I found the perfect To-do list app?
02/01 updated — Review of the top-14 to-do list apps for IOS
I’ve tried more to-do apps then I can remember.
And none of them seemed to be quite-right.
They aren’t intuitive. They don’t have enough features. They have too many features. They are full of ads. etc…
This left my current workflow a hodge-podge of different apps.
But, with AI and technology advancing as fast they are, there has to be a single to-do app that rules over them all.
That’s what I’m on a mission to find.
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Judgement Qualities
Here are the qualities I’ll be judging the apps by:
1. Intuitive ease of use
- Complicated or simple workflow
- Complicated / busy user interface
2. Necessary features
- Overload
- Under-load
Very straightforward, but if the app is intuitive to use and has the necessary features, it should actually be useful.
The apps I’m looking at are:
- Minimalist
2. Microsoft to do
3. Todoist
4. Any.do
5. Ticktick
6. Structured
7. Reminders
8. Notion USA
9. Do!
10: Twos
11: TODo List
12: Sorted3
13: Planner Pro
14: 24Me
App 1: Minimalist
Minimalist absolutely lives up to its name. It’s super intuitive using swipe instead of buttons to create tasks and perform actions.
Its design is one simple white page, which is really convenient. Very premium feel. And It does exactly what you would want it to do. You have the task, you have place for notes, any subtasks, and you can create multiple lists. The swiping is very satisfying and very intuitive, natural feeling, as opposed to pressing.
One of the unique features of this app is it has a focus Timer. So if you want to work on the task for 25 minutes, you just select focus, and it will count down from 25 minutes.
I would say this app works great if you have a single project or a single group of tasks that you are wanting to focus on. However, If you are looking to focus on more than just have a place for a brain dump, then I would suggest a different app.
It does not have a due date section, so it pretty much works as a brain dump with a very sophisticated feel, but not well for a to-do list tracking, which is what I would primarily use it for.
App 2: Microsoft to do
Next is the Microsoft app To Do.
It’s default homepage is nothing to write home about. The organization structure is nice because you can create a list pretty easily, and you can create a group which houses multiple lists within it. So that’s a positive.
However, it’s not intuitive or natural for creating a task. I go into tasks and then I can start creating them, but it’s not quick and painless as some of the other apps are. For a simple to-do app, this is not simple enough.
I do like that it has the “Add to Day” option, which I’ve pointed out in some of the other apps, such as any.Do. To Do allows me to turn on notifications for specific tasks to ensure that I don’t miss the task. So that’s helpful. I can set the due date, and I can add a note to the task. But it does not let me create subtasks, so its functionality is limited.
You can mark a task as important, but only after the task has been created.
All of your important tasks get stored in a separate area as well as on your actual day. That’s nice so that I can focus on the important tasks. But overall, it’s a serious let down. Not a fan.
App 3: Todoist
What I really like about this app, is that you can organize the tasks by priority. So I have my highest priority up top, followed by second, third, and fourth priority. This is great because sometimes the day will get away from me. And I know if the day gets away from me, I don’t have to worry about third and fourth priorities. Just hit my top priority and potentially some of my second priority tasks.
Adding a task is incredibly easy. Big red button at the bottom, task name, description, day, priority, reminder, throw a label on there, can throw a workplace on as well if I’d like. Very effective and straight forward.
At the bottom it has Today, home, routines, different projects, and your inbox, which is where everything will live that isn’t assigned to today.
I like the look and feel of this, which is very expected. You can add new projects. You have work and home as the defaults. You can have routines, “review your day, every Every day at 05:00 PM”, for example. You can connect your calendar so you can still see events that show up on your calendar. You can search your tasks, your projects, your workspaces, your events.
This is a very streamlined process for simple task management. One of it’s major pro’s — and also con — is it’s focus on today. You’re not mapping out your week, you’re just focusing on today. You can assign task for later in the week, but you can’t see your week so there’s no way to tell if you assigned 100 things to Wednesday and 0 to Thursday.
The other thing I noticed is that tasks in the third and fourth priority ended up just becoming tasks that were basically a brain dump. I would love to have a place that was specifically for brain dump. You could create a Brain Dump list and if something is in a third or fourth priority for more than a week, then move it to the Brain Dump list, but I would have loved to see that problem already solved.
Over all, this is highly recommended.
App 4: Any.Do
The app is a bit more robust than I need. You have a grocery list, which has come in handy a lot. You have a personal list, and you also have a work list. That’s all you need in a to-do app. However, any.Do also has an inbox, a home, and workspaces.
Now, what I like about any.Do is you can create tasks very simply just by going to the day, hitting a plus button. As you’re creating the task, you can assign it to whichever list you would like. You can have it repeat, have a reminder, add subtasks, have a notes section, and add tags — all of which I’ve used and have been incredibly helpful.
My favorite feature is probably the A”dd to Day” feature. I can simply select the tasks I want to add to my day and click Add to Day. Then when I go to the “My Day” tab at the bottom, those tasks and those tasks alone will show up.
I’ve integrated this with my work as well as my personal calendar. So all my Zoom meetings will show up above so I can get a closer look and representation of what my day actually looks like.
The unfortunate side is that that is tracked in a project management software doesn’t integrate with this. So I still have to go over to project management software in order to manage my day and get a much better picture of what this would look like.
App 5: Ticktick.
Next up is TickTick.
When I first signed on, I was a little confused. It didn’t look like it had a scheduler or you could sign due dates, and so I instantly was disappointed. But once I started clicking around and messing with it, I realized that it actually has all of the things that you need. It’s default page is simply your brain dump, the place where you just throw every task that needs to get completed — and that’s actually pretty handy.
Adding a task is super easy. Again, with the plus button in the bottom right. You can add the task, descriptions, assign to whatever type of list you would like, add priorities, tags, and due date all very quickly.
You can set icons, though I’ve personally found that icons tend to be a bit distracting and overwhelm the UI. It’s just unnecessary.
At the bottom, there are three tabs that you can click. The next tab is a calendar. This is where all of your tasks show up on their assigned day. This is very helpful. It’s also nice to not have this be the homepage as many to-do apps have it set for. This makes the to-do process much easier, and you’re able to simply brain-dump all of your info and then look at the appropriate day when it It’s time to execute.
Next, you have the settings tab. This is where I think TickTick actually shines. If you go under the settings tab and then click tab bar, you can to actually customize the bottom tab. What I personally liked was being able to add the Eisenhower matrix, which organized all tasks into 4 boxes: “urgent and important”, “not urgent and important”, “urgent and not important” and “not urgent and not important.”
I like having this view, because I can look at it and quickly say, “Am I getting the important things done each week? Am I getting the urgent things done as needed?” Having that separate from the calendar view is nice, though I would like to see that integrated within the calendar view. Like I pointed out with the Todoist app, when you can integrate the Eisenhower matrix within the calendar view, then you can look and see not only what is due that day, but of the things that are due that day that are the most important or tghe most urgent. Because life will get in the way and there will be days where you can’t get to your lower priority list.
From the calendar view, you can change the view from the day, to the month, to three days, to a week which is a unique feature that not a lot of the other to-do apps have.
You can also search all of your tasks as well as your calendars, which is very handy.
The integration on this is surprisingly impressive. You can integrate with your calendar, which should be a standard for most to-do apps at this point. You can also import your lists from Todoist, Reminders, or Microsoft to do. And then they also have a Zapier integration, and an IFTTT integration — if you know how to work with either of these, you know that this just opened the door wide open on possibilities here.
It has a Google Assist integration, Siri, and Amazon Alexa. so technically, if you don’t want to pick up your phone, you can ask your AI of choice to add something to your list. That’s very handy so you don’t get distracted by pulling out your phone.
Overall, I would highly recommend TickTick. Pleasantly surprised.
App 6: Structured.
Next up is the app Structured.
The homepage is the single day in a calendar view. To be honest, it’s overwhelming — at least how it’s set by default. This appears to be less of a to-do app and more of a daily scheduler.
Here’s a big button in the bottom right corner. When you click, you can easily add a new task. Once you type in the task, you can decide when you want to do it, how long it will take. You can organize it by color. You can set to Recurring, have alerts, and add any details or notes and subtasks. All of the usual stuff, but the user interface is a bit cluttered.
Like I said, the UI of this seems to be less of a to-do app and more of a daily scheduler. With the purpose of a to-do app being something you can open and quickly put some information into, I wouldn’t go to structured for that
it has a feature where it tells you how much time until your next schedule task, which in theory sounds nice. But in practice, that means I would have to have the app open and live on my phone all day. That’s just begging for a distraction.
Each task also gets an icon, which leads to it being very distracting and a little bit overwhelming. Overall, not impressed with structured.
App 7: Reminders.
Next is Reminders, which is Apple’s default way of trying to create a to-do app.
To be honest, apple should have stuck to iPhones. This is nothing special. Adding a task (here it’s called a Reminder) is pretty straightforward. There’s an “Add Reminder” button. From there, you put in any notes you want. After a couple of clicks, you can add a date, a priority, and a location, assign it to a specific list, and then click Add. All of which is not jointed together on a single page, so it’s combersum.
One thing I do like is that not all items need a specific date, which could be helpful. That way you can use it more as a brain dump and less as a scheduler.
You can create different lists, which is pretty standard for most apps. You can look at your schedule, look at what you have to do today, all of which is very standard.
As far as I can tell, the only reason you would use reminders is if you specifically wanted reminders that sent you a notification based on location. That seems to be the only unique thing about the Reminders app.
Other than that, this is pretty underwhelming. It’s not the simplest to use. It’s not the most complex. It has some of the features that you need, but it’s not fully robust enough. It does have the priorities, so you can assign different priorities to the different tasks. However, it does not have a priority view.
Underwhelmed.
App 8: Notion USA.
Next, I’m looking at Notion USA.
Now, the obvious selling point for this is that it directly and natively integrates with the project management system of Notion. That makes life very easy. As I’ve said in a few other to-dos, having a to-do list app is It’s really helpful, but it doesn’t replace a project management system. If you have a project management system that natively integrates with your to-do app, then you’re already a step ahead of most.
Now, the other really great plus for this app is how customizable it is. This could be a pro or a con depending on your temperament, because that means it’s less easy to use out of the box. But I personally really like it. Specifically, I can go to the bottom right, click views, and customize my own views, sorted by deadline or by priority or however else I would like to sort it.
Adding a task is simple with a plus button at the bottom. You put the task name, then you can add a priority, add tags, put a date and time, duration if needed. You can have notifications come up, add it or not add it to your calendar, set a repeating schedule, add notes, add a URL. The usual.
My personal favorite thing, is that you can set this task as a template and then add new tasks based on this template. That alone will save a lot of time and a lot of back and forth in recreating and editing if your workload becomes complicated, or if the tasks that you want to add have multiple steps.
I’m a little disappointed that there’s no swipe technology used here. I would say this app is not the easiest of the to-do apps to use, but if you are already using Notion, then it’s a no-brainer.
I’m not a Notion User, but this to-do app could end up pushing me that way in the near future.
App 9: Do!
Next up is the app called Do!It’s both pretty simple and pretty underwhelming at the same time, which is hard to do.
The homepage is very simple and employs a combination of swipe and press actions. Honestly, that just gets a little annoying. I would rather it be primarily swipe actions like Minimalist or primarily press actions like most other to do apps. This in between takes too much getting use to.
Just like most other to do apps, you can add a task plus button in the bottom right. You can add the task name, set the due date, set the time you’d want a notification, add a tag color.
The one thing I do like about this app is that you can pin a task. If you know that there’s a larger project or a task that will take you more than a single day to do, then you can pin it at the top. It’s easy to view. It doesn’t get stuck in the, “I’ll get to that eventually” pile that we all have. That’s really nice.
You can create different groups, which is helpful, but there doesn’t appear to be a calendar view here or a prioritization view.
Technically, you can create a prioritization view by designating different tags or colors to be different priorities and then sorting and organizing your tasks by priority. But again, that’s a bit cumbersome. A bit unnecessary. When so many other to-do apps will automatically do this for you, it’s dissapointing not to have that feature.
Unfortunately, very underwhelmed with Do!
App 10: TWOS
In a space where every to-do list app is pretty much the same, twos is surprisingly unique. Its focus is on the “things” you want to get done.
So it’s geared more as a daily brain dump to make sure you don’t forget anything, then it is necessarily to a to-do list that can have priorities.
You can start the list, you can do a sublist, you can organize them, have check mark and the like. You can even create a note as a “thing”.
You can assign your thing to a different day, which is pretty standard.
You have their calendar view, your list view, and you can create templates.
What’s interesting is that you can use other people’s templates. That is really handy.
I know the focus of the app to use is to focus on “things”. What are the things you would like to do?
This makes it a pretty good brain dumping app, but it’s not as simple as some of the more traditional to-do apps, and therefore not nearly as streamlined.
And it takes a little more tough to get something out of your head, at least at the beginning. I’m sure if you took time, you could get used to it and it would be faster.
But in the beginning, it’s a little more of a pain then I think it needs to be.
App 11: TODO LIST.
This seems similar to the Toys R Us of to-do lists. It’s a little childish, a little outdated.
Technically, it works, but you definitely find a better deal somewhere else.
In the first five minutes of using the app, it asked, “Would you mind telling us what you like in the app?” Four separate times.
That alone is incredibly distracting.
When you try and create more than a single task, it instantly puts that behind a paywall.
You can add a note to that task. You can assign a priority, put a due date, have a reminder, all of the usual things that you would expect.
However, it only gives you those features under a paywall where most to-do apps will allow you to do that completely for free.
For that reason, I’m not interested and have a hard time recommending it, completely outside of the fact that the user interface looks like a 2003 Toys R Us.
App 12: sorted3
This app is a little interesting, but not interesting enough.
The fact that it’s free is really helpful, even though you can get pro.
The pro feature includes auto scheduling and attachments.
You can reorganize to split tasks into multiple lists, duplicate, merge, set a pass code, all of which seem to be nice to have.
Most of these featers seem to be not needed, simply nice to have.
Adding a task is very simple. Instead of a lot of the buttons and highlighted icons being square, like most of the to-do apps are, this has all the buttons as rounded, which is a nice soft look and feel for it.
You can also add italics, bullets, strikethros, H1 or H2 formatting to the actual items themselves. This is a much more natural way to feel out and create a hierarchy without actually using a priority one, two, three, or four.
Ultimately, though, it seems to have a lot of the extra features that just aren’t needed.
In order to have a to-do app that you’ll use, you want something that’s really intuitive, it’s really simple, natural, something where you can easily add items and they can easily be assigned to days with priorities. Throw in some categories and I’m sold.
This app, though it does have that that simple functionality, gets lost once you start introducing the notes and attachments and in-depth tagging and custom alerts, creating event and custom formatting.
All of these things are nice to have, but ultimately it becomes more of a distraction in my experience than it does what will actually get the work done.
App 13: Planner Pro
More than anything, this looks like a kid’s version of a scheduler.
It does not look like a to-do tracker, nor is it set up to easily be a to-do list tracker.
This default page is a calendar view, which defaults to the month.
If you pay premium, you can get a weekly view which seems like an odd feature to hide behind a paywall.
You can create tasks and subtasks, create a note or an You can see what’s upcoming, what’s due today, what’s in your general inbox.
You can create major projects. There’s the 25 minute Timer. There’s a notes section. All of this is pretty straightforward and pretty typical.
If you want your todo app to look like it was designed for a kid, then this is for you. Otherwise, nothing special here.
App 14: 24Me
I definitely have some complaints about this to-do list app.
you have your calendar view, which defaults to the week. You can swipe down to see full month. It does have more or less an infinite scroll on the calendar view, so you can infinitely scroll week over week and swipe to go through multiple weeks at once. It seems more like a bug that would get in the way than a feature you would want, because I found myself swiping well past the week and having to backtrack.
When looking for specific time frames, you have your task management, which has all of your tasks. From here, you can add tasks.
You can add a location, a time, a group, a label, or a note, as well as whether you want it to be an explanation or not, high priority or not. Simple enough.
When you first open this app, you’re defaulted to the calendar screen.
If you try and click the big yellow button and you haven’t connected your calendar, it will say you need to connect your calendar first.
At first, I thought it wasn’t letting me create an action item or a task until I connected my calendar, which seemed very sketchy to me. However, after using the the app for a bit, I realized this was simply because I was on the calendar view, not because I was on the task item view.
When you scroll and select the task item view at the top, then you can click the yellow button and add a task.
For that function alone, the fact that you can’t quickly and easily add a task item without having multiple clicks to even get there, puts this app out of the running.
There is a notes section, which is maybe handy for some, but not for me.
I do like that you can customize the calendar day to one day, three days, week, month, or have a running list of all of your tasks. That’s handy, but that’s also default in most to-do apps.
Overall, its lack of functionality makes this un recommended.
Conclusion
So far, it seems that either ToDoIst, TickTick, or Notion USA would be the winners.
ToDoIst it the most straight forward (fastest to learn).
TickTick has the brain dump UI which is incredibly handy.
And though Notion USA was the most complex, it’s also the most customizable which I personally really liked.
Which to-do app do you use, or are you curious about?
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