From making to do lists, scheduling notes, writing reminders, to managing projects, there are many different things you can do with an app. How about best free to do list mac ever? Do you need the best free to do list app for mac?
What is the best to do list app for mac free? Or the best to do list app for ipad free? If you want to learn about that, then this article is just what you need. We provide some tips and reviews of the best to do list apps for mac desktop and ipad tablet. A to do list app for Mac is Mac’s best way to get organized. A Mac App Store app, one of the best to do list mac free apps, is an essential tool for completing your to-do list…
OmniFocus 3
If you want even more powerful features than Things, then you should look at the opposite side of the coin: OmniFocus 3.
OmniFocus 3 follows in the more traditional GTD (Get Things Done) format, which can take some time to learn and understand fully. But once you get the hang of it, OmniFocus 3 becomes incredibly powerful. There are a ton of ways for you to organize your tasks, such as location, project, context, priorities, people, and much more. There are now enhanced repeating tasks, so you can set things up like “on the first weekday of each month.” OmniFocus 3 also supports attachments (graphics, video, audio), making it even more invaluable to those who need these things for their tasks.
OmniFocus 3 is free to download and try for 2-weeks. If you want to get the Standard version, it will be $50. There’s also a Pro version that costs $100, though you can get it for $50 if you upgrade from Standard.
Todoist
Todoist is the app that much of the team here at CIG uses. It has a fairly minimalist interface, yet it still packs a lot of power with its tagging and natural language processing features.
Pricing
- Free tier (limited features)
- Premium tier at $4 per month or $36 per year (70% off for students, though)
Pros
- Best app for natural language processing. Categorize tasks with due dates, tags, and projects while you type as fast as you think. No other app beats Todoist in this category.
- Sweet spot between power and flexibility. With projects, labels, filters, and priorities, you can tailor Todoist to your personal workflow, all while being intuitive to pick up and use. This is why Todoist is recommended by so many productivity experts as an entry-level tool, and even has courses designed with it in mind.
- Quick add from everywhere. Todoist lets you add tasks from pretty much anywhere you can be online. In addition to being available on all the mobile app stores, Todoist has native apps on both Windows and Mac, a Chrome extension, and integrations with Gmail and Outlook.
- Siri and Amazon Echo integration. “Alexa, add buy Tesla Model Y in 2021.”
Cons
- Subtasks don’t work well. Among other complaints, Todoist doesn’t let you indent subtasks in its Inbox view. WTH. (Honestly, Todoist! Even the barest option — Google Tasks — has a more intuitive native subtasks function than you do.) Some folks from Todoist contacted me after this post went live and they said that they’re working on making subtasks better! Keeping my fingers crossed.
- Windows app isn’t as good as the Mac app. This probably applies to a lot of apps. But the UI for Todoist’s Windows app doesn’t work quite as well as the mobile or Mac apps.
- Creating custom views or lists take some fiddling. Todoist has a built-in Today and Next 7 days view, but if you want to see your school tasks due the next week without worrying about the tasks for your part-time job, then it’ll take some fiddling with Todoist’s filters.
- $36 per year. If you go with Todoist, you’ll probably need to get the premium option to get the advanced flexibility of filters, priorities, and calendar syncing. (There’s a student account that goes for ~$1.50/month, though.)
Things (macOS, iPhone, iPad)
To-do list apps tend to fall into two categories: the complex and the minimalist. Things is somehow both.
Open Things for Mac and it looks simple: you’ve got an Inbox for your tasks and the option to add more lists. Dig a little, though, and there are all kinds of advanced tools here. There are nesting ways to organize your tasks: areas can contain tasks or projects; projects can contain tasks or headers that can also contain tasks; even tasks can contain sub-tasks if you want. It sounds confusing but it isn’t, which really speaks to how well Things is designed. There’s no right way to use this system. Use as many or as few of the organizational options given to you, however you like, to make sense of your chaotic list of tasks, choose which things you want to do today, and then do those things.
Other applications offer features like this, sure, but Things manages to do so without feeling cluttered. And as a native application with no Windows or web equivalent, Things feels very much at home on the macOS desktop. Combine this blend of functionality and beauty with features like a system-wide tool for quickly adding tasks, integration with your calendar so you can see your appointments while planning your day, intuitive keyboard shortcuts, reminders with native notifications, and syncing to an iPhone and iPad app. It’s a powerful way to organize your tasks—and then accomplish them.
Zapier’s Things integrations let you quickly create Things tasks from Slack messages, emails, and even Trello cards.
Things price: The macOS version costs $49.99 but offers a 15-day free trial. The iPad version costs $19.99, and the iPhone version costs $9.99.
TickTick
TickTick is quite similar to Todoist, with a nearly identical interface. It does offer some features that Todoist lacks, such as a built-in Pomodoro timer and calendar view.
Pricing
- Free tier (limited features)
- Premium tier at $28 per year or $2.79 per month
Pros
- Cheaper than Todoist (for almost-equal functionality). TickTick positions itself as a direct competitor to Todoist. At $28 a year it delivers most of Todoist’s features at almost half the price, plus some things Todoist doesn’t have like custom views (a.k.a. smart lists) and a built-in calendar view.
- Lots of delightful productivity extras. TickTick has a built-in Pomodoro timer that ties to specific tasks. It lets you choose to add a new task to the beginning or the end of a list, and it lets you set start times and due dates. It even has a habit tracker and a white noise generator on mobile.
- “Plan My Day” feature. Pulls up tasks with due dates on them to help you decide what to work on for the day.
Cons
- No native calendar sync. You’ll have to get the premium plan and fiddle with links to sync your current calendar with TickTick.
- Super limited free plan. The free plan limits you to 9 lists, 99 tasks per list, and 19 subtasks per task. No calendar syncing or anything fun like that.
2Do
If you like the idea of GTD, but don’t want to be over-intimidated by software like OmniFocus, then you should give 2Do a try. It’s like OmniFocus, but much easier to pick up and use.
One of the best features of 2Do is the ability to create simple tasks, checklists, or even projects with sub-tasks. Every task item in these can have notes, attachments, and even multiple alarms (sometimes we need that extra push). 2Do also not just does lists, but there are smart lists, which utilize filters and custom views. There is tag support to make organization a breeze, as well as a ton more features.
I used 2Do (along with everything else here) a while ago and must say that it’s definitely one of the more underrated to-do apps out there.
Reminders (Mac, iPhone, iPad, Web)
The best to-do list is the one you have with you, right? If you own a Mac, you already have Reminders, which comes free with every Apple device.
Apple’s default application for managing tasks is a simple one, allowing you to create lists of tasks and schedule when you’ll do them. There are a few views: Today, Scheduled, All, and Flagged. Beyond that, though, you can see individual lists. It’s simple, sure, but this simplicity might be a big plus: you get in, add tasks, and then get to work.
There’s no universal keyboard shortcut for adding tasks, but there is integration with Siri for Mac, which is something no other app on this list can claim. And iCloud integration means you can sync tasks with your iPhone and iPad very easily. You’ve already got this application, so why not give it a shot?
Reminders price: Included with all Macs, iPhones, and iPads.
Conclusion:
When it comes to deciding which to do list app for mac is best for you, there are many factors to consider before making your final decision. These factors include the usability, organizational tools available, mobile functionality, memory consumption footprint, cost of the software, accessibility on your operating system or mobile device, and more.