🎯 Six Views Of One List
There is only ever one list. The chips across the top are different questions
asked of it, not different lists.
🎯 Focus is the one worth understanding, because it is the default and it is
not simply "everything". A to-do appears in Focus if any one of these is
true: it is starred; it is due today or already overdue; its urgency
is Urgent; its importance is Critical; or both ratings are
High or above. Nothing else gets in.
The two middle ones stand on their own — an Urgent to-do reaches
Focus even if its importance is None, and a Critical one does even if it is in
no hurry. Top rating on either axis is always enough, with or without a date.
There is exactly one way out again: ticking Stop Showing After Due Date
on the to-do itself. That is for the things that could only have been done on the
day — a class, a game, an appointment — and once the date has passed it leaves Focus and
Today for good, whatever it is starred or rated. It beats all five routes above,
which is the point of it; nothing else does.
It never hides anything early, and it never hides an undated to-do —
only one whose day is behind you. 📋 All still shows it, so nothing becomes
unreachable, and the daily summary stops listing it too.
📅 Today is due today or overdue, nothing else. ★ Starred is only what
you pinned by hand. 📋 All is everything still open. ✓ Done is your
history — completed and skipped. ↻ Repeat is everything that repeats,
whatever it is due and whatever else is switched on.
Focus, Today and Starred are meant to be short, so they show everything
at once with no pager. All, Done and Repeat can run long, so those page — 50 at a
time unless you change Rows Per Page.
The list dropdown, beside the search box, narrows any view to one list.
Tapping a chip is a fresh start: it clears the search box and the list filter, so a
view always shows exactly what its name says.
⚡ Adding In One Line
Type and press Enter. That is the whole thing — the row appears before the
server has even been asked, so you can add five things with five Enters without
waiting once. Press n anywhere on the page to jump to the box.
Urgency, Importance and List sit right underneath it. Urgency and
Importance go back to Medium after each add — a priority left over from the
last to-do would apply silently to the next one. The List deliberately stays
put, because you usually add several things to the same one.
✎ More details… (or Shift+Enter) opens the full form before the
to-do is created, carrying over whatever you have already typed. That is the only way
to set a due time, notes, a link or a repeat at creation, instead of adding a
plain one and going back to edit it.
⌨ Shorthand In The Add Box
The add box reads shorthand as you type, and chips underneath show what it
understood — silently swallowing part of what you wrote would be worse than not
parsing it at all.
u4 urgent · u3 high · u2 medium ·
u1 low · u0 none — and the same with i for
importance, where i4 is critical.
!! sets both to maximum at once.
#Health picks a list — the start of the name is enough, and where two
lists start alike the first one wins, so the chip underneath tells you which.
tdy, tmr, a weekday like fri, or a date like
8/20 set the due date — a bare date always means the next one, so
1/2 typed in December means next January.
★ stars it.
Shorthand only counts as a whole word on its own, so ordinary text is
safe. The older !u4 spelling still works. To keep a literal
— an actual #hashtag in the title — put a \ in front of it.
🔤 The Two-Letter Code
Every to-do carries two separate ratings, and that is the point: urgent and
important are not the same thing. A leaking pipe is urgent; a will is important.
The colored pill on each row shows both at once — urgency first, then
importance:
Z none · L low · M medium ·
H high · C critical (urgent).
So HC is high urgency and critical importance. MZ is medium urgency and
no importance. CC is both at maximum.
The color of the stripe and the pill comes from the two multiplied together,
across nine bands from grey to magenta — so something genuinely critical stands out
from something merely noisy. The letters are always there as well, so the meaning
survives greyscale, color-blindness and printing.
Click the code (or press and hold it) on any row to change either
rating on the spot. It saves as you pick and stays open, so you can set both.
✋ Everything You Can Do From A Row
You rarely need to open a to-do. Three targets on the row itself:
The code pill → urgency and importance.
The list name → move it to another list.
Anywhere else on the row → the full quick-actions menu.
The two pills open on a single click. The row itself takes a
double-click instead, so that a plain click is still free to select the text
you are reading. And all three answer a press and hold — with a mouse or a
finger, whichever you reach for. The ⋮ button opens the same menu as the row,
in one tap.
That menu holds: Today, Tmrw, +1wk, +1mo and
✕ date for the due date; ★ Star; ⤳ Move; ⏭ Skip;
✎ Edit for the full form; and 🗑 Delete.
The four date buttons all count from today, not from the date
the to-do is currently carrying — so +1wk on something three months overdue
means next week, never a date still in the past. +1mo on the 31st lands on the
last day of the next month when that month is shorter.
⤳ Move files the to-do under a different list — the same
thing clicking its list name does. It offers every list you have, — No list —,
and ＋ New list… if the right one does not exist yet.
Skip is not Delete and not Done. It means "this one passed and I
did not do it" — it is what you want for one occurrence of a repeating to-do, and it
leaves the series running.
✓ Checking Off, And Undo
Tick the box and it saves at once — a green ✓ confirms it, then the row fades
out after a moment so the list stays down to what is left.
An Undo button sits in the message at the bottom for ten seconds. Past
that, open ✓ Done and un-tick it to bring it back; nothing is lost.
The counter under the search box tracks how many you have finished today.
Prefer completed items to stay put instead of fading? Options &
Filters → Keep Completed Items In Place.
↻ Repeating To-Dos
Open a to-do and set Repeats to daily, weekly on chosen days, monthly
on a date, or yearly on one or more dates. A repeating to-do takes up one row, not forty:
the list shows the earliest one you have not dealt with yet — so if you missed
Monday, Monday is what you see, not Wednesday.
Completing or skipping it brings the following one forward automatically.
⏭ Skip passes on a single occurrence without breaking the series.
The ↻ on the row means it repeats, and it says how: daily,
weekly, monthly, yearly — or the days themselves once there is
more than one a week. One letter a day, Monday first:
M T W R F S Y — so MWF, TR for Tuesday and Thursday,
SY for the weekend. (R is Thursday and Y is Sunday, which is
what lets all seven fit in one character each.) Anything after the · is how
many are queued up behind the one you can see.
One day a week reads simply weekly, because the due date on the
same row already tells you which day. Hover the mark for the rule spelled out in
full — the same sentence sits under Repeats inside the editor, so the row and
the panel always say the same thing. It prints too. Prefer the bare glyph?
Options, Filters, Lists & Sharing → Show Repeat Interval; the tooltip keeps the rule
either way.
The ↻ Repeat chip shows everything that repeats, in one place. Like
every chip it clears the search box and the list filter on the way in, and unlike
every other one it also overrides Show To-Do’s Older Than One Year — a
view whose whole point is completeness has no business being quietly shortened.
It lists one row per repeating to-do, not one per repeat rule.
A rule whose dates have all run out has nothing left to list, so the line under the
chips says how many of those you have rather than leaving them out in silence.
Open any to-do and set Repeats again to restart one.
Every one of those dates does exist — they have to, or reminders could
not fire for them — they are just folded into a single row. To see them all,
Options, Filters, Lists & Sharing → Show Every Occurrence Of A Repeating To-Do.
✓ Done always lists every occurrence you completed; that is your history.
Monthly on the 29th, 30th or 31st falls back to the last day of
any shorter month, and 29 February falls back to the 28th in a non-leap year —
so a to-do never quietly skips a whole month.
Every repeat adds one more thing: Notify Me At. Pick one or more times of day —
on the half hour — and you get a notification at each of them. Good for
the things a date alone will not make you do: pills at 8:00 and 20:00, a walk at 12:30.
On a daily to-do those are push only — they never arrive by
email, however your Notifications settings are
set, because a dozen one-line emails a day is not a reminder. They repeat every day
until you tick the to-do off or ⏭ Skip it, and Do Not Disturb hours
silence them. The 🔔 on the row means a to-do notifies, and the number is how
many times a day.
Weekly, monthly and yearly ones send both a push and an email, and only
on the day it comes due — once each, never the next morning as well. Leave the
times empty and you still get one, at 10:00 AM unless you change it —
Notifications → Notify Me About Repeating
To-Dos At, where you can also turn it off.
Those do not repeat if you ignore them. A birthday you never
tick off would otherwise nag you every morning for a year; chasing overdue things is
the daily summary's job, on whatever cadence you set there.
For a repeat you simply cannot do late — a weekly game, a class, a trash
pickup — tick Stop Showing After Due Date on it. The occurrence you missed
stops following you around the moment its day is over, and next week's still turns up
on time. Set it with Every one in the series and it sticks for good.
Editing one asks Save changes to: Just this one or Every one in the
series. "Every one" also leaves already-completed occurrences alone. If you change
how it repeats, the choice locks to the whole series — a single occurrence
cannot carry its own repeat rule.
🗂 Grouping, Sorting And Finding
Options, Filters, Lists & Sharing — the panel above the list —
holds how the list is arranged, and it is remembered on every device you sign in
on. It is also where your lists live: rename them, color them, archive
them, and share one with somebody else.
Group By → When It's Due splits the list into Way Past Due (more than a
month late), Past Due, Due Today, Due Tomorrow, Due Within a
Week, Due Within a Month, Due Later and No Due Date. Every
heading collapses, and stays collapsed next time.
Or group by List, Urgency or Importance instead. Color By
can key the stripe to urgency alone, importance alone, or turn color off.
Show To-Do’s Older Than One Year is off to begin with, so a
long-lived list opens as what is still live. Turn it on to see everything
again. A to-do counts as old only when everything about it is more than a year
back — so one you wrote down two years ago but dated for next Tuesday stays
exactly where it is, and so does anything you finished recently.
Leaving it off can withhold a great many at once, and it tells you how
many: the count sits under the search box with a show them button that turns
it straight back on. Nothing is deleted, the chips count what you can actually see,
and 🖨 Print, 📥 CSV and 📧 Email all send the same list you are
looking at.
↺ Reset puts every option back and re-opens collapsed groups. It only appears
once something is actually off its default.
Search looks at the title and the notes, so a word you only wrote
in the notes still finds it. While a search is running every group opens, so a
match can never sit hidden inside a heading you had folded away — and the groups
you collapsed go straight back to how you left them when you clear the box. You can
still fold a heading away mid-search; that one is forgotten with the search.
🔔 Reminders
Once a day you get a digest — what is overdue, what is due today, what is
coming up, and anything urgent — by push, email, or both. Choose which, and what hour
it arrives, on Notifications.
Any to-do can also carry up to three reminders of its own, each an explicit
date and time you pick under Notify me at in the editor. They arrive
whatever your digest hour is, and they don't need a due date — "remind me Saturday
morning" works on a to-do with no deadline at all. Pick a date and leave the time
blank and it fills in 9:00 AM. Leave all three empty and this to-do never
notifies you; it still appears in the daily digest.
And repeating to-dos each carry their own times of day, set under
Repeats → Notify Me At in the editor. A daily one notifies by
push only, never email, and keeps going until the to-do is done or skipped.
A weekly, monthly or yearly one sends both a push and an email, once per
time, on the day it's due — and if you set no times it uses the one here, 10:00 AM to
begin with.
Also on that page: how many days ahead counts as "coming up", how often
an overdue item nags you again, and whether urgent to-dos are mentioned even on a day
with nothing due. Do Not Disturb hours silence push only — email still
arrives, because a silenced email is just a lost one.
📴 It Works With No Signal
This page is built to be used on a train. Check things off, change priorities and
lists, set due dates, add new to-dos, delete — all of it works with no connection.
Changes waiting to go up are marked ⏳ Waiting to sync, with a banner counting
them, and they are stored on this device. They upload by themselves the moment
you are back — even if you closed the tab in between. Nothing is held in memory and
lost.
Opening the full editor, and emailing or printing the list, need a
connection. 📥 Download CSV does not — it is built from what is already on your
screen.
Email, print and CSV all live at the bottom of
Options, Filters, Lists & Sharing.
👥 Sharing A List
A list can be shared with one other person, and you both then see the same
list. Either of you can add to it, tick things off, change them or delete them.
Open Options, Filters, Lists & Sharing — the panel just above your
to-dos — find the list under Lists & Sharing, and press
Share beside it. You
can only pick someone already on your Contact
List, and they have to accept first — nothing of yours is visible to
them until they do. Their answer turns up as a card at the top of this page.
A shared list is marked 👥 Shared wherever lists are listed, and its chip on
each row carries the 👥 too. To-dos the other person added are marked with
👤 and their name, so it is always clear whose is whose.
Two things stay with whoever started them. Only the person who
made the list can rename it, re-color it, share it or delete it — and
only the person who added a to-do can move it to a different list. Everything
else either of you can do.
By default a shared list joins both your reminders, so either of you gets the
nudge, and you each get a notification when the other adds or finishes something.
Press Sharing… beside the list to turn either off — your choice only
affects you.
Stop sharing (or Leave this list, if it is not yours) ends
it at any time. Nobody loses anything: whatever each of you added stays yours, it
simply stops being in that list. That is also why a shared list cannot be deleted
until you stop sharing it.