Guide: The Best To-Do List Apps

Using the right app to manage your to-dos and projects can be life-changing. But what’s the best to-do list app?

Here’s my list, depending on your needs:

Best for managing personal and team tasks together: Todoist

The Today view in Todoist.

Pros:

Cons:

Great for: managing your personal and team tasks all in the same place. See also: my Todoist course.

Best design & UI: Things 3 (Apple only)

The Today view in Things 3.

Pros:

Cons:

Great for: people in the Apple ecosystem who care about excellent design. See also: my Things 3 course.

Best advanced app: OmniFocus 4 (Apple only)

The Forecast perspective in OmniFocus 4.

Pros:

Cons:

Great for: people in the Apple ecosystem who want to customize their to-do app exactly to their liking. Also great for people who want to closely follow the GTD methodology. See also: my OmniFocus 4 course.

Best minimalist app: Tweek

Tweek’s main, calendar view.

Pros:

Cons:

Great for: people who want a digital to-do app that feels like a paper planner.

Best first-party app: Apple Reminders (Apple only)

My custom “Today” view in Apple Reminders.

Pros:

Cons:

Great for: people in the Apple ecosystem who prefer to avoid third-party apps when possible. See also: my Apple Reminders course.

Best combination task manager & calendar (for time blocking): Akiflow

Akiflow’s Today view in my Akiflow review on YouTube.

Pros:

Cons:

Great for: people who like to time-block.

Best for integration with Microsoft tools: Microsoft To Do

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Cons:

Great for: people in the Microsoft ecosystem who get many of their to-dos from emails and from Microsoft Teams messages.

Best for lightweight task management with Google tools: Google Tasks

Pros:

Cons:

Great for: people in the Google ecosystem who get many of their to-dos from emails and need nothing more than a couple of very simple to-do lists.

Best all-in-one solution: Notion

A project table, displayed as a timeline, in Notion.

Pros:

Cons:

Great for: people and especially teams who want to use one app to manage all of their information. See also: my Notion task management tutorial.

Best detailed collaborative to-do app: ClickUp

A list view in ClickUp.

Pros:

Cons:

Great for: teams who want to manage their projects and to-dos in detail.

A note about pricing

You’ll notice I haven’t commented on prices. You should decide for yourself what a to-do app is worth. I’ll just say that better productivity and organization can be worth a lot.

And whichever app you use, I recommend that you learn how to set it up correctly.

Have a productive day!

P.S. Some links on this page are affiliate links, which means that if you sign up for an app, I may be compensated. I only recommend apps that I love, though.