Things 3

Things 3 is a paid task manager for Mac, iPhone, and iPad made by Cultured Code that blends structured GTD-style organisation with some of the most considered visual design in any productivity app on the platform.

What is Things 3?

Things 3 is a native Apple task manager built around the idea that getting organised should feel good, not clinical. It stores your work in Projects and Areas, surfaces what matters today in a dedicated Today view, and gets out of your way the rest of the time. Unlike most productivity apps that feel like stripped-down spreadsheets, Things 3 reads like something designed alongside the Mac itself — because, in many ways, it was.

What does Things 3 do best?

The daily planning ritual is where Things 3 genuinely shines. Every morning I drag tasks into Today, set a rough order, and work down the list with zero friction. The Today and This Evening split is a small touch that quietly changes how you end a workday — you stop pretending the evening doesn't exist as productive time.

Checklists inside tasks (not nested sub-tasks — a deliberate choice) keep individual to-dos from ballooning into sprawling outlines. Deadline tracking with a separate When date means you can schedule a task to appear on Thursday without committing to Thursday as the hard deadline. That two-date system sounds minor; in daily use it eliminates a whole category of "overdue" anxiety.

Quick Entry with autofill, URL scheme support, and a surprisingly powerful natural-language date parser round out the power-user layer. Type "call dentist next tuesday morning" and the date and time are set. No clicking.

How much does Things 3 cost?

Things 3 is a one-time purchase — there is no subscription. You pay once for the Mac app, once for iPhone, and once for iPad, each sold separately on their respective App Stores. Cultured Code has held this pricing model through multiple major updates, which is increasingly rare. Things Cloud, the sync service, is included at no extra charge for as long as you own the app.

Compared to subscription-based competitors like Todoist or the omnipresent OmniFocus subscription tier, the lifetime cost of Things 3 is notably lower if you use it for more than a year or two. There is no free tier — no trial exists on the Mac App Store — though iOS offers a free look via TestFlight occasionally.

Who should use Things 3?

Things 3 is the right tool for individuals, freelancers, and creative professionals who want a personal task system that respects their attention. If you manage team projects, assign tasks to colleagues, or need Gantt charts and comment threads, stop here — Things 3 has no collaboration features and no web app. It is defiantly personal software.

Power users who live in the keyboard will appreciate the full shortcut coverage and the Quick Find bar (⌘F). Writers, designers, and developers who work across multiple ongoing projects will find the Areas + Projects hierarchy maps naturally to how real work is actually structured — one Area per client or discipline, Projects inside for the active work.

• Best for: solo professionals, students, writers, developers
• Not for: teams needing shared task assignment or commenting
• Sweet spot: 50–500 active tasks across 3–15 projects

What are the best Things 3 alternatives?

The most direct competitors are OmniFocus 4, Todoist, and Fantastical (with task support). OmniFocus is considerably more powerful — custom perspectives, forecast tags, a full review workflow — but its complexity is a legitimate barrier if you just want to get things done. Todoist is cross-platform and collaboration-ready but feels generic next to Things 3's Mac-native craft. For simpler needs, Apple's own Reminders has closed the gap more than most people acknowledge, though it still lacks the planning depth of a dedicated GTD tool.

Notion and Linear often come up in comparisons, but they solve different problems — databases and engineering sprints, respectively — rather than personal daily task management.

How does Things 3 compare to OmniFocus?

OmniFocus gives you more control over nearly everything: custom perspectives filtered by tag, project, flagged status, or defer date let you build a system tailored to any workflow. Things 3 gives you sensible defaults and gets you productive in an afternoon. I have used both for extended periods. OmniFocus rewards the time you invest in configuring it; Things 3 rewards you for showing up. If the phrase "review your system" energises you, get OmniFocus. If it exhausts you, Things 3 is the better answer.