A new icon

The first thing you’ll spot is Things’ iconic blue box, refined and realigned to sit beautifully within OS 26. It’s familiar at a glance and unmistakably Things.

This new icon is available in four variants – Default, Dark, Tinted, and Clear – to match whatever appearance style you choose for your device.

New Icon

Old Icon

Fresh look & feel on OS 26

We’ve tastefully refreshed Things’ interface. You’ll notice adjustments everywhere: in the curvature of windows, to-dos, dialogs, and controls; wider spacing that feels a bit more relaxed; and a touch of glass in the sidebar that lets a hint of color shine through. We think it’s the most beautiful version of Things yet!

But it’s more than looks – it also feels new. Throughout the interface, you’ll interact with new glassy buttons that respond to your touch with a subtle glow and scale. A great example is the blue Magic Plus button. As you drag it around, notice its new liquid nature – it ever so slightly deforms its shape in response to your movements.

iPhone

iPad

Mac

iPad windows and menus

On iPad, OS 26 brings some welcome Mac-like improvements. To try them out, you’ll need to switch to the new Windowed Apps mode in your device’s Settings.

Things smartly adapts its layout for the new mode. Your windows get traffic light controls, and you can arrange them freely on your screen. To open a new window in Things, right-click a list and choose Open in New Window, or go to File → New Window.

If you swipe down from the top edge of the screen, you’ll see that there’s also a new menu bar. We’ve updated Things’ menus to expose many powerful controls and keyboard shortcuts.

Taken together, these improvements do a lot to make Things on the iPad feel more powerful and natural to use. We’re enjoying it a lot!

New widget styles

Last year, we updated Things’ widgets to support styles on iPhone and iPad. These styles are now available on the Mac as well. In addition to the Dark and Tinted styles, OS 26 introduces Clear – a glass-like style that lets your wallpaper shine through.

Quick controls on Mac and Watch

Things’ handy Control Center controls are now available on Mac and Apple Watch.

• On Mac, Things offers Controls for New To-Do and List (you choose which list). You can place them in Control Center, or pin them to your menu bar for one-click access.
• On Apple Watch, Things’ New To-Do Control lets you capture a thought on the go, via swipe, type, or talk.

And more

• Widgets on Vision Pro. We’ve brought Things’ widgets to Vision Pro. You can place as many as you like in your space and choose which list to show, such as Today, Deadlines, a project, or a tag.
• Writing Tools on Vision Pro. We’ve added support for Apple’s Writing Tools on Vision Pro. You can use it to quickly proofread, rewrite, summarize, or reformat the text in your notes.
• Spotlight on Mac can now create to-dos. Type “Create To-Do”, press Return, then enter your title. Your new to-do is created in your Inbox, even if Things isn’t running.
• Apple Shortcuts has a new Use Model action that lets you bring AI into your workflows with Things. Use on-device or cloud models to create new to-dos with AI-assisted writing, or pull data from Things via its Find Items action and pass it to the AI model as context. Learn more about Things’ actions for Apple Shortcuts.

Get it now

Things 3.22 is available today as a free update on the App Store for Mac, iPad, iPhone, Watch, and Vision Pro. Note that you’ll also need to install OS 26 for the new design and features to show up!

We hope you enjoy the new look and other great refinements. ✨

For over a decade, Things Cloud has kept your to-dos in sync across devices. Many of you have told us how much you appreciate its reliability – it just works. But behind the scenes, a major transformation has quietly taken place: we’ve rebuilt the entire service from the ground up.

The new cloud is already up and running – and you didn’t notice a thing. That was by design. From the outside, everything appears the same. But under the hood, everything changed: the infrastructure, the architecture, and the language it’s written in.

This post takes you behind the scenes: why we rebuilt Things Cloud, why we chose to write it in Swift, and how we transitioned without skipping a beat.

This will be a bit more technical than usual. If that’s not your thing, the summary above is already the key takeaway: Things Cloud is now faster, more modern, and ready for the future.

Why we rebuilt Things Cloud

Fourteen years ago, we designed Things Cloud on a solid mathematical foundation. The core algorithms were crafted with care – capable of handling offline edits and resolving sync conflicts across multiple devices. Over time, we refined them and added features like Fractus, our granular text-sync engine.

That theoretical foundation has proven itself throughout the years, and we’ll continue to rely on it. However, the technology we used for its implementation began to show its age. Technology had evolved, as did our needs, and the system we built over a decade ago became increasingly difficult to maintain and extend.

To address this, we carefully reviewed every layer of Things Cloud – its code, architecture, and infrastructure – and explored how modern technologies could help us move forward. It became clear to us that we needed more than gradual improvements – a full rebuild was necessary. Our goal wasn’t just to keep Things Cloud running, but to lay the groundwork for future improvements and unlock new possibilities in the years ahead.

Why Swift?

Swift has become Apple’s flagship programming language for building modern apps, and over the years we’ve adopted it for much of the code in Things itself. It’s fast, safe, and expressive. So four years ago, when we set out to rebuild Things Cloud, we saw a promising opportunity: to use Swift on the server, too.

At the time, Swift was an unconventional choice. Unlike more mature server languages, it had a smaller ecosystem and fewer production-tested tools. That said, Apple had shown a strong commitment to server-side Swift, and there was a growing open-source community. The upsides were also very compelling: great performance, modern language features, and the ability to use the same language across both app and server code.

To see how things would go, we started small, building out a few components in Swift. As the system grew, so did our confidence. There were no real hurdles – just steady progress. In the end, it’s clear that this was a great choice. The new codebase is clean and robust, development moves faster, and the system runs with rock-solid stability – all while delivering a fourfold speed boost when processing sync requests.

For a deep dive into the technical details, check out our post on Apple’s Swift.org blog. We also gave a talk at last year’s Server-Side Swift Conference.

A seamless transition

Rewriting a cloud service is one thing – switching it on without disrupting its users is another.

To ensure a smooth transition, we ran the new cloud in parallel with the old one. While the old Things Cloud continued syncing everyone’s to-dos, the new cloud quietly processed the same data using its own logic and infrastructure. Every edge case and every corner of the sync model was tested under real-world conditions – without anyone ever noticing.

Once we were confident in the new cloud, we flipped the switch and moved everyone over. That transition happened early last year – and the new Things Cloud has been running reliably ever since.

With the migration done, we began taking advantage of the new architecture: refining our sync model, optimizing performance, and improving internal tooling and monitoring. That work wrapped up last month, marking the final step in this multi-year effort.

Ready for the future

The rewrite of Things Cloud didn’t change a thing on the surface – but it transformed everything beneath. The new cloud is faster, and easier to develop and maintain. Most importantly, it gives us a solid foundation to build on for the next decade and beyond.

At Cultured Code, we strive to build software with craftsmanship and care. Whether it’s a new app feature or a cloud overhaul, our goal remains the same: to build software you can rely on every day, for years to come.

Things has become a great place to write longer-form notes, offering options to format text with Markdown and adjust its size. Apple’s new Writing Tools take it a step further, providing a quick way to edit your writing. Using AI, it can proofread, rewrite, summarize, or reformat your text. You can invoke this feature right inside of Things.

Mac

iPhone

To access Writing Tools in Things on your Mac, simply select text and click the blue button that appears to the side. On iPhone or iPad, select the text and choose Writing Tools from the edit bar. The text you selected is then sent to Writing Tools for processing.

We’ve already updated Things for smooth integration with Writing Tools, but you’ll need to enable Apple Intelligence in the Settings app and restart Things (requires macOS 15.1, iOS 18.1, or iPadOS 18.1).

Have fun writing! ✨️

Writing Tools is part of Apple Intelligence, which is only available in some regions and requires modern hardware. Check Apple’s website for more information. No data from Things is shared with Apple Intelligence unless you choose to invoke Writing Tools.

Dark & Tinted Home Screens

Your entire Home Screen can go dark on iOS 18 and Things has a beautiful new app icon to match the aesthetic. To see how it looks on your device, simply switch to Dark Mode.

Things’ app icon and widgets can also adapt to your color of choice in the new Tinted Mode. If you’d like to try it, just tap & hold on your Home Screen, then tap Edit → Customize → Tinted and pick a color.

Control Center Buttons

You can now add Things to your Control Center for quick access while using other apps. Simply swipe down from the top right corner of your screen, then press & hold to edit the view. You can rearrange the existing controls, or add new ones from the gallery.

Things provides two types of controls: one to quickly create a new to-do, and another to jump into any list—Today, a project, an area, or even a tag. You can add as many of your Things lists as you like. To choose a list, flip the control over, just like you would when configuring a widget.

Larger Widgets

While customizing your Home Screen, consider trying the new Large setting. This hides the labels under widgets and app icons, providing a bit more room. The layout of Things’ widgets smartly adapts to the new size and shows more of your list in some configurations.

Window Tiling

A great new feature on macOS Sequoia is Window Tiling, which neatly sizes and arranges your windows for you. We’ve adjusted Things’ layout and behavior to work smoothly with this feature. Things’ windows will stay constrained to your chosen tile size, even if you’ve disabled “Preserve window width when resizing sidebar” in Things’ settings.

Keyboard Language Recall

We’ve got a neat little improvement for our multilingual users on iPhone and iPad: If you write one of your to-dos in a different language, Things will now remember and switch the keyboard back to that language when you next edit the to-do.

Ready for Apple Intelligence

We’re very excited for Apple Intelligence, which is expected to roll out gradually over the coming months. Today’s update for Things already lays the groundwork, with support for Writing Tools and better conversations with Siri. We’ll tell you more about these features once Apple Intelligence enables support for them.

Things 3.21 is out now and available as a free update on the App Store for Mac, iPad, iPhone, Apple Watch, and Apple Vision Pro. Remember to update your OS to take advantage of all the new features!

With Vision Pro, Apple has introduced an entirely new computing platform. Your apps inhabit the space around you and offer entirely new ways to interact. This opens up exciting new possibilities. Apple sees productivity apps playing a central role on Vision Pro, and we’re excited to have Things there on day one.

We recommend watching Apple’s Guided Tour of the device first. Then come back to let us walk you through 8 great things about Things on Apple Vision Pro.

1 Made for Vision Pro ✨

We’ve adapted and refined every corner of Things to make full use of Vision Pro and to fit in beautifully with your environment. A sidebar made of glass, menus and popovers that float above your lists, resizable windows, controls that light up to acknowledge your gaze, refined interactions, and more. A native app for the new platform, through and through.

2 A canvas for your thoughts

Things lets you open many windows so you can spread yourself out. Arrange them around you however you like as you create a space for your thoughts to roam. Your Today list in the center, scheduled to-dos to the left, and a few projects to the right – it’s great for getting a bird’s eye view.

3 A slim companion

You can neatly hide Things’ sidebar to focus on a single list. Place it next to your other apps and get things done. Another great setup: bring your Mac wirelessly into Vision Pro as a virtual display, then float Things in slim mode next to it as you work through your list.

4 Navigate with your eyes, hands, and voice

Things’ new interface is made for your eyes, hands, and voice. Pick up to-dos and drop them where they need to go. Glance at the search field and start speaking what you want to find. Swipe your to-dos for quick actions. Dictate your notes. All interactions are smooth and effortless.

1

2

3

4

5 The Magic Plus

This one is pure fun – and great functionality! Grab the + button with a pinch, make it float across the list with the wave of a hand, then release to create a new to-do on the spot. It feels like magic. 🪄

6 Keyboard maestro

Connect a wireless keyboard and unleash the power of Things’ outstanding keyboard support. Navigate the app like a breeze, create to-dos, rearrange lists, and so much more – all at the stroke of a key. And of course, Things also provides excellent trackpad support.

7 Feature rich

All the features you enjoy in Things on iPhone and iPad are here: projects, areas, tags, alerts, repeating to-dos, Siri integration, sharing from other apps, importing reminders, Shortcuts support – you name it!

8 Things Cloud

Of course, Things on Vision Pro is fully integrated with Things Cloud. Everything you do is instantly synced across your Mac, iPad, iPhone, and Watch. Reliable as ever – a system you can trust.

That concludes our quick tour of what makes Things great on Apple Vision Pro — a native app, fully integrated with visionOS, and designed to look stunning in every environment. We’re very excited for you to try it out!

Things 3 for Vision is available now for $29.99 USD.

The interactive widgets that recently came to iPhone and iPad are now available on your Mac. This means you can complete to-dos directly in your widgets without having to open Things.

In the past, widgets were confined to your Notification Center. Now you can place them right on your desktop. Extra Large widgets are now also supported and Things provides two: one that can show any list you like, and another that shows your schedule for the coming days.

To add a widget, simply right-click on your desktop, choose Edit Widgets, and search for Things in the gallery. Also note that you can change how the widgets look by going to System Settings → Desktop & Dock → Widgets → Widget Style.

Don’t forget that you need to update to macOS 14 Sonoma before you can try the new widgets. We hope you enjoy them!

The first improvement for your widgets is that they’re now interactive. This means you no longer have to open Things to complete a to-do – simply tap its checkbox on your Home Screen and it’s done. ✨

There’s also a new feature called StandBy, which shows Things’ widgets while your iPhone is on its side and connected to power. Your widgets are significantly larger here since they’re intended to be viewed from a distance, such as on a kitchen counter or while lying in bed.

StandBy

Night Mode

Widgets have also come to your iPad’s Lock Screen. You can add them to a strip down the left side, or above the clock.

We've also added a widget for the new Smart Stack on watchOS 10. It appears when you swipe up on the watch face, showing your next three to-dos.

Finally, Things has been adjusted to complement the new design of watchOS 10, and is now built entirely with Apple’s latest technologies (SwiftUI) – a great foundation for future improvements.

Things 3.19 is available now for iPad, iPhone, and Apple Watch. Remember to update your OS before you try the new features.

Whether you want to shrink your text to fit a small iPhone, or jack up the size on a thirty-inch display – Things 3.18 gives you the control. Of course, it’s not only the text that changes size. The app now uses vector graphics for all icons, and we’ve fine-tuned the layout so that everything scales together beautifully.

Change the size on iPhone & iPad

Things now automatically follows your system-wide Dynamic Type setting. This is managed in System Settings → Display & Brightness → Text Size.

We’ve also added an option to override the system setting. To choose a custom size, simply go to Things Settings → Appearance.

Change the size on Mac

The Mac doesn’t have a system-wide Dynamic Type setting, so you’ll need to set a size just for Things. In the menu bar at the top of your screen, go to Things → Settings → General, and drag the slider to find a size that’s right for you.

Smaller

Default

Larger

Things 3.18 is available now for Mac, iPad, and iPhone. We’ve made adjustments to every corner of the interface for this update, so do let us know if you spot anything out of place!

Enjoy. 🙂

We’re looking for a Cloud Platform Engineer to join our team. You’ll be responsible for Things Cloud’s availability, scalability, and data security, and you’ll play a key role in the development of some exciting and challenging new features.

If this sounds like you, or someone you know, head on over to our jobs page to learn more. We hope to hear from you!

View This Job

Try a shortcut from our gallery

A “shortcut” is a quick way to perform a sequence of actions in your apps with just a tap. You can create and manage shortcuts in the Shortcuts app on your Mac, iPad, and iPhone.

Today’s update greatly increases the number of actions that Things can perform, and we’ve prepared some ready-made shortcuts to show you what’s possible. Simply visit our gallery, add one to your own device, then run it to see what it does.

Open Shortcuts Gallery

This feature requires Things 3.17 and macOS 13 Ventura, iPadOS 16, or iOS 16.

Build your own

If you’re technically inclined, you can also build your own shortcuts. There are nine entirely new actions for you to explore. They let you create full-blown projects with headings and to-dos, query your database, edit items, duplicate them, and much more. It’s a massive upgrade if you love automation.

The best way to get started is to download a few shortcuts from our gallery and modify them to suit your own needs. Also, be sure to check out our technical documentation for a deep dive on how it all works.

Have fun! 🤖

Stage Manager

This year, iPadOS 16 introduces Stage Manager – an entirely new way to work with multiple windows. After turning it on, you’ll be able to open up to four windows at the same time, resize them, and even drag them around.

We’ve fine-tuned Things’ window layout, animations, and performance to make sure everything works great on our end. If you have a keyboard attached, these shortcuts will come in handy:

• Open a new Things window: ^ Ctrl ⌘ Cmd N
• Add another app’s window to the current set: ^ Ctrl 🌐︎ Globe ↑
• Remove a window from the current set: ⌘ Cmd M
• Close a window: ⌘ Cmd W
• Toggle full screen: 🌐︎ Globe F
• Cycle between all windows in the current set: 🌐︎ Globe `

Stage Manager is also available on macOS 13 Ventura. For more information, be sure to check out Apple’s documentation.

Other Improvements

Of course, today’s update includes a long list of OS-compatibility fixes under the hood, but there are several noteworthy enhancements as well:

• As many of you requested, you can now tap calendar events on iPhone or iPad to jump to their relevant date in the Calendar app. This works in the Today, Tomorrow, and Upcoming lists.
• We’ve added support for iPadOS 16’s new pop-up menu style, which makes it far easier to get at Things’ Markdown formatting when you right-click on your trackpad.
• In projects on the Mac, you can now select both headings and to-dos at the same time; this makes it easier to grab exactly what you want.
• We’ve added support for macOS Ventura’s new Share menu. Also, when you filter a project or area by tag, and then select ••• → Share → Copy Link, your link now includes the tag filter parameter. ✨

These updates are available now for download on the App Store. Remember to update your OS before you try the new features.

Enjoy!

Once you’ve updated to iOS 16, tap and hold your Lock Screen until you’re in edit mode. Now you can add widgets above and below the clock; we’ve made three for you to enjoy.

Quickly glance at your lists

With the List widget, you can put your to-dos directly on your Lock Screen. By default, it shows your Today list, but you can customize it to show any list you like – your Inbox, your Deadlines, or perhaps a shopping list. It’s totally up to you! You can even use tags to filter the list to focus on something specific.

iOS 16 also makes it possible to create multiple Lock Screens, so you can put different widgets on each one and switch between them throughout the day.

Instantly add new to-dos

The New To-Do widget puts Things’ familiar ⊕ button right on your Lock Screen. With just a tap, the app will launch with an empty to-do, ready for you to type.

Track your progress throughout the day

Like your Fitness rings, Things’ new Progress ring inches forward as you advance toward your goal: completing all the to-dos on your Today list. You can also tap the widget to jump straight into the list.

Apple Watch Ultra

Things is ready for watchOS 9 and Apple Watch Ultra. We’ve updated Things’ layout to make sure it looks great on the gorgeous new display. And since the app syncs over LTE, you’re always up to date – even if you don’t have your iPhone with you.

Things 3.16 is available now for iPhone and Apple Watch. We hope you enjoy the new widgets. Have fun!

Apple Shortcuts for Mac

Life-hacking corner-cutting super-nerds rejoice! Apple has brought the Shortcuts app to Mac and we’ve built integration with Things. This means you can run shortcuts seamlessly across all your devices. 🎉

For those who haven’t tried the Shortcuts app yet, here’s a simple example. Say you want to do something over and over, such as create a to-do in your “Personal” list and apply the tag “Errand”. Instead of filling out the details every time, you can create a shortcut that fills it out for you. Use Things’ Add To-Do action in the Shortcuts app to set this up:

Give your shortcut a name, like “Add an Errand”, and then try running it:

• On iPhone, you can say “Hey Siri, add an errand.”
• On iPad, you can hit Cmd Space and type “add an errand”.
• On Mac, you can assign a keyboard shortcut, or use the new Shortcuts menu at the top of your screen to quickly get at your favorites.

Try it yourself

We’ve created a few example shortcuts for you to download and try out. Click one to add it to your Shortcuts library. Once you’ve added a shortcut, you’ll be able to customize it to suit your own needs.

Of course, you can also create your own from scratch in the Shortcuts app. Have fun experimenting and looking for ways to speed up your workflows – but beware! 🤓

For more information about the Shortcuts app, see Apple’s documentation.

Major Performance Gains

Over the past months we’ve put a ton of work into improving performance. We’ve changed how lists operate under the hood and unified large portions of our Mac & iOS code. The resulting speed boost will be most noticeable for those with very large databases and many projects, but the app will generally be snappier for everyone.

There were also a few situations where Things would behave differently on Mac & iOS. As an added benefit, our work on code unification has eliminated such quirks, providing a more consistent experience across devices.

International Keyboard Support

Another improvement in this release is for shortcuts of a different kind: keyboard shortcuts.

With the release of macOS 12 Monterey and iPadOS 15, keyboard shortcuts can adapt to your specific keyboard layout. Apple’s own apps have adopted this behavior on Mac and iPad, and we’ve now built it into Things.

If you have a US keyboard, your shortcuts won’t change. On non-US layouts, shortcuts involving letters will mostly stay the same, but shortcuts with special characters will now be easier to type – and some that were previously impossible to use can now be typed for the first time!

Check out our updated keyboard page for your layout. You can also look in the menus on Mac, or hold down Cmd on iPad.

Further Improvements

We’ve also brought many of the great new improvements from our recent iOS release to the Mac:

• Widgets let you choose which list the “+” button saves to.
• Things uses time-sensitive notifications so your reminders get through even when you’re in Focus mode.
• When importing from Reminders, Things also imports your tags.
• Things integrates with Quick Note: View a list in Things, then switch to Apple Notes and click the “Add Link” button.

All these improvements are available now in Things 3.15 for Mac and Things 3.15.5 for iPhone & iPad.

Don’t forget that if you want to use Apple Shortcuts on your Mac you’ll need to upgrade to macOS 12 Monterey first. We hope you enjoy using Shortcuts across your devices and look forward to seeing what you build with it!

Two New XL Widgets for iPad

We’ve added two new extra-large widgets for the iPad’s big screen, and they’re delightful:

1. The first, called “Up Next”, helps you stay on top of your schedule. It shows your to-dos for Today, Tomorrow, and the two days after that.
2. The second is the extra-large “List” widget. It shows a single list, but in two columns so you can see more to-dos at a glance.

Widget Customization

Things’ widgets have proven super popular. Many of you have written in to say you’d like more customization options, so we’ve added two improvements that we think you’ll enjoy:

1. Plus Button Behavior. By default, the + button saves a new to-do to your Inbox. You can now change this to the currently-displayed list. Simply tap and hold the widget, choose Edit, and change the “Plus Button” setting. You can also hide the button entirely.
2. Custom Themes. By default, Things’ widgets follow the system’s light/dark setting, but many of you told us that you prefer your widgets to be always dark or always light. You can now control this behavior in Things → Settings → Appearance. We’ve also added a beautiful Black theme.

Live Text

There are many ways to quickly get content into Things – via the Share extension, Quick Entry, Siri, Mail to Things, and more. Today a new option called Live Text is added to the list, and it’s awesome! It lets you capture text simply by pointing your iPhone’s camera at it.

Try it out: Open a to-do, tap in the notes field, tap again to bring up the menu, and activate Live Text. Now point your camera at some text and voila! It automagically appears in your to-do. ✨

Improved Notifications

iOS 15 provides more ways to control your notifications and there are two improvements for Things:

• Announce Notifications. If you receive a text message while wearing headphones or driving in your car, Siri will read it to you. This now also works for reminders you’ve set in Things. You can enable this feature in iOS Settings → Things → Notifications.
• Time-Sensitive Notifications. iOS 15 introduces a new feature called Focus that cuts out distracting notifications. Since notifications from Things are time-sensitive, we’ve made sure they can still get through. You’ll be prompted to allow this when your first notification is delivered.

Shortcuts Work Across iPhone and iPad

If you’ve been using Things with Apple’s Shortcuts you’ll know that actions created on the iPhone don’t work on the iPad (and vice versa) without a complicated workaround. We’re happy to report that once you upgrade to iOS 15, this limitation is gone. 🎉 Simply add a Things action to a shortcut from either device and it will work everywhere.

Great External Keyboard Support for iPad

Things has had outstanding support for external keyboards for a while. The app is fully navigable from your keyboard, and there are many powerful shortcuts. With iPadOS 15, it gets even better:

• Keyboard shortcuts are now neatly structured into menus. Simply hold down the ⌘ Cmd key to see what’s possible.
• While in Split View, Things can now show if it has keyboard focus. Certain elements in Things will dim when it doesn’t have focus, and brighten when it does.
• There’s a handy new shortcut: with a to-do selected, hit ^ Ctrl Return to bring up the context menu. You can then navigate the options with your arrow keys.

And More

• Support for the new Apple Watch Series 7.
• If you have an Apple Watch with an always-on display, Things will now stay visible when you lower your wrist and nicely dim the screen’s contents.
• We’ve added support for the iPad’s new Quick Note feature. Invoke Quick Note while viewing a list in Things and you’ll see an option to link to that list.
• If your iPhone or iPad is locked and you swipe right to reveal your widgets, your to-dos are now redacted for privacy.

Things 3.15 is available now for iPad, iPhone, and Apple Watch. We hope you enjoy these great new features!

1. Bullet Lists
2. Markdown
3. Find in Text
4. Things Cloud “Fractus”

When you open a to-do, your notes take center stage. It’s where you capture any extra info you need to get the task done. While many of your notes will only be a line or two, some can grow quite long – with detailed plans, reference material, brainstorms, and so on.

The longer a note gets, the more important it becomes to have a way to structure it. That’s what today’s update is all about. It’s the biggest change we’ve made to notes since Things was first released, and we think you’re going to love it.

Let’s take a look at what’s new.

Bullet Lists

Things now supports bullet lists and they couldn’t be easier to use. Simply type - followed by a space. But wait, couldn’t you already type bullets in your notes? Indeed, but now they get the treatment they deserve:

• Text that wraps to a new line is neatly indented.
• When you hit Return a new bullet is inserted; return again escapes the list.
• And you can now create nested lists!

To nest a list, simply insert spaces in front of a bullet. You’ll notice that the bullet lines up perfectly with the text on the previous line, as if by magic! Try it, it’s cool 🤓

In addition to using - for bullets, you can also type *, +, • or 1.. If you’ve already written lists with any of these characters, there’s nothing you need to do – they’ll automatically look great when you update to 3.14.

Together, all of these little touches make working with bullets a pleasure, and they’re so much easier to read.

Markdown

As many of you requested, you can now use Markdown to structure and style your notes. 🎉

If you already know Markdown, go ahead and try it out. Things detects a wide range of commonly-used syntax and renders it in a unique blend of proportional and fixed-width fonts. It looks and feels great!

If you don’t know Markdown, here’s how it works. To emphasize a word, simply surround it with asterisks, like so: *emphasized*. Things will detect this and render the word in italics. If you remove the asterisks, it goes back to normal again. Here are a few more examples:

• Use two asterisks to make text **bold**.
• Use colons to ::highlight:: text.
• Insert a hash at the beginning of a line to make a # Heading.

Here’s how it looks in Things:

If you’re new to Markdown, this will all seem a bit quirky at first – but we encourage you to try it out! Many people love Markdown, and you might end up liking it, too.

To learn more, be sure to check out our Markdown Guide. We’ve also added many great keyboard shortcuts for Mac and iPad. On iOS, you can double-tap a word, then tap Aa and choose a style from the popover.

Light

Dark

Find in Text

Things’ Quick Find feature does a great job of searching across all your lists. But sometimes you want to narrow the search to the note you’re writing, especially if it’s a long one. For this, we’ve added a new option called Find in Text.

Simply open a to-do and hit ⇧ Shift ⌘ Cmd F. On iOS, open the to-do and tap ••• → Find in Text.

Things Cloud “Fractus”

Last but not least, we’re happy to announce Things Cloud “Fractus” – a smart new method for syncing text.

Until now, each time you modified a note – say to insert or remove a few words – the entire note would be synced again across all your devices. With our new method, only the fragments of text you modify are synced. This drastically improves the speed and efficiency of the sync, and allows for smarter resolution of conflicts.

There’s nothing you need to do to enable this – we’ve already rolled it out.

We’ve been testing these features internally for a while now, and it’s hard to imagine writing our notes without them. We hope you enjoy this update, and look forward to hearing what you think!

Things 3.14 is available now as a free update for all our customers. Get it now for Mac, iPad, and iPhone.

The New Widgets

The powerful new widgets that recently came to iOS are now available on your Mac, giving instant access to your most important lists. You can add as many as you want.

To set them up, swipe the Notification Center in from the right side of your screen. The default widget will show your Today list, but you can configure it to show any list you like: right-click the widget and choose Edit Things to flip it over.

You’ll notice that you can also use tags to filter the list you’ve chosen. This is useful if you want to focus on particular types of to-dos, such as Errands you need to run, Work items, and so on.

Rich Notifications

Notifications are so much better now.

Before, you could only snooze an alert for 10 minutes, but now you can choose how long: 10 minutes, 30 minutes, or 1 hour. There’s also an option to complete your to-do directly from the alert. Perhaps best of all, the app no longer jumps to the foreground when you hit snooze! 🙃

Apple Silicon

Apple has announced three brand new Macs running on their very own Apple M1 chips – a MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, and Mac mini. As of today’s release – 3.13.2 – Things fully supports the new architecture in these machines.

This update is available now for download on the App Store. We hope you enjoy it!

Widgets on your Home Screen

For Things, the greatest new feature in iOS 14 is Home Screen Widgets: customizable tiles that show you pertinent information at a glance.

Small

Medium

Large

Available in three different sizes, Things’ widgets can be dropped directly onto your Home Screen where you can configure them to show any to-do list you want. Quickly see what you’re doing Today, glance at what’s due Tomorrow, stay on top of your most urgent project, view tag-filtered lists – it’s amazing how flexible they are. And aren’t they cute? 😊

You can add as many Things widgets as you want, intermingle them with widgets from other apps, stack them on top of each other and flick through them with your thumb. We’ve fallen in love with these things. We hope you like them too!

For information on how to set up Widgets, see Apple’s guides for iPhone and iPad.

Scribble on your iPad

For iPad users we’ve also added support for the Apple Pencil’s new Scribble feature. (iPadOS 14 currently supports scribbling in English and Chinese.) This means you can write inside of Things, as you would on paper, and it’ll convert your handwriting into typed text ✨ Just open Things and start scribbling!

Scribble in any open space to insert a to-do, or scribble into a field where you would normally type, like a project’s notes or a to-do’s checklist.

New Complications for Apple Watch

We've got some nice improvements for the Apple Watch today.

There’s a new + complication that lets you add new to-dos directly from your watch face. The Modular watch faces can now show the top 3 items from your Today list. And the Siri watch face now shows your upcoming reminders.

And more...

• Wind Down As bedtime draws near, your iPhone can suggest some things to do before you sleep. Apple calls this process “Wind Down”. For example, you might have shortcuts to put on some relaxing music, jot down your thoughts in a journaling app, and then hop into Things to review tomorrow’s to-dos. Head over to your Health app to set this up.
• Shortcuts In the Shortcuts app on iPhone & iPad, you can now select one of your tags in the Show List action.
• Notes We’ve improved the way notes in your projects and to-dos are synced. As a result, you can also write longer notes.

Things 3.13 is available for download now on iPhone, Apple Watch, and iPad. We hope you enjoy it!

Apple surprised us all last month when they added cursor support to iPadOS. Even though apps get basic cursor support “out of the box”, there’s a lot developers can do to make the experience great. That’s what we’ve done for today’s release.

The good news is, this feature works with any Bluetooth trackpad or mouse, so if you’ve got one lying around you can play with it right now 🎉

The first thing you’ll notice when you connect your trackpad is that Things’ entire interface responds to the cursor. As you move it near a button, for example, or a to-do’s checkbox, it now magnetically “hops” into place and takes on the shape of whatever you’re clicking. It’s quite playful!

Of course, there are all the normal benefits you would expect from using a “mouse” – you can click, select, drag & drop, just like you would on a Mac – but it has also made a few other great features possible.

New features

Context menus everywhere. You can now right-click stuff! This will reveal context menus with powerful actions. To see what’s possible, right-click a to-do, project, or area. It also works for lists in the sidebar like Today or Upcoming.

Open a new window. New windows are now just a click away: right-click a list in your sidebar and you’ll find the option to Open in New Window. This puts Things into Split View so you can see your two lists side by side. To close one of the windows again, just hit Cmd W.

Swipe gestures. As a touch-based app, Things for iPad has many great gestures available. We’ve now made these work for the trackpad as well; just swipe with two fingers. For example, swipe right on a to-do or project to schedule it, swipe left to enter selection mode, or swipe left within a to-do’s checklist to delete rows.

Selection tips

When it comes to selecting things, it’s worth mentioning a few tips:

• Clicking on a to-do will open it, just like when you tap with your finger. If instead you want to select the to-do, hold down Option when you click it.
• To select multiple items, hold down Cmd or Shift when you click. Or, while in multi-select mode, click and drag downward on the dots to the right.
• To deselect something, just click in an open space.

Today’s update is all about the trackpad, but we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention that Things also has excellent keyboard support. The app’s entire interface is navigable at the touch of a key, and there are powerful shortcuts, too.

Together, the iPad, the Keyboard and the Mouse provide a truly wonderful experience for Things, and we can’t wait to hear what you think!

Five Years On

We first created Things for Apple Watch five years ago, when watches were still slow and entirely dependent on your phone for connectivity. In order to get changes from your watch to the cloud, the iPhone app had to act as a middleman, ferrying changes to and from the cloud on the watch app’s behalf. While it seemed like a fine idea at the time, in practice it turned out to be slow and error-prone.

In the years since, the Apple Watch has come a long way. Devices are faster, have more storage, support background refresh, connect to WiFi, and many are free-roaming on LTE. Compared to 2015, it’s a huge leap forward.

In short, we knew that big improvements were possible for Things – and well overdue. So in January, we disassembled our watch app and began replacing all the parts: the sync, data layer, complication integrations, background refresh, Siri integration – everything under the hood is completely new. But without doubt, the biggest change today is the sync: we’ve brought Things Cloud to Apple Watch.

Things Cloud on the Watch

The most important change in this release is that Things on your watch will now sync directly with Things Cloud.

Now

Before

Syncing directly with Things Cloud is far superior to the previous implementation, and we couldn’t be more excited to get this into your hands.

Even when you’re away from your phone, the watch syncs instantly with the cloud and you can be confident that you’re always looking at the latest data.

When you enter a project, for example, or a to-do with a checklist, you’ll no longer have to wait for that content to load. Everything is already on your watch and ready to go.

We’ve also improved the quality of data on the watch face. Since both your phone and watch now sync to the cloud, we’re at liberty to choose whichever data is more recent and display that in your complication. After all, you want to be sure when you glance at your wrist that the info’s up to date ⌚️👀

Of course, all of this requires a Things Cloud account. If you don’t already have one, you can create one for free.

More New Features

Even though today’s update is mainly focused on the app’s foundation, we were able to sneak in a few of your most-requested features.

• Add to Today

  By default, the watch app saves new to-dos to your Inbox; you can now set Today as the default instead. To access this setting, open the watch app and force press in the main list.

• Remove from Today

  Many of you complained that there was no way to remove a to-do from Today – that is to say, put it in Anytime. You can now do this by tapping Clear in the date picker.

• Scribble support

  When adding new to-dos, or appending some notes, you can now scribble instead of speaking the text 👆

• Multiple watches

  Incidentally, the new implementation of sync brings another benefit: many of you wrote in saying you use a spare watch for sleep tracking and really missed having Things on it. Now you can!

If you love your Apple Watch, we think you’ll love Things 3.12. The addition of Things Cloud makes a world of difference and we find ourselves using the app more than ever. Take it for a spin today and let us know what you think!

We’re currently looking for:

• Software Engineer (C++)

  Responsible for our client-side data persistence and sync frameworks.

• Cloud Engineer

  Responsible for the server-related aspects of our sync solution.

• Executive Assistant

  For our office in Stuttgart (German required).

If these roles sound like you or someone you know, head on over to our jobs page to learn more.

View Openings

We’d love to hear from you!