A good to-do list app isn’t just a dashboard of your life’s obligations—it can be the control room that makes it possible to keep chaos at bay. Plenty of free apps can handle basic shopping or chore lists, but our favorite paid options, TickTick and Things 3 (for Mac and iOS only), have flexible organization schemes and thoughtful designs that make it easy to duck in, check on obligations, enter new tasks, and then get back to the doing.

TickTick is the best to-do list app, thanks to its simple and structured project organization, seamless calendar integration, and ability to fit into many different workflows (rather than making you organize your work a certain way). Its modern, uncluttered design is easy on the eyes, and its natural language support—“Turn in draft to editor at 3 on Monday” magically becomes a task with the correct deadline—eases the friction of getting tasks from your brain into the app before they have a chance to slip your mind. It works across Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android, which means you can keep up with your life across all the devices you have now, as well as ones you might get in the future.

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Things 3

A better option for Mac users

Cultured Code’s Things 3 offers the best combination of design and functionality of any app we tested, with nearly all the features of other power user applications and a delightful interface that never gets in the way of your work. But it’s available only for Macs and iOS devices.

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$50

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Cultured Code

For those who strictly use Apple devices, Cultured Code’s Things 3 is an even better to-do list and task manager app than cross-platform TickTick—it just isn’t available on Windows or Android devices. It has plenty of options to organize tasks without being overwhelming or finicky, and its calendar integration is the most intuitive we’ve seen. Things 3 also has the most thoughtful and attractive design of any app we tried, making it as pleasant to use as it is efficient at helping you sift through your ever-increasing workload. Though it lacks the natural language input or location-based reminders of TickTick, Things 3 has better integration with Apple apps like Calendar, Mail, and Reminders, making it the preferred choice for most people who use Apple products.