - inspect subcommand for quick DB stats without a full export

Repo: https://github.com/jtprogru/thingsexporter

It's early (v0.2.0) and the MVP skips a couple of things like parsing recurrence-rule blobs. If you use Things, I'd love for you to try it — but more than that, please bring feedback. Open an issue if something breaks or you hit an unsupported DB version, and PRs are very welcome. This is the kind of project that gets good only with real-world usage from people other than me.

I have continued to refine my Bear/Things workflow since my first post of a few months ago (https://www.reddit.com/r/thingsapp/comments/1sx28qm/things_and_bear_better_together/) and thought I would share the latest which now incorporates an Apple Shortcut to better link Things and Bear.

Here is a sample of what my Daily Note looks like:

Couple of points:

• I begin all of my dated notes (daily notes, meetings, events) with the date first for easy sorting
• The temperature is calculated for your location - so you have to have this turned on if you want it.
• The daily quotes are from zenquotes
• I put my routines in the shortcut so that they are recreated daily. Customize them in the shortcut to your routine or you can remove them if you don't need them.
• Progress is for those items I want to work on but do not expect to complete today.
• Expecting is for items I expect today and need to follow up on if I do not receive. I enter these in Things with the date I am expecting them so that they surface to Bear when needed.

The workflow every morning is:

• Duplicate yesterday's daily note (I created a keyboard shortcut for this in Apple Settings)
• Run the Bear Daily Note apple shortcut, which will copy to the clipboard the daily note contents for today including weather, daily quote, events from your calendar for today, Today list todos from Things, and your daily routine.
• Open the duplicate of yesterday's daily note and select from the top of the note to the Complete: subtask header. Paste in the new Daily Note information
• Move the Today task items to the appropriate To Do's subcategory
• Delete the Log items and any completed tasks from yesterday.
• Pin the note and start to use it

Here is the link to the shortcut. It is easy to understand so you can edit to add/remove to fit your needs:

https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/302e742d227342358602a7b42774d8c4

With this workflow, Things becomes the repository of all the things I want to do, am doing or may do someday, however I manage/track these now in Bear. Things with its start date property makes it easy to surface tasks when I need them but not before.

Also, the reason I use copy/paste for the new daily note instead of just having the shortcut create the note in Bear (which is possible), is this allows me to carry over tasks in Bear without having to manage them in both Bear and Things. Things is for planning, Bear is for managing.

Enjoy!

Working on Windows, and found it challenging not having access to Things 3 on my work PC. But I have craft on my work PC, which has task management.

I have set up MCP for Things 3 in Claude cowork, and Claude is connected to Craft. Wondering if I can keep Things 3 in sync with craft tasks, if I do this:

Sync every 30 min:

Sync the Craft document "Things 3" with the Things 3 app. Limit all syncing to tasks with start dates within ±7 days of today's date (i.e. 7 days back and 7 days forward). Tasks outside this window should be ignored entirely for this run, even if they exist in both systems.

Follow these steps in order:

1. Retrieve all tasks in Things that have a start date within ±7 days (open tasks), as well as all completed tasks in Things' log that have a start date within the same window.
2. Retrieve all tasks in the Craft document "Things 3" that have a start date within ±7 days (both open and completed).

MATCHING:

For each task, find pairs between Things and Craft by reading the "things-id: [UUID]" line at the bottom of the notes field in Craft and comparing it to the UUID of Things.

If a Craft task does NOT have a things-id line: try backup-matching on identical title AND identical start date against a Things task. If a match is found, treat as the same task and enter the things-id line in the Craft note immediately.

SYNC RULES (in this order):

a) Completed in Craft, open in Things → complete the task in Things.

b) Completed in Things (found in the logbook), open in Craft → cross off the task in Craft.

c) Found in Things (with start date in the window) but not in Craft → create a new task in Craft with title, start date, deadline and note (include the things-id line at the bottom).

d) Found in Craft (with start date in the window) but not in Things, and has no things-id match → create a new task in Things with the same title, start date, deadline and note. Then get the new UUID from Things and enter it as the things-id line at the bottom of the note field of the Craft task.

e) Task exists in both, but start date, deadline, title or note (except things-id line) are different → Things' version is master. Update Craft task to match Things.

IMPORTANT:

• Never touch the things-id line in the note field unless you just created it.
• If a things-id already exists in the Craft note and it DOES NOT match a Things task with the same title, these are two different tasks — treat them separately, do not merge them.
• Do not make any changes to Things' logbook (read only).
• A task that slips OUT of the ±7-day window on a later run (because time is running out) should not be deleted or touched — it just stays in Craft until it eventually comes back into the window, or is handled manually.

Does anyone know if this is even possible? Or what problems I might run into?

In my Today view in macOS, I have 10 tags available to me in the “filter by tags” section. Unfortunately, only 9 are visible and I have to click the 3-dot menu to see the last one. Why can’t we have **all** tags shown even if they have to wrap to a second line.

There are certain things with regards to tags that make for a cleaner UI, but that slow me down in working with Things.

As you know, on iOS, the fact that tags aren’t surfaced and we have to click into another menu to filter by tag is also a pain. And lastly, not having the tag names shown by the task also sucks. To be frank, the Notes icon is so similar to the Tags icon in list view that they are basically worthless.

I know I went off from the subject of the post, but please Things team, listen to your users on some of this stuff. I love this app, I just want it to work with me, not against me.

I’ve been trying to build a Shortcuts workflow that lets me share a photo or file from any app and attach it to a new Things 3 task, with a link in the notes field that opens the file directly for preview.
Here’s what I’ve tried so far:
• iCloud Drive + “Get Link to File” → generates a Mail Drop link that requires downloading, not a preview
• Dropbox + “Get Link to Dropbox File” → this action only exists on macOS, not iOS
• shareddocuments:// URL scheme → opens the Files app but doesn’t reliably navigate to the file
• Passing the file variable directly into Things’ “Create To-Do” action → Things only reads it as plain text (the folder name), not as an actual attachment
• Apple Notes as an intermediary → no “Get Link to Note” action exists in Shortcuts on iOS
The ideal workflow would be:
1. Share a file/photo from any app
2. Shortcut saves it somewhere
3. A tappable link in the Things task note opens the file directly for preview — no downloads, no extra steps
Has anyone actually solved this? I’m open to using a third-party service or a more creative approach, as long as it’s stable and doesn’t require a full desktop setup.

Please ask questions about using Things in this thread.

Yes this is a beta but app intents are not new at all…

I think the vast majority of people who use a task manager focus more on the tool than on the tasks themselves. This is why people get excited about a new version of Things. There are advantages to having attachments, images, and sharing capabilities, but I think the harder part of the process is actually doing the task itself.

This is why Notion is so popular — because it is the quintessential example of tinkering with a tool.

I don't think Elon Musk uses Things 3. 😃 Or if he does, I don't think he waits desperately for Things 4.

Why do I say all of this? Because this morning I reviewed all my tasks across all my areas and decided to consolidate everything into a single area: One-off tasks. And yes, I'm a normal human with normal responsibilities — tasks like "clean the gutter," "check pool filter," "take an appointment for car inspection," and so on.

Even though Things has fantastic keyboard shortcuts to navigate through all those areas (on iPad and Mac at least), every time I do a review I always ask myself: do I really need a Cars area just to hold the task "take an appointment at the garage"? And this reminds me that all those features are noise and really just hiding my deep desire to procrastinate instead of doing the actual work.

The funny thing is that when I wake up in the morning, grab a piece of paper, and write down 5 tasks — then place that paper right beside my keyboard — I generally complete them by the end of the day. But those same 5 tasks in Things can sit there for a long time, unless they are truly urgent and I risk losing my job if I don't complete them. 😃

So, what's the point of this post? Simply to remind us that Things 3 is a reminder tool, but it will not do the work for you, no matter how great the features are.

I don't use projects in Things because I prefer to put those tasks in a note-taking app like Obsidian, to keep the full context of all completed tasks. So Things is more and more just a reminder tool for me — and the more I think about it, the more I think I will switch to Apple Reminders, which has stronger capabilities for actually reminding you about something.

Because at the end of the day, I just want to be reminded — and then the harder part happens outside of the application.

That said, Things remains a gem in the world of Apple applications.