Things is a to-do app that has resisted every trend of the last decade. No subscription, no team features, no AI, no dashboards. Projects, areas, tags, a Today list, an Upcoming list, and a Someday list where ideas go to wait without guilt. The design has barely changed in years, and that is a feature.

How I use it

Every morning I pick three things for Today. Not ten; three. Everything else sits in projects by area and shows up in Upcoming when its date comes, or in Anytime when I go looking. The evening has a shortcut too: anything left in Today gets moved or demoted, so tomorrow starts clean instead of with yesterday's leftovers at the top.

Capture happens from anywhere. The quick entry shortcut on the Mac and the share sheet on the phone mean a thought becomes a task in two seconds and I can stop holding it in my head. Most of those go to the inbox and get sorted once a day.

The important part is what it does not touch. No script writes into Things, nothing automated creates tasks in it, nothing syncs from a project tracker. It is the one place that only contains what I decided, by hand, matters. The moment a tool starts filling your task list, the list stops being yours, and I have watched that happen with every other system I tried.

What surprised me is how long it has lasted. I have changed note apps, calendars and browsers in the meantime. Things stayed, because it never gave me a reason to leave.

What annoys me: Apple only, so there is no way to look at it from a Windows machine or a browser. If someone else needs to see your tasks, this is the wrong tool. And the one-time price is fair per device but you pay it three times for Mac, iPhone and iPad.

Who it is for

Individuals on Apple devices who want their tasks in a calm, fast, private place. Skip it if you share tasks with a team or work across platforms; Todoist does that. If you just want your own list to behave, buy it once and stop thinking about task apps.

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