Things 3

In the sprawling, chaotic market of digital productivity, Things 3 by Cultured Code is a monument to restraint. For years, while competitors chased every conceivable feature—collaboration, cross-platform ubiquity, AI-powered scheduling—Things has remained defiantly, almost stubbornly, focused. It is a personal task manager, and it has no ambition to be anything more. This isn’t a weakness; it’s the ideological backbone of an application that feels less like a piece of software and more like a finely calibrated instrument. The developer, Cultured Code, operates with a discipline that mirrors the app’s own ethos. Updates are infrequent but substantial, and the business model is an artifact from a bygone era: a one-time purchase. No subscriptions, no cloud service rent, just a piece of software you own.

This positions Things 3 in a peculiar spot. It’s a premium product in a field crowded with free or subscription-based alternatives like Todoist, TickTick, or Microsoft To Do. It lacks the brute-force power of a database-driven “second brain” like Notion. Yet, it commands a fiercely loyal user base. Why? Because Things 3 isn’t selling features; it’s selling a philosophy. It bets that for most people, the enemy of productivity isn’t a lack of options, but an overabundance of them. It provides a structured, hierarchical system for capturing thoughts, organizing them into tangible projects, and, most critically, deciding what needs attention today. It’s a walled garden, existing only within the Apple ecosystem, but within those walls, every screen and interaction has been carefully shaped to foster focus and calm.

• The Workflow: The core structure is a simple but powerful hierarchy. Fleeting ideas land in the Inbox. Actionable items are moved to projects or areas. The magic happens in the Today and This Evening views, which automatically populate with scheduled and deadline-driven tasks, forcing a daily moment of intention.
• Project Organization: Beyond simple lists, Things 3 allows for structuring complex goals. Projects contain tasks, which can be organized under non-completable Headings. For granular detail, tasks themselves can contain Checklists, ensuring no step is missed.
• Deep System Integration: Things 3 works naturally with iOS. Tasks can be created from any app using the Share Sheet, Siri can capture to-dos via voice, and a rich set of home screen Widgets provides an at-a-glance view of the day without even opening the app.

The soul of Things 3 is its prescriptive nature. It is an opinionated piece of software, and its opinions on how to be productive are ruthlessly enforced through its design. The primary workflow is a gentle but firm push through the classic “Get Things Done” (GTD) methodology: capture, clarify, organize, reflect, and engage. Every task begins in the Inbox, a digital purgatory for thoughts, reminders, and links forwarded from other apps. The first act of the day is meant to be triaging this inbox, a process that forces a decision: is an item trash, a reference, or an action?

The Tyranny of ‘Today’

The app’s most powerful and defining feature is the Today list. This is a curated agenda built by hand, not an automatic dump of tasks due today. Things 3 will automatically add items with a deadline of today, but its real power lies in the manual selection of tasks one intends to work on. This simple act of planning creates a finite, achievable list, transforming an overwhelming “everything” list into a manageable daily docket. It’s a psychological masterstroke. The friction of adding yet another item to an already full Today list is often enough to force a realistic assessment of one’s time and energy. It’s a built-in defense against the over-ambitious planning that dooms so many productivity systems. The one area where this feels dated is the input itself. There is no smart parsing of dates or natural language input; the workflow means tapping through date pickers like a digital bureaucrat.

Form Follows Function

The organizational structure is clear and effective for its purpose. Areas serve as broad categories for life (e.g., “Work,” “Personal,” “Finances”), and within them, Projects represent goals with a defined end-state. The ability to add structure with non-actionable Headings inside a project is a surprisingly potent tool for breaking down a complex initiative into phases. This is where Things 3 shines: planning a vacation, outlining a report, or managing a multi-stage creative endeavor.

Where it falters is in the murkier, non-project work that defines modern life. It has no elegant solution for “areas of ongoing responsibility.” A tag-based system exists, but it feels secondary to the core hierarchical model. If work is less about discrete projects and more about continuous streams of tasks related to a role, the system can feel constricting. The workaround is either tags or “fake” projects that never truly end, cluttering the view.

To put it simply, Things 3 is gorgeous. It sets a high design bar for productivity apps. The interface is an exercise in minimalist discipline, utilizing generous white space, beautifully chosen typography, and a calming color palette. The magic, however, is in the motion design. Dragging a task to a new day, completing a to-do with a satisfying swoosh, or expanding a project is designed to feel fluid, responsive, and weighty. These micro-interactions provide clear, tactile feedback with every animation. As a native-first application of modest technical demands, it is built to stay out of the way.

On iOS, Things 3 is built to feel like a native extension of the operating system itself, with subtle haptic feedback and system-calibrated interactions. The ability to quickly capture a link or a thought from Safari into the Inbox via the Share Sheet is a cornerstone of the workflow. The widgets are genuinely useful, ranging from a simple task list to a circular progress indicator for the Today list, offering glanceable information that reduces the need to constantly open the app. The deep integration with system Calendars means the daily schedule and tasks live side-by-side in the Today view, giving a single source of truth for the day. This is an app that could only exist on this platform, made by developers who have mastered their craft.

Things 3 is not a to-do list. It is a system, a philosophy, and a statement. It makes a deliberate trade-off: it sacrifices the infinite flexibility and platform ubiquity of its rivals for a focused, serene, and highly effective user experience. The lack of a web or Android version is not an oversight; it’s a declaration of intent. That focus allows for a level of polish and system integration few rivals can match. But the rigid structure won’t suit everyone, the missing power-user features are real limitations, and the price of entry is steep. For the user it’s designed for—the individual seeking to bring order to personal chaos within the Apple ecosystem—it is an excellent tool that we recommend with confidence. It respects attention, delights the senses, and, most importantly, helps get the right things done.