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Ask HN: Your favorite to-do list or task manager?

28 points by owkaye ↗ HN
I have one large (and several small) personal projects to accomplish during the next year or two of my life (including building a new house) and one professional programming project to start planning. I think an online to-do list or task manager would be a help in terms of planning, scheduling and reminding me. I do not need a mobile app, instead I'm interested in a solution with great desktop interface. What do you use? Do you recommend it? If so, why?

76 comments

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grantism
I use wunderlist on my iOS devices and my windows PC at work.

I like it because it offers automatic synching over multiple devices as well as making it easy to separate out each of the projects I'm working on.

richo
It's so far from finished, but I'd be interested to see people think about where it's going:

https://github.com/richo/groundstation

You should be able to get something working by installing the dependencies, pulling in some github issues with ./slurp_github and then running airshipd

EDIT: Which is the logical successor to https://github.com/richo/TODO

I've tried most of the other platforms and none really delivered for me. At the very least I could find my old TODO anywhere since it was all online.

AdamGibbins
Todoist. Why? Because it supports sub tasks and sub projects (this is pretty rare), freeform tagging so I control how I structure things, a wonderful UI and works offline by way of HTML5 storage.

I don't like that I can't hide tasks until they're nearing their due date however.

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afshinmeh
Trello. Powerful for managing team tasks and simple for managing personal to-do(s).
dsyph3r
We recently released our visual task management app DropTask (https://www.droptask.com). It allows you to split your tasks across projects, categorize them using nested sub grouping and schedule them easily using the week view.
mtrimpe
When I first saw DropTask I thought it would allow you to take multiple perspectives and have a grouping per perspective, like urgency, compononent, assignee, customer value, etc., etc.

I've been looking for that for ages and was so disappointed when I saw it wasn't...

If you're still open for it you might want to consider adding what are essentially additional views to help organize your tasks from different perspectives. You can even add something like a 'scale' view to help sort these things on e.g. a linear scale.

Anyhow, just my €0.02 :)

dsyph3r
Thanks for the feedback. DropTask is still at a relatively early-stage so we are constantly working on adding new features. The ability to see tasks from different grouping perspectives sounds really interesting.
imasmas
Looks nice. Does it have an API like basecamp or Trello?
dsyph3r
Not yet, its likely we will have a public API in the future.
dageshi
notepad.

* this is something I would like to achieve

              -this is a sub step on the way to achieving it

              -and another substep
merinid
Workflowy.com
captn3m0
They recently launched their native iOS app, which has offline support, which makes it even more awesome.
frans
I tried everything on this post, some for several months. Only one survived: Workflowy!

Its nested, collapse/expand structure seems to match best with my view of the world.

thanthese
I've never had any piece of software become so indispensable so quickly as workflowy did. It's hugely flexible, dead-simple to use, and easy to use on all my devices.
maxkir
Interesting, have you tried Checkvist (I'm the dev)?
Todd_Davies
As a student, I use Schooltraq (http://schooltraq.com).

It has both a web interface, Android app and an API so it's fairly ubiquitous for me. I find it simple and efficient.

Disclosure - I am a developer at Schooltraq.

bumbledraven
todo.txt (todotxt.com) - open source with a simple text file format. Items have (priorities), +tags, and @locations. There is a CLI interface for desktops and apps for iOS & android. Syncing over dropbox is supported.
zenweasel
I chose todo.txt after trying all the others because I can get command line efficiency and Smartphone portability. Everything is open-source (both the smartphone apps as well) and easily extendable. I prefer Taskwarrior for a pure CLI tool, but no visibility on any other platform.
jsherer
I build TodoPaper and combine it with TaskPaper and DropBox to sync across my PCs and Macs and iPhone. It's a plaintext file format that also has a number of open source projects that highlight the files when you work in Vim, Notepad++, etc. Example of the format:

  Project:
  - task
  - task @done
    - sub task 
      Notes for this task.
    - sub task @due(2013-03-03)
waxjar
I just use a piece of paper.

For coding I use comments and a git alias (git todo) that returns the comments.

    todo     = !git grep --color=always --no-index --exclude-standard --heading --break --ignore-case -e ' FIX: *' -e ' TODO: *' | sed -e 's/^[[:space:]]*//'
Long term stuff I keep in Notational Velocity, among a load of other things.
manuelflara
I use Basecamp for project to-do's, and Gmail with "Show unread at the top" option on, for "life" to-do's.
skycocker
I have recently made a small todo webapp because I needed one myself, it's still deep in beta, but besides few UI flaws on WebKit works pretty well: http://www.rodosapp.com/

You can add a new group just for yourself or add some people to it, you do it by typing their email address to "add user" field. Of course that user has to be already registered in the app.

siddhant
You should also add some screenshots on the website, just so people get a feel for what it's like before signing up.
skycocker
I'm planning to do so, but I need to stabilize push notifications a bit before I start to make Rodos look better. Thanks for the advice, anyway! :)
BjoernKW
GitHub for software issues / bugs features.

Trello for sales pipeline, general project planning and management tasks.

Remember the Milk for tasks with a specific due date and recurring tasks, though I'd like to use Trello for that in the long run, too.

gorbachev
Wunderlist.

I was using Things before, but the rip-off pricing and lack of web and non iOS clients made me switch.

I like Wunderlist for its simplicity and the "GTDishness".

Supports multiple projects (or lists), sub-tasks, reminders, repeated tasks.

No support for tags, and the recent Wunderlist2 release dropped support for the great "smart dates" functionality, which was an absolute killer feature on their old version.

michielvoo
Do you use a Mac? If so, I recommend Things for Mac

http://culturedcode.com/things

http://culturedcode.com/things/mac/appstore ($49.99)

Edit to answer to ralfy's reply below:

I recommend it to Get Things Done [1], for its versatility (projects, scopes, labels, scheduling and repeated tasks), its excellent user interface and aesthetics, and the seamless synchronization across multiple devices (Mac, iPhone and iPad).

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getting_Things_Done

ralfy
Why do you recommend it?
kennu
I also recommend Things, because it's an app that makes you feel good if you're into OS X and iOS style user interfaces. I bought it years ago, but truly started using it when they got the Things Cloud sync working.

So now I always keep it open on all my Macs (I switch between 3). It's always up-to-date, shows the number of tasks pending for today in the Dock icon, and it's comfortable to very quickly switch to the app, and create new tasks or mark old ones done. And when you're procrastinating, you can organize the tasks into projects and drag'n'drop them around, enter tags and descriptions, etc.

I think you can achieve the same with any todo list app or even text files, but Things makes it look and feel nice.

pooriaazimi
Have you tried OmniFocus? The Mac client is just fantastic (if you take the time to learn and customize it). And v2.0 (due in seversl months) is even better.

Of course, you have to learn GTD system to get the most out of OmniFocus. It's something that'll greatly improve your efficiency in the long run, so I think it's worth the time you invest.

porter
I've used a lot of web and desktop based todo lists....

Turns out it's pretty hard to beat pen and paper.

alanmeaney
What would you add or change on previous apps you've used?
PeterisP
Two plaintext files in dropbox (todo.txt and priority.txt), kept always open in all my computers.

Search, editing and subtasks-by-indentation are convenient enough, as my text editor anyway is my main work tool.

tbrownaw
Google Docs, but any other text editor would work about as well. I have three bulletted lists, one (very short) one for things that are currently in-progress and really ought to be finished before I start something else, one for things that are blocking on something, and one for things I either haven't gotten around to yet or had to defer for some reason. For small/quick things that come from emails, I just flag them in Outlook.
joshguthrie
Astrid for daily tasks (paperwork and links or technologies to check later) and Trello for projects-related tasks.
jsheperd
I am happy with MS OneNote. It seems to be the most versatile tool. Integrated to outlook calendars, easy to find open tasks, ...