- Best App For Managing To Do For Mac
- Best App For Managing To Do For Mac 2018
- Best App For Managing To Todo For Mac 2018
In addition to all of the free apps that Apple gives to every Mac owner, both the Mac App Store and independent developers provide tools that make using your computer easier — and a little more fun. The best to-do list app will always be whatever works for you. One reason for the enduring popularity of pen-and-paper-based methods is that they can map perfectly to your individual needs.
To-do lists are essential for helping many of us stay organized and productive. Sometimes even just the act of writing something down can help you achieve your goals or at least reduce the weight of that task from your mind. Here are a few of the best online, mobile, and desktop applications for managing your tasks, chosen because of their multi-platform capabilities, their ease of use, and their rich features sets.
Desktop To-Do List Apps
There are only 2 desktop apps in this list, both Microsoft products, and both very useful as standalone personal information managers (PIMs). Unfortunately, as proprietary applications, they sometimes don't play as well with other applications.
• Bottom Line: The sleek, expensive Samsung Portable SSD X5 offers the fastest single-drive external storage money can buy, but it's suited mainly to well-heeled content-creation pros using late-model Macs. While extras are limited, the cost per gigabyte, thin design, and transfer speeds are highly appealing. Difficult to connect to Windows PCs. Best external speakers for mac mini. The Seagate Backup Plus Ultra Slim ($99.99 for 2TB) is a travel-friendly portable hard drive with a high storage capacity.
- Microsoft Outlook is the king of desktop calendar, task management, contact lists, and email software. All those features seamlessly integrate with each other; you can flag an email message as a task (with a follow-up date), for example, and view tasks on your calendar. For integration with other apps, however, such as Google Calendar, you'll need to rely on 3rd-party syncing tools, and those might not be available. Outlook tasks only sync well with Windows-based mobile phones, so taking your to-do list with you can be tricky if you use a different mobile platform.
- Microsoft OneNote is an organizational tool with many list management features built-in, like the ability to insert checkboxes into tabbed pages and integrate them with Outlook's tasks list. OneNote syncs with Office Web Apps, but only on a very basic level.
Online To-Do List Apps
There are many dedicated to-do list apps online, all very capable of maintaining your tasks lists. The problem is they don't interact with each other, as there isn't a universal 'to-do' item format (yet), in which you can easily export and import tasks or sync them with other programs. Still, the online, cloud-based to-do list apps win for overall accessibility -- as long as you have an Internet connection, you have access to your list of things-to-do.
- Remember the Milk (or RTM) is one of the most popular Web-based to-do list managers, and for good reason: The interface is intuitive, it works with multiple emails, SMS, and IM services, and has a host of other features like task reminders, saving task searches, tagging tasks, prioritizing and estimating task time, and more. It even has apps for mobile devices and other online apps like Google Calendar. The smartphone app is free, however, you'll need to upgrade to a Pro account for advanced features like Outlook syncing.
- ToodleDo is similar to RTM. Though the interface is a little more cluttered, ToodleDo offers more functionality and integration that other online to-do list services, including setting project/task goals, OpenID integration, and exporting/importing from CSV and Excel. Free 3rd party syncing apps like Got 2 Do on Android make this a more Android-friendly to-do list solution.
- Producteev - This online task management tool implores you to get your to-dos out of your email inbox. It is a robust online app that lets you add tasks via email, IM, Google apps, and iPhone apps, and the tasks can be color-coded, flagged, prioritized and otherwise finely managed. A Mac desktop app is also available.
Mobile To-Do List Apps
If your mobile phone is your task organizer of choice, you have a lot of list making apps to choose from. Besides task or to-do list apps, there are apps for creating shopping, wedding lists, and more. https://zycopquiso1986.mystrikingly.com/blog/whats-the-best-cheese-combination-for-mac-and-cheese. If you don't want to be restricted to accessing your list only on your smartphone, your best bet is to use one of the online apps above with a mobile app or their mobile website. The mobile apps below, however, excel at helping you track your tasks on your smartphone, specifically.
- 2Do - This to-do app for iOS and Android has one of the most elegant user interfaces and an assortment of features, including colored tabs, geo-location task sorting, projects, and checklists, drag and drop task management, multiple calendars, syncing with MobileMe, ToodleDo, iCal, and Outlook, and more.
- Got 2 Do - If you're an Android smartphone owner and a ToodleDo online task manager user, then the Got To Do app is ideal for you since it syncs with ToodleDo. Even if you don't use ToodleDo, however, Got 2 Do is a feature-rich mobile to-do app, with task reminders, task contexts, and folders, sorting by multiple categories, tagging, and more.
The best to-do list app will always be whatever works for you. One reason for the enduring popularity of pen-and-paper-based methods is that they can map perfectly to your individual needs. Bullet journals, which have surged in popularity in recent years, encourage you to pepper them with your own idiosyncrasies: widgets to track various goals, say, or lists of books to read, nestled alongside your daily chores. You impose your own point of view on a paper to-do list, for better and for worse.
Software, on the other hand, imposes its viewpoint on you. It asks you to bend your way of working to the only one it knows, in ways that can be suffocating. So, for you to trust your personal productivity with software, it has to go far beyond what pen and paper can do. Properly used, it should feel like a superpower in your pocket. You should get more things done, more easily than you would without it. Otherwise, what's the point?
Many to-do list apps are free — or built into your phone — and there's no harm in trying out a handful. Given the large overlap in features between these apps, you're likely to make your decision in large part on how you feel about their designs. But I encourage you to resist the trap I have fallen into consistently now for a decade: assuming that what I need at any given moment is a new to-do app, rather than the willpower necessary to get things done.
Once you're ready to be more productive in earnest, one app stands above the rest.
Todoist, which is available on virtually any platform you can think of, is clean, fast, and easy to use. Its natural language processing makes entering new tasks lightning-fast. Power users will appreciate advanced features including custom labels and filters, location-based reminders, and templates for recurring projects. You can also use it to collaborate with co-workers. But even if your needs are less robust, you'll likely still appreciate Todoist for its straightforward approach to getting things done.
Todoist was the runner-up the last time we surveyed to-do apps, in September 2014. In the time since, the app on Android and iOS has received a simple but attractive redesign. It organizes your tasks into three useful tabs: Inbox, for stuff you haven't yet processed; Today, for things due today; and Next 7 Days, for the week ahead. Most weeks, that's all I need to stay on top of my tasks. I'll tap out something like 'finish review for Dan Tuesday,' and Todoist will put a task labeled 'finish review for Dan' and remind me about it before my deadline. It takes all of one second, and the reminders are way more effective for me than relying on pen and paper.
Todoist makes it easy to go as simple or as complex as you want
But to-do apps can also be places to dream big, too. That's why I appreciate Todoist's simple but effective project view, for organizing anything that involves multiple tasks. When I'm planning something more complicated, I'll pull up Todoist's app for Mac — there's one for Windows, too — and think through my project on the larger screen. It's also a good place to add comments or file attachments to individual tasks, or to set custom reminders for each step.
Other features added in the past few years should have wide appeal. If you have an Echo device in your home, you can now add tasks with your voice via Alexa. Or you can add tasks from Slack. This year, Todoist also introduced a powerful integration with Google Calendar, allowing you to sync tasks to your calendar and back in real time. And if you get overwhelmed, a feature named Smart Schedule will offer to find time on your calendar for you to complete overdue tasks.
Todoist's basic plan is free, and it gets you access to apps for every major platform, where you can add up to 80 active projects. A $29 annual fee gets you a lot more: up to 200 active projects, task comments, reminders, and project templates, to name a few. But you may find that the free tier is good enough.
Todoist won't actually do any of your tasks for you. But in my experience, it will make it easier to get started — and follow through on the most important stuff on the list.
Our review of Doist Todoist
There are a lot of other to-do list apps to choose from, and depending on your needs, they may suit you better than Todoist does. Here are a few of the more popular ones we've tested:
Our review of Any.do
Good Stuff
- A visually pleasing blue-and-white color scheme
- Moment feature offers you daily encouragement to plan your schedule
Bad Stuff
- No natural language processing for entering due dates
- It's unclear how to complete simple actions like changing due dates
- Using the Moment feature daily requires a paid subscription
Our review of Microsoft Todo
Good Stuff
- Tight integration with Office 365
- My Day feature offers suggestions for which tasks to complete first, while hiding everything else on your plate
Bad Stuff
- Has far fewer features than Wunderlist, the app it is being designed to replace
- Utterly generic visual presentation
- No natural language processing
Our review of OmniGroup OmniFocus
Good Stuff
- The most full-featured to-do app on the market, allowing you to customize nearly every corner of the app
- Strong design connection to David Allen's Getting Things Done, the personal productivity bible that inspired a generation of knowledge workers
- Useful features include context-based working and weekly reviews
Bad Stuff
- Limited to iOS and macOS
- While the apps are one-time purchases, they're also some of the most expensive to-do apps on the market
- You may find yourself spending more time customizing the app than you do getting work done
Our review of Remember the Milk
Best App For Managing To Do For Mac
Good Stuff
- Underwent a nice redesign in 2016, refreshing the app's look and feel
- A 'smart bar' lets you add notes to your tasks at the same time that you are entering them
Bad Stuff
- Costs $40 a year to use basic features like reminders and using the app offline
- Lacks distinctive features that would help it break out of the pack
Our review of Onus WeDo
Good Stuff
- Adds habit tracking and social features to the standard to-do app template
- Features aimed at students help organize group projects
- While a paid version unlocks new themes, every important feature is free
Best App For Managing To Do For Mac 2018
Bad Stuff
Best App For Managing To Todo For Mac 2018
- Design is somewhat childlike and uninspired
- No natural language processing
- Focus on the education market could make it less relevant to professionals