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For some people, to-do lists are an essential part of the workday. Whether you meticulously create a to-do list each day as a part of your morning ritual or you live for the thrill of checking off completed tasks, using your smartphone instead of a legal pad has a lot of advantages. We’ve rounded up seven of the best to-do apps, both free and paid, for iPhone and Android. Whatever you use, there’s an app here for you.
If you’re an iPhone user, you might not need anything beyond the to-do app that comes with iOS — Apple Notes. The app is relatively modest in scope, of course. It’s free and built into your iPhone, and lets you take notes or create a list of items to complete and check off as you go. On the iPad, it even supports the Apple Pencil. However, if you want the ability to schedule to-dos, integrate with other apps, or manage to-dos on Android, there are other options on this list.
Available virtually everywhere, Any.do is a favorite to-do app for many people thanks not just to its simplicity, but the fact that you can schedule when you want to get your tasks accomplished. It’s even more useful thanks to integration with Outlook and Google Calendar. The app is free, but you can subscribe to Premium for as little as $2.99 per month, which includes customizable themes, location-based reminders, and integration with WhatsApp.
Todoist gets a lot of its power from a large collection of templates you can use to create tasks in a wide variety of categories — everything from planning your annual review at work to setting up appointments, writing blog posts and managing classwork. These templates are Todoists’s secret weapon, but it also lets you organize your to-dos into separate projects, schedule to-dos on your calendar, assign priority levels, delegate tasks to others, and track your progress with satisfying graphs. You can get a lot out of Todoist for free, but there’s a Pro level for $4 per month that adds more of everything, like the number of active projects, collaborators, and cloud storage space.
If you like simplicity but something like Apple Notes is simply too spartan for your needs, Google Tasks might be just what you need. Like most Google products, it’s free and available for both Android and iPhone, so everyone can enjoy tracking their tasks here. The app is quite simple — adding tasks is a snap, and you can optionally assign it to a day and time if you want to. You can also create multiple to-do lists and access them from a set of tabs at the top of the page. The best part is that Tasks integrates with Google Calendar and is always available from the sidebar.
Of course, Microsoft has an option here as well; Microsoft To Do is based on the old Wunderlist app that Microsoft purchased in 2015. It has become a simple but competent to-do list app that supports multiple lists, tasks you can schedule, sharing with others, and the ability to attach notes to any to-do entry. It also integrates with Outlook, so you can see your tasks in the sidebar or add them to your schedule. Unfortunately, you can’t schedule your tasks for a specific time of day like you can with other apps, though. It’s completely free though, with no need to upgrade to unlock all the features.
There’s a lot of power under TickTick‘s hood. This to-do app is available on a slew of platforms, including Android, iPhone, Windows, Mac, and Linux. It works with the Apple Watch and has a variety of browser extensions. You can get started with the app for free, though high-end features like filtering, calendar integration, collaboration with others, and the ability to see a complete history of your task management costs $27.99 per year. But for power users, there might not be a better to-do manager. You can add to-dos by voice and turn emails into tasks, for example, and the app supports multiple lists, tagging, priorities, sorting, and folders. For Pomodoro adherents, it even includes its own digital egg timer.
Here’s a second entry from Google in this list. Available for both Android and iPhone, it’s distinctively different from Google Tasks and is worth considering — especially if you want something that looks and works a little different than the usual to-do list manager. The app is free, of course, and like Apple Notes combines both lists and notes into a single interface. Entries appear in blocks or modules, which is both aesthetically pleasing and makes it easy to find what you need by visually scanning the screen. Each list or note can be color coded or assigned a background pattern, and your lists can include notes, images, and other items, including voice recordings. Your to-dos can be scheduled and have reminders, of course.
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