iPadOS has just been released, and Things has three great new features you should try out: Multiple Windows, a Home Screen Widget, and Conversational Shortcuts.

Multiple Windows on iPad

One of the great things about working on a Mac is that you can open multiple Things windows to view more than one list at a time. Today – after you upgrade to iPadOS and Things 3.10 – you can do it on your iPad, too.

Opening a second window is easy. Just tap & hold Things’ icon in the dock, then drag it to the side of your screen. Et voila – two windows! Now you can drag & drop between them to get organized.

If your iPad has a physical keyboard, Things is a real powerhouse with lots of shortcuts. Today we’ve added three more for controlling your windows.

⌘ CmdCtrlN – new window
⌘ Cmd` – switch between two windows
⌘ CmdW – close window

If you want to see all currently open windows, just tap & hold Things’ icon and choose Show All Windows. From here, you can also swipe a window upwards to close it.

See Today on your Home Screen

iPadOS also introduces a great new layout for the Home screen, which can now display pinned widgets. We’ve tweaked Things’ widget and it looks great in both Light and Dark Modes.

Conversational Shortcuts

There’s also an exciting new feature this year called conversational shortcuts: a new way to create to-dos by speaking to Siri.

To create a conversational shortcut, use Things’ Add To-Do action in the Shortcuts app. But instead of entering a title for your to-do, simply set it to Ask Each Time.

Now when your shortcut runs, Siri will ask you: “What’s the title?”

This is a simple shortcut, but it’s a fantastic way to create to-dos without typing a thing. And of course you can easily augment it by having Siri Ask Each Time for other things, such as which list to save your to-do in, what tag it should have, and so on.

Plus!

Of course, all the great features that came to iPhone last week are now available on iPad, too:

• Dark Mode integration to switch Things’ appearance at sunset.
• The new Share Extension that lets you target a list.
• Accessibility improvements with VoiceOver and Voice Control.
• A new Reminders importer for migrating to Things.
• And support for the new system-wide gestures for editing text.

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Things 3.10 is packed with features we think you’re going to love, and you can get it now for iPad and iPhone. An update for macOS Catalina is also in the works, and that should arrive in October.

Over the the past few months we’ve been working on Things 3.10, a big update with great new features for iOS 13 and iPadOS. It introduces Actions for Siri Shortcuts, Multiple Windows on iPad, Dark Mode integration, and more.

Today we’ll focus on everything that’s new for iPhone. The update for iPad will come on September 24 with the launch of iPadOS.

Siri Shortcuts

Siri Shortcuts has received a big overhaul in iOS 13 and you can do some cool new things that were previously not possible.

If you already know how the Shortcuts app works, by all means, jump right in and start playing with the new actions we’ve provided. There’s a lot you can do!

If you’ve never created a shortcut before, you’ll find a page in Things’ settings with some suggestions to get you started. You can also create a shortcut directly from there.

Chain Things actions together to create powerful shortcuts.

The true power of Things’ new actions, however, will be unleashed in a few days when Apple enables a new feature called “conversational shortcuts”. You’ll then be able to have a conversation with Siri – while your shortcut runs – and dictate the title of your to-do, when you want to do it, and so on. Things 3.10 already includes support for this, and it will automatically become functional with iOS 13.1 on September 24. Stay tuned for a more in-depth exploration of what’s possible.

Update: Conversational Shortcuts are now functional.

Dark Mode

Things turned to the dark side last year, but now that iOS has joined it, they shall together rule the galaxy and...

Ahem... Things now fully integrates with the new system-wide Dark Mode on iOS, which kicks in at sunset. Of course, you can override the system setting if you like, and you can still choose between a Dark or Black appearance.

Things can now go dark at sunset.

New Share Extension

We’ve changed the way you share to Things from other apps. When you tap the Share button, you’ll now find Things in the row of colored icons. If you don’t see Things, tap “More” at the end of the row to enable it.

You’ll also notice it has a new look, and lets you directly choose a list to save your to-do in.

Things’ new Share Extension. You can now choose a list for your to-do.

Accessibility Support

It’s inspiring to see the effort Apple puts into accessibility features for iOS. VoiceOver can read out the interface for you, while Voice Control is the latest improvement for people with physical limitations. We’ve now overhauled many areas in Things to make sure they play well with both of these technologies.

And more

We’ve made sure that iOS 13’s new text editing gestures work great (cut, copy, paste), as well as undo and redo. See Apple’s documentation to learn more about how they work.

There’s also a new Reminders importer to migrate all data from Reminders to Things, and we’ve overhauled the mechanism for displaying Reminders in Things’ Inbox.

Finally, Things 3.10 works great on the new iPhone 11 models and the new Apple Watch Series 5. Things also now requires iOS 12 or later, and watchOS 5 or later.

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Things 3.10 is available for iPhone now – we hope you enjoy it! Stay tuned for multiple window support, coming to an iPad near you on September 24.

We have a big update for you today, and it includes nothing exciting! Sorry 🤓

Every once in a while we’re going to release an update that’s hugely important but doesn’t seem so exciting for you, the user. Things 3.9 is one such release – the culmination of months of work, with broad refactorings, architectural changes, and preparatory work for future updates.

As unexciting as that sounds, it’s important for us to step back every once in a while and devote time to the health of our codebase.

So what have we been up to?

Three Big Projects

Our main work for Things 3.9 delivers non-visible improvements in three areas:

• Reactive programming.

  The biggest change is one that will sound familiar to our fellow coders. There’s been a significant shift in the last few years to adopt something termed a “reactive” programming style. It’s a way to structure code that makes it very easy to understand and reason about, and thereby eliminate a big source of bugs. We’ve been experimenting with this style for some time, and with today’s update we’ve now implemented it across large parts of our codebase.

• Repeating to-dos.

  We’ve also begun modernizing our implementation of repeating to-dos. As a first step in that direction, today’s refactoring lays the groundwork for later improvements, so the goal today is for you to see nothing different.

• Sync refactoring.

  A few months ago we hired a new Things Cloud engineer. He’s been busy refactoring some long-untouched areas of our sync code – again as a preparation for new features we plan to build down the road.

Things to Enjoy

So maybe we downplayed this update a little – there are a few improvements that you can enjoy today:

• Better performance.

  One of the benefits of digging deep and refactoring your code is that, once in a while, you unearth some real gems. So it was for 3.9, when we managed to find ways to improve performance for three common actions. You’ll notice that Things is significantly faster after you launch it from an idle state: the app opens more quickly, and there’s no lag when you tap to expand a to-do, or tap the + button to create a new one.

• Improved layout on small screens.

  If you use a small device, such as an iPhone SE, your to-do titles could get a little cramped – particularly after setting start dates, deadlines, tags, and checklists. So we’ve now improved the layout and date formats to free up some extra room.

• More clarity when setting dates.

  The “When” popover for setting dates has been enhanced to provide more clarity, especially when dealing with reminders.

• Many smaller bug fixes across the apps.

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As our version number is now at 3.9, questions about 4.0 will surely abound. But if Apple can count past 9 – so can we! 😄 Things 3.10 is on the way.

Until then, we hope you enjoy Things 3.9 – with all the shiny new code you can’t see but which is nevertheless totally awesome.

We’ve got a special gift for you today – a perfect feature for the darker months of winter: Dark Mode for iOS! Available now in Things 3.8.

The beautiful Dark appearance that came to Mac in September is now available for iPhone and iPad. Our journey to the dark side is complete. 🌒

However, for iOS we went a step further, adding a third beautiful appearance: Black. Black is particularly stunning on the OLED display of the iPhone X and XS, where the boundary between your device and the app almost seems to vanish.

You can set your preferred appearance permanently, or have it switch based on your display’s brightness. When the brightness drops below the threshold – which happens naturally in the evening – Things will automatically go dark. Just go to Settings > Appearance to try it out.

Things 3.8 is available now for iPhone and iPad as a free update for all our customers. We hope you love it as much as we do!

From all of us here at Things, Happy Holidays! Thanks for a fantastic year and see you in 2019.