Finding a new GTD app
For personal reasons I’ve shared on this post I’ve been trying new GTD apps and finally I decided to write my experience. So far I’ve tried Things, Omnifocus and 2do but I’m open to trying more and please feel welcome to tell me I’m wrong or if I forgot some key feature. This is a personal review but I’m still learning about this apps and maybe I’m missing something that could be added. I’ll keep updating this post as I discover or change my mind over features but these are the points I’m testing so far:
Inbox
The 3 apps have an inbox with 2do maybe being the only different because is optional. All of them are pretty fast on dropping anything into the inbox with 2do being the one offering more options on the quick add menu and Things the one with the best design.
Winner: Tie
Tags
Here I’ve started seeing differences. Things has tags but they are not that useful. You can search by tags but no much more. On the other hand, 2do and OmniFocus have a more complete tags experience. Omnifocus is moving from contexts to tags in latest versions and 2do has good tags support but not as good as Omnifocus where tags have a full perspective.
Winner: Omnifocus
Review
As I’ve exposed I tend to add tasks, organize but then forget about it and end up having hundreds of things to do causing my brain to crash. So far the only app I’ve found to have a review process is Omnifocus. I can work around this on Things and 2d with some kind of repeating reminder but it won’t be as good.
Winner: Omnifocus
Estimate
Sometimes I don’t do things because I think: I don’t have enough time to get into this. I’m guessing (because I don’t know) that being able to estimate tasks as I organize them would help me on beating that initial barrier. I’ve 30 minutes of free time I can find something that should take me less. The only way to do this in Things is using tags and that’s really far from being good. Both 2do and Omnifocus have this feature but only OmniFocus allows creating perspectives filtering by estimated time.
Winner: Omnifocus
Synchronization
This is a key point and fortunately not a problem because the 3 apps have a fast an reliable way to sync between platforms. The only difference here is that 2do uses a 3rd party service (Dropbox being the best option) while Things and Omnifocus have its own service.
Winner: Tie
Important flag
Again, this is something I’ve used so I’m guessing it may be useful. Sometimes you have tasks that are really important, that need to be done asap and here again, Things lacks a functionality. Only 2do and Omnifocus have this feature. I’ve many doubts about it because it may do more harm if you start to mark everything as important (As I tend to do now in Things where I set everything to do tomorrow and then, when tomorrow arrives I’ve too many things to do)
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Winner: Omnifocus and 2do
Design
I know this is subjective but this whole review is subjective so… Desing is a really important point for me, I love having a clear and focused design and here I’ve a clear winner: Things. Minimalistic design, nice animations and not being so complete on features make Things one of the nicest apps I use daily. In the 3 apps I’m testing I´ll place 2do in the last place because design (at least on macOS) feels a bit outdated.
Winner: Things
Attached content
Something I always miss from any todo app is attaching any kind of content. I’m not talking only about files, but urls, phone numbers… Things and Omnifocus allow this using notes but 2do goes one step further and adds support to add all this attachment types directly to the task. Is not something that would make me choose one app or another but a plus for 2do.
Winner: 2do
Price
There’s some differences in price between the 3 apps:
- Omnifocus is $39.99 for standard / $79.99 for pro on macOS and $39.99 for standard / $59.99 for pro on iOS
- Things is $49.99 on macOS, $9.99 for iPhone and $9.99 for iPad
- 2do is $49.99 on macOS and $14.99 on iOS
Those are the prices but here are “my prices”:
- Omnifocus: If I want to use the custom perspectives feature that will allow me having a Short tasks perspective I´ll have to pay: $139.98
- Things: I already own all the versions so: $0
- 2do: This one is tricky because I’m planning on getting into Setapp so I´ll have 2do included so I´ll have to pay $14.99 to get the iOS app
From this review, I’ve a clear conclusion: Omnifocus is the app that marks more checks on my wishlist but its price is really hight. I’m going to give a full try to OmniFocus on that 10 days of trial I have and then I´ll update the post with my decision.
