Finding the best checklist app isn’t easy. I’ve written about before, and I’m who has trouble sorting themselves out — you probably don’t know which productivity solution is best for you either. Part of the problem is that there are so many different apps for slightly different purposes, it’s hard to know which to choose. For this post, I’ve gone in search for the best checklist app ever created, and found some pretty under-the-radar stuff as well as apps most people already know. Let’s take a look. Bonus: Get a nuts-and-bolts comparison of Any.Do, Wunderlist and Todoist Here I go over 13 apps so you can get a feel for what you want to try and create a checklist, but you should also check out the bonus material here: a full comparison of Any.Do, Wunderlist and Todoist. I go deep into the details of those apps, and compare which is the best to-do list overall.

Clear — Untangle your life is the simplest app on this list. It’s got just 2 levels of navigation: lists and items.

Lists contain items that change color depending on their position. The higher the item up the list, the darker it gets. With Clear, you by color and get a quick visual overview of what needs doing right now, and what isn’t so urgent. Another interesting feature of Clear is that it brings mobile-like gestures to desktop.

It’s the first desktop app I’ve used that feels like it was ported-over from iOS, and it makes for a surprisingly comfortable user experience. Here’s what Clear looks like and how it works, as explained through its informative: Google Keep — Capture what’s on your mind Like Trello, is your classic wall full of sticky notes. Naturally, being a Google product, a hell of a lot of thought has gone into the search feature.

Color-coding notes isn’t just for aesthetics, you can filter you notes by color, so if you wanted to keep one set of notes for your blog, another for your shopping list and, that’d be the way to do it. Not to mention my single favorite thing about Keep: it integrates with! Inbox (which I herald as the best email app ever) has a feature called ‘Reminders’. When you pin an email so you can refer back to it with ease, you also get to add a little note to it. With Google Keep, you can add your notes directly into that section of your inbox. It’s definitely not an to keep your inbox as a to-do list, but I think it’s handy as a quick-fire reminder you’re bound to see when you check your emails.

Google Keep isn’t a runaway success, and — for a Google product — it’s well hidden. I feel that the strongest feature of Keep is that it can you can add tasks in so many different ways, including:. Speech-to-text (record a voice note and have the words indexed and searchable).

Image-to-text (upload an image, click ‘Grab image text’ from the three-dot menu) And tasks appear in other Google products, too, including Inbox and Calendar (both on mobile and ) Process Street — The simplest way to manage recurring checklists I love how you can set recurring tasks on Any.Do, Wunderlist and Todoist, but there isn’t a way to trigger entire checklists on demand or to a schedule. It’s just not what the apps were made to do., however, was created exactly with that in mind. If you need a or have a daily routine, you can for it in Process Street. It could look something like this: Then, you can set it to at 7am and alert you. By working through the steps you can systemize and document your day, then get an overview of how you did in the week just by looking at the on your dashboard. (See the full guide on using Process Street for your daily routine.) That’s just one way to use Process Street. There are million of use-cases, both personal and professional, including, and even.

Process Street integrates with through, so if you want to trigger a checklist from Trello, by email or add a task when you check off a box, that’s all really easy to set up. Also, it’s free forever, so sign up for your account. TickTick — Your lightweight task manager Like Todoist and Wunderlist, works with a main task Inbox and then generates several smart lists based on due date. For example, if you type ‘get dressed today’ as a new task in Inbox, TickTick will automatically sort it into the ‘Today’ list and set a due date for you. No more flicking through a tiny, horrid calendar looking for the right date — TickTick understands natural date/time language. While TickTick doesn’t have integrations with many apps, it can sync from your calendar. If you like hacky integrations, you could probably wrangle that.

TickTick is available on Android, iOS, desktop, and everywhere else under the sun. NotePlan — Lean, quick, efficient planning is part of what inspired me to write this article. Right now, it’s in beta and emailed me last week with a copy. The basis of NotePlan is notes/checklists attached to a calendar. So, for every day you can add notes and to-do list items and they stay connected to the calendar date. That way, you can see what you did yesterday, what needs doing today and any future plans at a glance from the main view.

It’s best to explain through screenshots, so here’s the calendar view: And here’s the notepad/to-do list view that shows when you double-click on a date: I’ve only been using NotePlan for a few days, but keeping my notes and checklist items away from the rest of my noise helps me focus down, and I’ve had an extremely productive time using it. Right now, NotePlan is in beta and only available for Mac. Any.Do — Get things done like a pro wasn’t the right for me, but it might be good for you. Essentially, it only does one thing differently, but it does that one thing extremely well. Its main selling point is a daily overview of your tasks where you can quickly assign due dates without scrolling around a calendar. By going into Moments mode every morning before you start the day, you can see everything you haven’t done yet and decide if you want to set the due date for today, tomorrow, next week or someday in the future.

The major issue for me is that it doesn’t integrate with any other apps. For now, it’s totally closed off. That means that if you use anything else with your team to manage tasks, like Trello or, you’re going to have to copy over every action item instead of getting them put automatically in your list. The downsides of that senseless data-entry busywork definitely outweighed the Moments view (which I’ve since replaced with swiping right on the Todoist mobile app). To see a full overview of Any.do vs Wunderlist vs Todoist, check out.

Evernote — Remember everything Evernote is a task-management behemoth. However, as I’ve already looked at in, it has a tendency to get full of garbage extremely quickly if you’re not careful. On the other hand, if you consistently organize and tag your notes it can make for an incredibly versatile checklist app that lets you create checklists with files, images, snippet, links, and anything you might need to reference as you work through your list. Evernote isn’t strictly a checklist app, but the reason why you might want to use it as one is so you can keep everything in one place.

It’s a pet peeve of mine when information isn’t centralized, so as soon as I have to start flicking between apps to make sense of my tasks, that app goes out the window. With Evernote, you can make checklists inside your project notebooks. So, if you’re, you’d collect all your research material, outlines and drafts in a notebook then have one more note as a dedicated checklist to refer back to. WorkFlowy — Organize your brain WorkFlowy is one of the most flexible list making apps you’ll ever use. It operates like a single sheet, which lets you zoom in on list items and make sub-lists. If that sounds confusing, it’s because it’s MUCH easier to visualize than to read: I use WorkFlowy for meeting notes, interview notes, article structures and more.

Check out my full, and a breakdown of. Wunderlist — Keep your life in sync is one of the most popular to-do list apps in the world. It’s available on mobile and desktop, and lets you create and filter items into separate projects. Here’s what your setup might look like: While the mobile app is a little awkward because it doesn’t make any use of gestures like Todoist, it’s a passable experience bearing in mind it is simultaneously a) useful and b) a Microsoft product. On top of that, one of the main attractions is that you can connect it to over 500 apps using Zapier. You can with that, like send to-do items from all over the web, notify others automatically when you check tasks off, etc.

For an in-depth comparison of Wunderlist vs Todoist vs Any.Do, click. Checklist+ — Creating lists shouldn’t be complicated If you can’t be bothered with yet another bloated checklist app and want something that works intuitively and simply, is the app for you. It doesn’t have tags, filters, searches, labels, or 10,000 bells and whistles that serve mainly as UI clutter. It’s optimized for pure ease-of-use and its features boil down to ‘lists within lists’ and being able to create/check off anything in the minimum amount of taps. Bear in mind that it’s only for iOS, so if you’re looking for a desktop or Android app this simple, you might try Clear for desktop Mac or TickTick for every platform. Todoist — Achieve more, every day Unlike some apps on this list, prides itself on being available on every platform.

It has everything you’d demand from a checklist app, with the added bonus of being able to set up custom filters and saved searches. (As you can see, I’m terrible at getting stuff done.) Since this is one of the bigger names on the list, it also integrates with Zapier meaning you can push in tasks from essentially anywhere on the internet. An example of this which I personally use is: Todoist is also a collaborative app, so you can invite your family or coworkers to come in and work on tasks with you. This is awesome for a shopping list you share with your wife or a to-do list for a work project in your team. For a full rundown of Todoist and how it stacks up against Wunderlist and Any.Do, go.

Things — A major upgrade to your productivity is a Mac-only app including projects and tags. It’s super simple, and optimized for quickly adding, tagging and organizing tasks with keyboard shortcuts. It’s the perfect to-do list app for power users. Using Cmd+N, Tab and Enter in sequence, I made this task below without clicking. Once I’ve made a task, I can drag it into a project, or time-based list.

If I make the task in Inbox, the date will send it to a time-based list automatically. Right now, Things doesn’t have many proper integrations but you can.

Overall, Things is an ideal app with some bonus features like your Logbook. The Logbook tracks every completed task, so instead of hiding them like Wunderlist, you can get a quick look at your.

Lanes — Accomplish your goals beautifully is a free, minimalist web app which helps you manage your tasks with a pomodoro timer. Add tasks to multiple lists and dates, all on one dashboard. Once you’ve added a task, you can go to the Sessions menu and start a 25 minute sprint on that task, like this: A seemingly inconsequential (but important for me) feature of Lanes is the fact that you can change your background to any color or image you like. If I don’t like how my checklist app looks, I’m going to get annoyed with it pretty quickly. Lanes is a young app, but it’s being developed rapidly and was created purely by user suggestions.

If you find that most to-do lists aren’t right for you, you might find Lanes to be your best bet. Which checklist app should you choose? After looking over the options, it’s clear that checklist apps fall into a few different categories based on their features and complexity. With that in mind, I’ll run through the best checklist apps depending on your needs: Full GTD suite: or Recurring checklists: Extremely simple and intuitive: or I definitely missed some here, but here these are the apps I have experience with so I thought it’d be better to cover what I know. Got any other suggestions?

What’s worked for you? Let me know in the comments.

Time to get some work done, exactly like this cat. Bonus: Get a full comparison of Any.Do, Wunderlist and Todoist I just skimmed through 13 apps pretty quickly, but you should also check out the bonus material here: a full comparison of Any.Do, Wunderlist and Todoist.

I go deep into the details of those apps, and compare which is the best to-do list overall. A cool new Checklists App is Arktik (www.arktik.co). I’m one of the makers, trying to reach as many people as possible 🙂 Here’s some quick info about it: Planning trips, cooking meals, designing websites, even flying airplanes?

No matter what you do, it’s utterly important HOW you do it, in order to succeed. Arktik is a checklist web app built so you can worry less and achieve more by using failure as a tool for success! We’ve built a checklist tool which does exactly what a checklist tool should: power-up your efficiency! By reusing – previously defined – checklists, you can break the limits of your memory and attention.

Arktik can be your guide and can lead you from the beginning of a project right until the successful reach of your objective. The best part? In the future, on a similar projects, you won’t need to rethink the entire process again!

If you feel adventurous you could give Arktik a try! I’ve used Out of Milk for shopping and to do lists.tried to get into taking advantage of the many features of todoist but I keep procrastinating. So I’ve settled on giving commands to my Amazon Echo: “Alexa, put buy new tires on To Do list” or “Alexa, put kale on the Shopping List.” The lists are simple and uncategorized–but I did not have to stop and enter text, so that’s the tradeoff I’m using. For more complicated stuff, I keep a word document GTD style on my desktop. For routine stuff, I use the “reminder” function in Google calendar (workout, meditate, etc.). I’ve used Out of Milk for shopping and to do lists.tried to get into taking advantage of the many features of todoist but I keep procrastinating. So I’ve settled on giving commands to my Amazon Echo: “Alexa, put buy new tires on To Do list” or “Alexa, put kale on the Shopping List.” The lists are simple and uncategorized–but I did not have to stop and enter text, so that’s the tradeoff I’m using.

For more complicated stuff, I keep a word document GTD style on my desktop. For routine stuff, I use the “reminder” function in Google calendar (workout, meditate, etc.). So far, so good. One really annoying thing about any.do–if you’ve established notes or subtasks to a main task–two really inadequate things–(1) there’s no indication on the main task that it has subtasks, until you actually give focus to the task.

(2) Worse of all–once you’ve completed the task, you CAN’T SEE the subtasks or notes, unless you uncomplete the item. That is idiotic.

I’ve commented about this on their support site, apparently to deaf ears. In your evaluation, I’d like to see a point about search. In my opinion, search should be thorough–it should include both active and completed tasks, and it should includes notes and subtasks.

Some of these apps do, but some don’t. Anyway, thanks for the analysis.

Few apps have made a more valiant effort to rescue us from indolence than, the to-do list app for Mac and iOS from German software developer Cultured Code. When it debuted as one of the original iPhone apps in 2008, Things was notable for its strong compatibility with, the popular productivity system. Its original incarnation won an Apple Design Award, and by 2014 Things had sold 3 million copies of its iPhone app alone. But in the intervening years, Things has come to look a little dated.

Visually, it hadn’t quite shed the skeuomorphism of older versions of iOS. And while other to-do apps were focused on collaboration — encouraging small teams to subscribe to premium versions that let them delegate tasks to one another — Things remained a resolutely single-player game. A to-do list five years in the making In 2014, when I evaluated, I held off on including Things after the team told me they were hard at work on the next version of their app: Things 3. They had been working on it for two years — and would continue working on it for the next three.

And so when Things 3 finally arrived this week, for a certain kind of productivity nerd, it felt like a major event. I’ve been using the app on Mac and iOS for the past week, and have generally been impressed — despite a handful of flaws that will likely be deal-breakers for many. But mostly I want to talk about three things Things 3 does extremely well — and ought to inspire makers of to-do list apps the world over to imitate or improve on them.

The upcoming view. One of the chief design decisions the maker of a to-do list app has to make is how to display your upcoming tasks. OmniFocus, perhaps the most overpowered of all to-do lists, offers a “Forecast” view that shows you the number of tasks you have coming up over the next week.

Todoist, which has been my to-do app of choice for the past two years, offers both “today” and “next 7 days” views that list your upcoming tasks in order. Things 3 builds on this idea, ingeniously, by integrating your calendar. Connect to your Google account or other calendar service and you’ll see your appointments for the day, followed by any tasks that are due.

“Today” shows you a single day; “Upcoming” offers you an infinite scroll into the future with whatever you have planned. A combined calendar, to-do list, and reminders app is something of a holy grail in the productivity world; Things 3 gets extremely close to realizing it. Project completion circles. How close is your project to being complete? Other to-do list apps require you to look inside a project and estimate for yourself how much work it will take to perform the next steps.

Things 3 answers this with a lovely visual metaphor: circles next to every project that fill in as you complete tasks. If a project has five parts and you’ve completed four of them, you’ll see a tiny sliver left to be done. It’s gimmicky, but I appreciated being able to see how close I was to finishing a given project at a glance. The magic plus button. A good to-do list app makes it dead simple to create new tasks, and Things 3 has a fun tool to do just that. Cultured Code calls it the “magic plus button,” and it appears in a big blue circle at the bottom right-hand corner of the app. But it doesn’t just stay there: you can tap and drag it up and down, and side to side, and where it lands changes what it creates.

Move it to the inbox and you can create a task without a due date there. Slide it up and you can create a new task within a larger project. Or drag it into your project list to create a new project immediately.

There’s other great stuff here, too. You can set a task to “evening” — a useful designation for all the stuff you’re saving for after work. “Anytime” and “Someday” lists encourage you to daydream. And the individual tasks cards are designed with beautiful minimalism.

Things is still a single-player game So what are the potential deal-breakers? One, Things requires you to live entirely within the Mac ecosystem — if you’re away from your devices, you can’t even access your work from the web. Two, Things is still for individuals — there’s no easy way to collaborate with colleagues on your projects. Three, there’s no natural-language input in the task entry window.

Close This App Please

On many to-do apps, including Todoist, you can type in something like “finish assignment by 2P Wednesday” and the app will attach the appropriate due date. On Things, you can only access natural-language input after clicking the date picker. Then there’s Things’ business model, which also feels a bit dated: instead of paying a single subscription fee to access all of the companies’ apps, you have to buy the iPhone, iPad, Mac, apps separately. (They are $10, $20, and $50 respectively.) Despite those faults, I’ve switched over to Things to manage my tasks, at least for now. And who can blame me? No piece of software is more tempting than a brand-new to-do-list. Installed on your phone, it becomes a wonderland of possibility — a blank canvas on which you can project your wildest dreams, and through the power of software achieve them.

Never mind that your determination will falter. That the tasks you entered so lovingly will refuse to do themselves, and will instead glare at you from your to-do app, making a mockery of your dreams. Never mind that you will delete it, and resolve to better yourself the only way you know how: by returning to the App Store, and buying a new to-do app. Things is now available for,. Correction, 3:44 p.m.: This post has been updated to reflect that natural-language input is available in the date picker.