Best To-Do List Apps for Mac in 2026: The 6 I'd Keep

Apple Reminders is the best to-do list app for most Mac owners this year, because it's free, already installed and now has smart lists, sections and shared lists. Pay for Things if you want the calmest Mac app and only use Apple devices; pick Todoist or TickTick if you also use Windows or Android, and OmniFocus if you run many projects at once.

A to-do app earns its place on a Mac in the first ten seconds: how fast a thought gets out of your head and into the list while you're in the middle of something else. Everything else, from tags to themes, matters less than that. Below are the six apps worth keeping, what each costs today according to its maker, how it gets a task in while you're busy, and the catch that might rule it out for you.

Mac to-do list apps compared at a glance

Every price below is the US figure on that company's own store or pricing page. "Once" means a one-time purchase rather than a subscription.

What makes a to-do app good on a Mac

A good Mac to-do app captures a task from any app with one shortcut, shows your day without making you build it, and syncs to your phone before you leave the desk. That's the short list I judge every one against. A few more things separate the apps once those basics are covered:

• Capture without switching apps. A global shortcut or a Share menu entry means you never lose the thread of what you were doing.
• Dates in plain words. Typing "call the printer Thursday 3pm" and having the date filled in saves more time than any view.
• Your calendar beside your list. Tasks compete with meetings for the same hours, so seeing both in one place keeps the plan honest.
• The devices you actually own. An Apple-only app is a dead end if your work laptop runs Windows.
• How you pay. A one-time price, a yearly plan or free all add up differently over three years.

When I take on a new app, I give it one honest week with every task going into it, phone included. If I'm still opening a sticky note by Wednesday, the app isn't the right one, however good the feature list looks.

1. Apple Reminders: the free one that's now good enough

Apple Reminders is the free to-do app that ships with macOS, iOS and iPadOS. Apple's Reminders guide for macOS 27 covers subtasks, tags, list or column views, sections, pinned lists, list templates, grocery lists and custom Smart Lists, which is a long way from the plain checklist Reminders used to be.

Smart Lists are the feature that makes it work for real projects. In Apple's Smart List steps, you click Add List, open the List Type pop-up menu and choose Smart List, then filter by tags, date, time, priority, flag, location or list. My own setup is one called "This week, work," built from a date range and a work tag, and it's the list I keep open.

Reminders also ties into the rest of macOS. You can send a web page from Safari, an email from Mail or a note from Notes straight into a list with Share → Reminders, per Apple's guide to adding reminders from other apps. Calendar can show your scheduled reminders when you tick Scheduled Reminders in the calendar list, as Apple's Calendar steps explain. And a few shortcuts from Apple's Reminders shortcut list are worth learning on day one: Command-T makes a reminder due today, Command-K pushes it to the weekend, and Control-Command-T moves everything overdue to today.

The catch: sharing works only between iCloud accounts using the upgraded version of Reminders, per Apple's sharing page, so it's no help with a colleague whose phone is Android or whose laptop runs Windows.

Pick Reminders if you only use Apple devices, want to pay nothing, and your lists are mostly personal or shared with family.

2. Things 3: the calmest daily plan on a Mac

Things 3 is a task manager from Cultured Code that runs only on Apple devices and is paid for once, not monthly. Its Mac App Store page prices Things for Mac at $49.99 and requires macOS 13.3 or later. The iPhone version is a separate $9.99 purchase that includes the Apple Watch app, and Cultured Code's buying guide says sync through Things Cloud costs nothing.

Things is built around one question: what are you doing today? The Today list pulls in your planned to-dos and your calendar events, there's a This Evening section for later, and Upcoming shows the days ahead, according to the App Store listing. You can also forward an email to Things to turn it into a to-do.

Capture is where it shines. Press Control-Space anywhere on your Mac to open Quick Entry, per Cultured Code's Quick Entry guide. The Autofill version, Control-Option-Space, grabs a link to the web page, email or file you have selected in Safari, Mail or Finder once you switch it on in Things → Settings → Quick Entry. I use that one most for emails I can't deal with now: the task gets a link straight back to the message.

The catch: no Windows, Android or web version, per Cultured Code's own page. Each device type is a separate purchase, so a Mac, a phone and a tablet cost more than the Mac price alone.

Pick Things if every device you use is Apple's, you'd rather pay once than every year, and you want the app to stay out of your way.

3. Todoist: the best pick if you also use Windows or Android

Todoist is a cross-platform to-do app, free to start, with apps for Mac, Windows, Linux, iPhone, iPad, Android, Apple Watch and Wear OS, according to its downloads page. If your laptop is a Mac but your phone is Android, or your work computer runs Windows, start here.

Todoist's pricing page lists three plans. Beginner is free, with 5 personal projects and 3 custom filters. Pro costs $60 a year (shown as $5 a month billed yearly) or $7 billed monthly, and adds 300 projects, 150 filters, calendar and table layouts, task durations, deadlines and custom reminders. Business is $8 per user a month billed yearly, or $10 monthly, plus local tax.

The thing people stay for is capture in plain words: Todoist's homepage promises tasks captured "using easy-flowing, natural language," recurring tasks included, and lists integrations with Google Calendar, Outlook Mail, Gmail, Slack, Microsoft Teams and Zapier. On the Mac app, the Quick Add window has a global shortcut you can set to your own keys under the Desktop tab in Settings, per Todoist's Quick Add guide.

The catch: the free plan's 5-project cap fills up fast, and the calendar layout needs Pro. Our Todoist alternatives page covers how Todoist's pricing has changed, and what to try instead.

Pick Todoist if you work across more than one operating system or want your tasks wired into Slack, Teams or Zapier.

4. TickTick: the most features for the money

TickTick is a to-do app that puts a calendar, a focus timer and a habit tracker in the same window. Its homepage lists yearly, monthly, weekly, daily and agenda calendar views, a Pomodoro timer that splits work into 25-minute intervals, a habit tracker with statistics, and an Eisenhower Matrix. The download page offers apps for macOS, Windows, Linux, iPhone and iPad, Android, a browser extension and the web.

On TickTick's upgrade page, Premium is $49.99 a year, and no monthly price is listed. The free plan allows 9 lists with up to 99 tasks each and a basic calendar view. Premium raises that to 299 lists of 999 tasks and adds the full set of calendar views, task durations, email reminders and TickTick's AI features.

I like TickTick for weeks that are mostly blocks of focused work. On days I block out for a big draft, I want the task and its timer side by side, not a list in one app and a timer in another.

The catch: with that much in one app, there are more settings to get through before it feels like yours. For a plain checklist, it's more app than the job needs.

Pick TickTick if you plan by the hour, want a focus timer and habits built in, or need Linux support at a lower yearly price than Todoist Pro.

5. OmniFocus 4: for people running many projects at once

OmniFocus 4, from The Omni Group, is a task manager for Apple devices built for people juggling a lot of projects, each with its own next steps. Its homepage highlights Forecast, which shows what's coming up, and a weekly Review that walks you through every project so nothing goes stale. You can try it free for 14 days.

Pricing has more options than the others, per Omni's buy page: a Standard license for $74.99 or a Pro license for $149.99, both one-time and covering Mac, iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch and Apple Vision Pro, or a subscription at $99.99 a year that includes OmniFocus for the Web. It needs macOS 15.2 or later.

The reason to pay for Pro is Custom Perspectives, saved views that filter and group your projects and tags however you like. Omni's perspectives manual says they can be created with OmniFocus Pro. If you follow David Allen's Getting Things Done, a perspective like "calls I can make from my desk" is exactly what the method asks for.

The catch: OmniFocus asks you to learn its way of working, and the Pro license costs more than any other app here. It's a lot of tool for a short grocery list.

Pick OmniFocus if you manage ten or more active projects and want a weekly review built into the app.

6. Microsoft To Do: free, and tied to Outlook

Microsoft To Do is a free list app with a native Mac version. Its Mac App Store page says it costs nothing, runs on macOS 13 and newer, and includes My Day, a daily planner with suggested tasks, plus lists you can share with friends, family or colleagues.

Its real advantage is Outlook. Flag an email in Outlook and it shows up as a task in To Do, per Microsoft's flagged email guide, which says the feature works with accounts hosted by Microsoft, such as Outlook.com, Hotmail.com and Live.com addresses, or a custom domain hosted by Microsoft.

The catch: flagged email only works with Microsoft-hosted mail, so a Gmail or iCloud address won't feed it, and its Mac listing doesn't mention a calendar view like the ones Todoist and TickTick offer.

Pick Microsoft To Do if your workday runs on Outlook and you want tasks next to your mail for free.

Which to-do list app should you use on your Mac?

Choose by the devices you own first, then by how you plan:

• Only Apple devices, and you don't want to pay: Apple Reminders, with a Smart List or two.
• Only Apple devices, and you'll pay for polish: Things 3, bought once.
• A Mac plus Windows or Android: Todoist, or TickTick if you want calendar views and a timer for less a year.
• Lots of projects and a weekly review habit: OmniFocus 4, with Pro for Custom Perspectives.
• Your mail is Outlook: Microsoft To Do, with flagged email turned on.

A common mistake is choosing the app with the longest feature list, then spending a month setting it up. I'd start with Reminders for a week; if something specific is missing, like a calendar view or an Android app, that missing piece tells you which paid app to try.

How to move your tasks without losing any

Moving to-do apps goes smoothest when you move only what's still open, in this order:

1. Finish or delete anything you know you won't do. There's no point importing it.
2. Check whether the new app imports from the old one directly. Things, for example, has a Todoist importer under File → Import → Import From Todoist on macOS 14.4 or later.
3. If there's no importer, export or copy only your active projects, then add the rest by hand. It doubles as a review.
4. Recreate repeating tasks by hand. Things' importer, for one, brings them over without their repeat schedule.
5. Keep the old app for a week, read-only, then delete it from your Dock so you stop opening it out of habit.

When I switched from a paper notebook to an app, the old list stayed on my desk for days, and I kept writing in it. Taking it off the desk was what made the switch stick.

Where Merlin fits next to your to-do app

Merlin is our product, a macOS helper that sits above your to-do apps instead of adding one more list to maintain. It reads open tasks from Todoist, Notion and Linear once you connect them, and gathers them in one To-do panel beside its chat, with action items from Granola meeting notes and anything you ask it to remember ("add renew the domain for Friday"). After each sync it ranks the lot, weighing due dates, each app's priority and the meetings coming up in the next few days.

Open a task and Do it with Merlin asks it to do the work, such as drafting the email the task is about, and that draft waits for your OK before going anywhere. Tick a Todoist task off in Merlin's To-do panel and it asks Mark done in Todoist too? before closing it there. Things, Reminders, TickTick, OmniFocus and Microsoft To Do aren't among the apps it connects to today, so this helps most if your list lives in Todoist.

If most of your tasks arrive as email, letting your Gmail inbox double as your task list may be all the system you need. And if your day is really a calendar problem, our Mac calendar app picks are the better read.