Fantastic update. Absolutely love everything about Things 3...except, not being able to complete recurring tasks early. I'm sure I'm not the only person who can forget if I paid a bill early or not. That's the only thing that prevents me from going all in on it. I'm starting to lose hope that they will address this. Thanks for video.
I love all of your take on what is missing on Things 3, I contacted them a couple of years ago asking for a web version of things and they said no. I currently work on a windows platform both professionally and personally, it would be great to be able to have that option rather than having to grab my iphone or ipad to capture during the course of the day. I even paid for the Mac version when I owned a MAC a few years ago, I would gladly pay that 49.99 for a windows version of THINGS if they can make that happen.
I've been looking for some kind of a "planned" date as well and started to use the new notification date feature for that, which integrates with the forecast perspective as well. Freely sorting tasks in forecast also made my daily planing a nicer experience. I'll have to see if I can stick to it.
10:31 Great overview Peter. I agree, start dates on Todoist would be a game changer. I am so used to the Things 3 implementation of start date/ deadline dates that I don't know how Todoist users do it. Thanks for the content!
Absolutely agree. Todoist, Omnifocus, TickTick, Reminders, etc, etc - everyone offers this because the value is so clear. It’s nearly “table stakes” at this point, as you put it. This is something they can add without losing elegance, too, which is important to them and their many fans! I think the biggest reason they haven’t done it is because of the back end upgrades necessary for their servers. They’ll have to store a whole lot more data and do it safely. So to see that they are hiring for exactly this makes me hopeful for the first time in a long time that they’re working seriously on upgrades!
Has anyone found decent workarounds? I keep thinking there’d be a vaguely efficient way to scan something to an Apple Note, copy that link, open a new Things note, and … about here I give up and wonder why I just spent this much time only to save myself time. 🙄
Just wanted to share that on OmniFocus 4 (Mac), if you click on the eye icon for "View Options", you can choose the "Structure" to be either Organized vs Flexible (as you have it) or Organized (as it sounded like you were expecting it). I could imagine there being a couple of scenarios for either, but definitely is something that feels a little secretive in that intense settings modal and does leave things up to the user to figure it out and tweak things to work well vs it be ready out of the box and anticipate a person's needs. Totally agree about Todoist and the impact of natural language processing-it's so efficient and basically the experience I expect anymore. The work they're putting into the Experimental features/New Layout has really has been winning me over the past few months as they've polished a lot of their older UX issues. Within a release, the updated an iPadOS full screen icon that had been missing that I reported. Very impressive. Still some ways to go, some wishes I have of them to make, but they're really getting somewhere.
Totally agree. The fact that I had to look in a couple places of their various settings trying to remember *how* this toggle is done speaks to this point. :)
I can agree whit omnifocus complexity but for example on mobile you can turn off the calendar before open forecast or tags filter before open a prospective, the real outdated here is the missing of natural input and collaboration yet
In addition to the features you mentioned for 'Things 3', I am disappointed with how the markdown is displayed. It would be nice to be able to hide the markdown syntax and see the result of the markdown being applied. I want the option to toggle the feature to view my list -> to-do items -> notes in a three-tiered layout like TickTick. Currently, when I tap on a to-do item, the item is collapsible/expandable. This is annoying because it forces me to repeatedly press the 'return' and 'esc' keys to see the notes written on the to-do item when I'm flicking through my to-dos on the keyboard and reviewing them.
Fantastic video! I've been using Things3 since the beginning, and sticking with one to-do task management app and knowing how to use it very well for you is the most important part. However, I use Apple Reminder occasionally when I need to attach screenshots to my notes or set a location-based reminder (since Things3 doesn't allow it as you said it 🙂).
After watching your Things 3 video earlier this year, I purchased Todoist, Tick Tick, and Things 3 for an extended trial. At first I was confused by how simple Things 3 was and why you liked it so much. But recently I went with Things 3 full-time. It's fast and easy, it integrates into Apple apps and seems to be bug free. You seemed disappointed that there aren't constant updates to Things 3; I came to appreciate Things 3 because it wasn't a moving target.
I’m glad you’re enjoying Things 3. I am not “disappointed that there aren’t constant updates to Things 3”. Things is stable and bug-free and that’s wonderful. But location-based reminders and support for attachments are big missing features. They would not be updates for the sake of updates but meaningful changes.
I am in the fan base as well- but I get frustrated with Cultured Codes' reluctance to beef up abilities for managing dates for subtasks. I have monthly repeating processes that do not need full Project Management functions but do contain activities that need to be planned and tracked. I do not need or want to additional overhead of ToDoist- but cannot find a way to "trick" Things into reminding me of due dates related to the parent task.
my top features for things 3 would be a kanban board view (esp for upcoming), a two way sync to calendars and some sort of priority/time system (i.e. why is there an "Evening" but not an "afternoon" and "morning" haha)
I know they've said no in the past but I would love Things to let me hide markdown code - my project notes look like word salad when all I need to do is bold or highlight something.
One feature I really like from Amazing Marvin is you can divide a day into "sections." It's similar to how Things 3 has evening tasks, except you can add as many custom sections as you like, and you can move tasks between the sections. I have a section for urgent tasks, a secition for chores that I do outside the house, a section for things I need to remember to do before leaving for work in the morning, etc. This is independent of the categorization of tasks into areas (work, personal, etc). Do you know of any other To Do list managers that can do this?
If anyone from culture code is reading. 1 - Need colour coding projects with custom labels. 2 - ability to replace the box glyph in front of ‘area’ in the sidebar so emojis (used commonly to label areas’ can be seen first thing. Text of area heading is bold already that’s good enough to differentiate areas and projects. 3 - small and medium widgets show same number of tasks while using twice the space.. Maybe add a second column in medium and large widget.
I am 99% sure that number 1 and 2 will never happen. Cultured Code prides itself on Things’s design. The people there will not be inclined to let you modify the “design” of the app by color coding. In the tiny chance that they do, they will surely choose only a few colors to pick from that don’t clash with the existing design.
What is your take on Apple reminders compared to these three, now that Reminders has Kanban (as Todoist), Early reminders and Sections (as Things 3 Headings)? Good enough for task management for an average Joe? Or still "just" for groceries and other shopping?
Things3 is maintain as my backend brain dump, (soon to phase out, depending on how well their next version )but my go-to apps are Bear and TeuxDeux for their minimal design, offering fewer distractions. For everything else I like to use my real 🧠🤣
Do you think I should go in (pay the amount) and ignore the fact that things4 may be released? I believe yes attachments are important and recurring tasks fix.
I rotate between these apps because I want to stay up-to-date on all of them. So I do that for my work. I don’t recommend that people who are not productivity coaches switch apps very often.
Things 3: for me the most disappointing thing is the cooperation between Things and Shortcuts. They implemented more commands, which should make the writing of shortcuts much more easier then using the url coding. I was so happy after the release and started immediately with transferring my ulr shortcuts using the new shortcut commands. They were running fine and stable up to the next update. At that point even the shortcut examples provided by culturecode were not running any more. Several email discussion with partly very long answering time were not solving this issue. I am again using the url codes, which are complete user unfriendly.
5:25 > 6 years user of OF here ... I don't think it's about development more than about enrolling a real UX & graphic designer a LET (him/her/them) shake the app's look from top to bottom. Knowing organisations, I think this could have to do with holding dearly to their baby and the inability to let go (and I would be curious to know how many front end developers work on the project.. 2? 3?). Reviews, doc attachment inside notes, showing only relevant tasks & geotags are strengths indeed but that won't suffice to compensate such an awful UI. OF4 is better than OF3? Thank god! But slightly better ain't enough... your basic description of "feeling like looking at a database" sums it up. Things3 has it all in terms of UI, but indeed, in 20023, I am waiting for v4 to spend 70+€... Todoist bother me with the fact that I apparently can't open the app if not online..but it looks that today, it is the best option...
I agree that OmniFocus badly needs a better UX/UI. Hiring someone or several people for that seems like an obvious choice to us… perhaps we don’t know everything.
I had a conversation with developers of Things. I was hoping for timeboxing feature but it is not gonna happen. It is not a part of the developers' beliefs about productivity. Fair enough. However, sad for me. It is so great app! BUT timeboxing. So I still fight... with both Things and Google cal.... every app I tried is just not possible to compare with Things 3 in terms of minimal system, design etc. Cannot get rid of Things but still desiring timeboxing feature. aaaaaghhr!! 🤬
I get your frustration. But it doesn’t surprise me. The people at Cultured Code have a philosophy and you either adopt it or their app won’t work well for you. Happily, I agree with most if not all of their philosophy.
@@PeterAkkiesFrom your videos, I am not sure if you personally use a timeboxing app? I guess you don't, right? If not, is it also a todo app + calendar?
Todoist hasn't released any decent updates for a long time. Still having trouble getting notifications to work on both Android and iOS, sometimes they don't ring. And all these new features you showed aren't that great... the only thing Todoist would need is an integrated calendar, but it will still take another year or two I imagine... (something asked years ago). And when these updates come out we'll see how much they will increase the subscription... luckily there's more out there too.
Is Todoist developing? Are they listening to their users? Seems to me like all they do is rehash the UI and update colors and icons. Sure they've added a few small conveniences, but a real calendar view and start dates have been asked for for years. It doesn't happen, though. Just minor tweaks and bug fixes.
They are working on a calendar view and on start dates. They engage with their users all the time, for example on Reddit. And they have released several good new features recently, like start times, natural language for reminders, the new UI, which I like a lot.
@PeterAkkies Thank you for your reply. I've signed up for Reddit and will follow their progress there. I hope that they do implement a real calendar view and start dates. There was a time when I was excited about Todoist and ran my entire life through it. (pushing 14,000 tasks completed) After countless configurations and workarounds, it's been reduced to shared grocery lists and bills with my wife. While I would agree, it's probably the best cross-platform task manager. It's just not for me. My projects have deadlines and consequently start dates. The Today and Upcoming views are useless. Not everything has a due date. How nice would it be to open the Upcoming View in board view and see what is due this week and have some sort of mechanism to put unscheduled tasks around scheduled tasks to plan your week. While I like their open canvas approach to task management, a little more structure to streamline a workflow in order to cut down the need to be fiddling with filters and spreadsheets, could go a long way.
Fantastic update. Absolutely love everything about Things 3...except, not being able to complete recurring tasks early. I'm sure I'm not the only person who can forget if I paid a bill early or not. That's the only thing that prevents me from going all in on it. I'm starting to lose hope that they will address this. Thanks for video.
This the deal killer for me
Agreed
Agreed
I love all of your take on what is missing on Things 3, I contacted them a couple of years ago asking for a web version of things and they said no. I currently work on a windows platform both professionally and personally, it would be great to be able to have that option rather than having to grab my iphone or ipad to capture during the course of the day. I even paid for the Mac version when I owned a MAC a few years ago, I would gladly pay that 49.99 for a windows version of THINGS if they can make that happen.
I've been looking for some kind of a "planned" date as well and started to use the new notification date feature for that, which integrates with the forecast perspective as well. Freely sorting tasks in forecast also made my daily planing a nicer experience. I'll have to see if I can stick to it.
10:31 Great overview Peter. I agree, start dates on Todoist would be a game changer. I am so used to the Things 3 implementation of start date/ deadline dates that I don't know how Todoist users do it. Thanks for the content!
Brilliant Peter, great video as always, appreciate your ongoing magic. Spot on about Things, can't wait for the attachments option! ✌🏻
Absolutely agree. Todoist, Omnifocus, TickTick, Reminders, etc, etc - everyone offers this because the value is so clear. It’s nearly “table stakes” at this point, as you put it. This is something they can add without losing elegance, too, which is important to them and their many fans! I think the biggest reason they haven’t done it is because of the back end upgrades necessary for their servers. They’ll have to store a whole lot more data and do it safely. So to see that they are hiring for exactly this makes me hopeful for the first time in a long time that they’re working seriously on upgrades!
Has anyone found decent workarounds? I keep thinking there’d be a vaguely efficient way to scan something to an Apple Note, copy that link, open a new Things note, and … about here I give up and wonder why I just spent this much time only to save myself time. 🙄
Just wanted to share that on OmniFocus 4 (Mac), if you click on the eye icon for "View Options", you can choose the "Structure" to be either Organized vs Flexible (as you have it) or Organized (as it sounded like you were expecting it). I could imagine there being a couple of scenarios for either, but definitely is something that feels a little secretive in that intense settings modal and does leave things up to the user to figure it out and tweak things to work well vs it be ready out of the box and anticipate a person's needs.
Totally agree about Todoist and the impact of natural language processing-it's so efficient and basically the experience I expect anymore. The work they're putting into the Experimental features/New Layout has really has been winning me over the past few months as they've polished a lot of their older UX issues. Within a release, the updated an iPadOS full screen icon that had been missing that I reported. Very impressive. Still some ways to go, some wishes I have of them to make, but they're really getting somewhere.
I know OmniFocus has those view options, but both views are way outdated, in my opinion.
Totally agree. The fact that I had to look in a couple places of their various settings trying to remember *how* this toggle is done speaks to this point. :)
I can agree whit omnifocus complexity but for example on mobile you can turn off the calendar before open forecast or tags filter before open a prospective, the real outdated here is the missing of natural input and collaboration yet
In addition to the features you mentioned for 'Things 3', I am disappointed with how the markdown is displayed.
It would be nice to be able to hide the markdown syntax and see the result of the markdown being applied.
I want the option to toggle the feature to view my list -> to-do items -> notes in a three-tiered layout like TickTick.
Currently, when I tap on a to-do item, the item is collapsible/expandable.
This is annoying because it forces me to repeatedly press the 'return' and 'esc' keys to see the notes written on the to-do item when I'm flicking through my to-dos on the keyboard and reviewing them.
Fantastic video! I've been using Things3 since the beginning, and sticking with one to-do task management app and knowing how to use it very well for you is the most important part. However, I use Apple Reminder occasionally when I need to attach screenshots to my notes or set a location-based reminder (since Things3 doesn't allow it as you said it 🙂).
Fantabulous update 👍
Hehehehehe :D
After watching your Things 3 video earlier this year, I purchased Todoist, Tick Tick, and Things 3 for an extended trial. At first I was confused by how simple Things 3 was and why you liked it so much. But recently I went with Things 3 full-time. It's fast and easy, it integrates into Apple apps and seems to be bug free. You seemed disappointed that there aren't constant updates to Things 3; I came to appreciate Things 3 because it wasn't a moving target.
I’m glad you’re enjoying Things 3. I am not “disappointed that there aren’t constant updates to Things 3”. Things is stable and bug-free and that’s wonderful. But location-based reminders and support for attachments are big missing features. They would not be updates for the sake of updates but meaningful changes.
I am in the fan base as well- but I get frustrated with Cultured Codes' reluctance to beef up abilities for managing dates for subtasks. I have monthly repeating processes that do not need full Project Management functions but do contain activities that need to be planned and tracked. I do not need or want to additional overhead of ToDoist- but cannot find a way to "trick" Things into reminding me of due dates related to the parent task.
I love Todoist.
my top features for things 3 would be a kanban board view (esp for upcoming), a two way sync to calendars and some sort of priority/time system (i.e. why is there an "Evening" but not an "afternoon" and "morning" haha)
I know they've said no in the past but I would love Things to let me hide markdown code - my project notes look like word salad when all I need to do is bold or highlight something.
One feature I really like from Amazing Marvin is you can divide a day into "sections." It's similar to how Things 3 has evening tasks, except you can add as many custom sections as you like, and you can move tasks between the sections. I have a section for urgent tasks, a secition for chores that I do outside the house, a section for things I need to remember to do before leaving for work in the morning, etc. This is independent of the categorization of tasks into areas (work, personal, etc). Do you know of any other To Do list managers that can do this?
If anyone from culture code is reading.
1 - Need colour coding projects with custom labels.
2 - ability to replace the box glyph in front of ‘area’ in the sidebar so emojis (used commonly to label areas’ can be seen first thing. Text of area heading is bold already that’s good enough to differentiate areas and projects.
3 - small and medium widgets show same number of tasks while using twice the space.. Maybe add a second column in medium and large widget.
I am 99% sure that number 1 and 2 will never happen. Cultured Code prides itself on Things’s design. The people there will not be inclined to let you modify the “design” of the app by color coding. In the tiny chance that they do, they will surely choose only a few colors to pick from that don’t clash with the existing design.
I believe the small widget should allow us to add a new task.
What is your take on Apple reminders compared to these three, now that Reminders has Kanban (as Todoist), Early reminders and Sections (as Things 3 Headings)? Good enough for task management for an average Joe? Or still "just" for groceries and other shopping?
Things3 is maintain as my backend brain dump, (soon to phase out, depending on how well their next version )but my go-to apps are Bear and TeuxDeux for their minimal design, offering fewer distractions. For everything else I like to use my real 🧠🤣
Hope that Things 4 will not cost extra. I just began using Things 4 a couple of months ago
Do you think I should go in (pay the amount) and ignore the fact that things4 may be released? I believe yes attachments are important and recurring tasks fix.
Yes
Omnifocus is a mess. I have given up on them ever getting it right. Thanks for your work doing this. Very helpful.
You’re so right that the omnifocus team needs to add AI natural language for custom perspectives.
Do you actively use all 3 of these apps for different purposes? I find myself actively rotating between these 3+tick tick almost quarterly 🤦🏼♂️
I rotate between these apps because I want to stay up-to-date on all of them. So I do that for my work. I don’t recommend that people who are not productivity coaches switch apps very often.
Excellent video!
I like the better the circles than the new hashtags in todoist
Can you tell me such a thing Once we are all owners of OmniFocus 4, will all settings be copied automatically from OmniFocus 3?
Things 3: for me the most disappointing thing is the cooperation between Things and Shortcuts. They implemented more commands, which should make the writing of shortcuts much more easier then using the url coding. I was so happy after the release and started immediately with transferring my ulr shortcuts using the new shortcut commands. They were running fine and stable up to the next update. At that point even the shortcut examples provided by culturecode were not running any more. Several email discussion with partly very long answering time were not solving this issue. I am again using the url codes, which are complete user unfriendly.
5:25 > 6 years user of OF here ... I don't think it's about development more than about enrolling a real UX & graphic designer a LET (him/her/them) shake the app's look from top to bottom.
Knowing organisations, I think this could have to do with holding dearly to their baby and the inability to let go (and I would be curious to know how many front end developers work on the project.. 2? 3?).
Reviews, doc attachment inside notes, showing only relevant tasks & geotags are strengths indeed but that won't suffice to compensate such an awful UI. OF4 is better than OF3? Thank god! But slightly better ain't enough... your basic description of "feeling like looking at a database" sums it up.
Things3 has it all in terms of UI, but indeed, in 20023, I am waiting for v4 to spend 70+€...
Todoist bother me with the fact that I apparently can't open the app if not online..but it looks that today, it is the best option...
I agree that OmniFocus badly needs a better UX/UI. Hiring someone or several people for that seems like an obvious choice to us… perhaps we don’t know everything.
I had a conversation with developers of Things. I was hoping for timeboxing feature but it is not gonna happen. It is not a part of the developers' beliefs about productivity. Fair enough. However, sad for me. It is so great app! BUT timeboxing. So I still fight... with both Things and Google cal.... every app I tried is just not possible to compare with Things 3 in terms of minimal system, design etc. Cannot get rid of Things but still desiring timeboxing feature. aaaaaghhr!! 🤬
I get your frustration. But it doesn’t surprise me. The people at Cultured Code have a philosophy and you either adopt it or their app won’t work well for you. Happily, I agree with most if not all of their philosophy.
@@PeterAkkiesFrom your videos, I am not sure if you personally use a timeboxing app? I guess you don't, right? If not, is it also a todo app + calendar?
Todoist hasn't released any decent updates for a long time. Still having trouble getting notifications to work on both Android and iOS, sometimes they don't ring. And all these new features you showed aren't that great... the only thing Todoist would need is an integrated calendar, but it will still take another year or two I imagine... (something asked years ago). And when these updates come out we'll see how much they will increase the subscription... luckily there's more out there too.
The calendar will not take two years. I’ve seen it. It was in pretty good shape when I saw it. Have some faith.
Is Todoist developing? Are they listening to their users? Seems to me like all they do is rehash the UI and update colors and icons. Sure they've added a few small conveniences, but a real calendar view and start dates have been asked for for years. It doesn't happen, though. Just minor tweaks and bug fixes.
They are working on a calendar view and on start dates. They engage with their users all the time, for example on Reddit. And they have released several good new features recently, like start times, natural language for reminders, the new UI, which I like a lot.
@PeterAkkies Thank you for your reply. I've signed up for Reddit and will follow their progress there. I hope that they do implement a real calendar view and start dates. There was a time when I was excited about Todoist and ran my entire life through it. (pushing 14,000 tasks completed) After countless configurations and workarounds, it's been reduced to shared grocery lists and bills with my wife. While I would agree, it's probably the best cross-platform task manager. It's just not for me. My projects have deadlines and consequently start dates. The Today and Upcoming views are useless. Not everything has a due date. How nice would it be to open the Upcoming View in board view and see what is due this week and have some sort of mechanism to put unscheduled tasks around scheduled tasks to plan your week. While I like their open canvas approach to task management, a little more structure to streamline a workflow in order to cut down the need to be fiddling with filters and spreadsheets, could go a long way.
"I like the subscription model", yeah good for you, was this sponsored?
No, if it was sponsored I would have disclosed that. I actually like the subscription model, like I said.
Agenda anyone?
OmniFocus is DEAD.
Kinda seems that way. I love the review feature of Omnifocus. Other apps should copy that.
@@AndyMcCann I agree. I’d love to see the review functionality added to Things.