Today’s update was due a few weeks ago, but we discovered a critical bug during testing that had to be resolved by reworking part of the app. Many of you have been writing in asking for Complications over the last few weeks, so we’re happy to finally get this out to you – we hope you like it!

A Faster Native App

With watchOS 1, apps were designed to run on your iPhone, and stream over to your Apple Watch wirelessly. This could cause noticeable delays during use, and your iPhone always needed to be within range. But with watchOS 2, Apple made it possible to run apps directly on the watch, which meant we could rebuild Things as a native app.

Since the watch app now runs separately from the iPhone app, it also stores a discrete copy of your data that needs to be kept in sync – so we’ve created a special new mechanism that manages sync for these two devices over a local connection. It doesn’t matter now if your iPhone is out of range, Things for Apple Watch runs independently – and syncs up with your iPhone again when they’re close.

But the feature we think you’ll love the most is Things’ new custom Complications – tiny widgets that display pertinent information directly on the watch face.

A Complication for Every Face

When we first released Things for Apple Watch, we said that our intention was to make an app that was focused, not on task management, but on task accomplishment – a companion that would encourage you to follow through on your daily goals. With the Complications we’re releasing today, this is easier than ever. They show you what to do next – right on the watch face – and display your progress as you go.

Varying in size, color, and content, Things’ three Complications are designed to look great on any watch face you choose. In fact, why not create several different watch faces based on your context? It’s very easy to switch between them with a force touch.

1. The Modular watch face allows you to display Things’ largest Complication, which shows your next three upcoming to-dos.
2. Where space is limited, like on the Utility watch face, a one-line Complication shows you the very next thing you need to do.
3. Finally, Things provides a Complication that subtly shows your progress each day in a ring that looks great on any watch face.

Each Complication also acts as a shortcut – just raise your wrist, tap the watch face, and Things will open. This makes your to-dos instantly accessible, and keeps you on track as you progress through the day.

Multi-Tasking With Split View

The Split View feature that recently came to iPad is now also available on your Mac. Just click and hold the green zoom button in the corner of Things’ window, drag it to the left or right pane, and then choose another app for the other side. It’s great for setting up a dedicated workspace so you can focus on your events and to-dos together:

Drag & Drop With Force Touch

If you’re a Mac user with a Force Touch trackpad, today’s update brings a nice little enhancement for you. When you drag a to-do over the sidebar and want to drop it into a specific list, you can now press a little deeper on your trackpad and the list will open. With the to-do still under your cursor, you can drop it at just the right place in the list.

Requires a Mac with a Force Touch trackpad.

Things 2.8 for El Capitan is available now as a free update for all customers. We hope you enjoy it!

iPad’s New Multitasking and Shortcuts

iOS 9 introduces two great new multi-tasking features for iPad: Slide Over and Split View. They allow you to access Things while working in other apps by sliding it in from the right side of your screen. Here, you can use a fully functional version of the app in a neatly condensed layout.

These two new multi-tasking modes are great for working through your Today list, taking notes while researching something online, or viewing your to-dos alongside calendar events as you plan your day. Here’s how it looks:

Slide Over

Split View

Slide Over allows you to quickly check your to-dos with a swipe.

Split View allows you to run two apps side by side at full power.

Things 2.8 for iPad also introduces new shortcuts for external keyboards, making it easier to navigate around the app and create new to-dos.

iPhone’s New Quick Actions

Along with general improvements for iOS 9, this update adds a nice feature for the new iPhone 6s with 3D Touch. When you tap Things’ app icon, just press down slightly and a menu will appear with our new Quick Actions. You can create a new to-do from the home screen, or jump straight into your Today list:

Things for watchOS 2

Our new native app for Apple Watch is almost ready. We intended to release it this week alongside iOS 9 and watchOS 2 but found an important bug that we need to fix. We’re working on that now and will release it as soon as it’s ready. In the meantime, the existing watch app will continue to work fine on watchOS 2.

Things 2.8 for iPhone and iPad is available now as a free update—we hope you enjoy the new features! Things 2.8 is also coming to Mac—it’s been submitted for review and we’ll release it for OS X El Capitan next week.

Three years have now passed since the launch of Things Cloud. Over these 36 months, the service has done exceptionally well. It has proven to be robust and reliable, and continues to receive fantastic feedback.

Now, as you know, we’ve been working away on Things 3. Part of this time has been invested in enhancements for Things Cloud in a project we call “Nimbus”, and this is what we’d like to talk about today.

Pushing Changes Across Devices

Shortly after Things Cloud launched, we released a feature called Local Push. It makes sync instantaneous as long as Things is open on your devices (and they’re on the same local network). But of course the app is often closed on your mobile device—so it won’t receive the push, and won’t be in sync until you manually launch the app later.

Today’s new version of Things Cloud solves this problem by sending your devices a push from the cloud (regardless of what network they’re connected to). This means that most of the time you’re in sync even before you launch the app. Here’s how it works:

1. You make a change on your Mac; this change is immediately sent to Things Cloud.
2. Things Cloud determines which of your other devices should receive the change, and asks Apple’s Push Notification Service to contact them via a push notification.
3. Apple’s notification service contacts your devices and wakes Things.
4. Things wakes in the background on these devices, requests the latest changes from Things Cloud, and integrates them. The next time you launch the app, it’s already in sync.

Note that Apple’s role in this process is only to deliver notifications, not transmit the data itself. Your data is only ever communicated between your devices and Things Cloud—just like before.

Of course, we need to be responsible about the frequency of these pushes. If we did too many, too often, there would be a lot of unnecessary traffic. So we’ve configured Nimbus for low-priority pushes that wake Things infrequently: typically, up to 10 minutes can pass until a push is received by a dormant device.

You’re already using it

Nimbus is a significant enhancement to Things Cloud—a 2.0 if you will—which enhances the “just works” experience you’ve come to expect. You don’t need to enable it, or configure any settings—you’re already using it. We hope you didn’t notice! It’s meant to be completely silent.

Designing Things for Apple Watch

With the Watch, Apple is entering a new device category: wrist-worn computers. Much like with the iPad before, in order for the Watch to be useful, it needs to do some things better than our existing devices. This burden is not on Apple alone—we as developers need to strive to find good answers for our apps as well. What exactly is the watch better at? Which interactions would be great, and which wouldn’t?

In our view, the most defining feature of Apple Watch is its immediacy: it’s always with you, literally at your fingertips. There is no barrier between your wish to interact with it and your ability to do so—all you have to do is tap your wrist. The watch can even tap you on the wrist to get your attention. We believe it’s the immediacy of these interactions that makes it possible for Apple Watch to become your very own companion that guides and assists you throughout the day.

Apple’s own health app is a perfect example of this: if one of your goals in life is to live healthier, you now have a friendly companion to help you achieve that goal—subtly reminding you to move more, and showing you at a glance how far you’ve progressed.

We see Things for Apple Watch in exactly the same light. Things has always had a unique feature that lets you curate your very own Today list: everything you want to accomplish on a given day goes there—be it individual to-dos, to-dos from various different projects, or even entire projects themselves. After you’ve compiled your list for the day, all you need to do is follow through. As with your health goals, this is easier said than done. The Watch, we believe, is the perfect companion to help you stay on track.

With this in mind, we set out to design a version of Things that’s focused, not on task management, but on task accomplishment. Specifically, what you’ve decided you will do today. Let’s take a look at how it works.

A Tour of Things for Apple Watch

Today’s To-Dos at a Glance

As you go about your day, the quickest way to access your to-dos is by pulling up Things’ Glance—just raise your wrist and swipe up on the watch face to see it. Two things are prominently displayed here: the next few outstanding to-dos for today, as well as the progress you’ve made so far. There’s also a nice little graph that tracks your performance over the past few days.

Tapping anywhere on the Glance opens the main app, and brings you directly into your full Today list where you can quickly mark your to-dos complete as you go.

Each accomplishment doesn’t go unrewarded: there’s a nice animation as you check off your items, and the ring at the top inches forward as you progress through the day.

Quick Decisions

If you tap on a to-do, you’ll see all relevant information: its title, the project it belongs to, its notes, as well as its due date. This gives you all the information you need to decide how to proceed with the to-do.

If you scroll down to the bottom of this screen, you can also tap to dictate some notes, or change the due date.

Adding To-Dos

With Siri, you can add new to-dos to Things right from your Apple Watch. Just press and hold the digital crown, or say “Hey Siri, remember to contact Sarah about our trip”. This sends the new to-do to Things’ Inbox where you can process it later.

Inside the app, you can also tap the + button in the top right to dictate your to-do. If you want to work on it right away, move it from the Inbox to your Today list with a quick tap.

Work with Projects

If you know you’ll mostly be working on a given project throughout the day, you can simply mark that project with a star on your Mac, iPad, or iPhone and it will show up on your Apple Watch, together with all its to-dos.

Fully Integrated

Things for Apple Watch is integrated with Things Cloud for seamless updates across all your devices. Every thing you dictate; every task you complete; every due date you set; every change you make—it’s all passed over and synchronised instantly with your Mac and iPad via the iPhone app.

Also, if you’ve scheduled to-dos for a certain date, Things for Apple Watch can remind you in the morning on that day. This gives you a chance to review them so you don’t miss anything important. Just turn it on in Things for iPhone, and choose a time for your alert.

With this combination of features, we hope you’ll find Things for Apple Watch to be a great companion that truly helps you achieve your goals every day.

Available Today

Things has already been released for Apple Watch. This means that if you already own Things for iPhone—and millions of you do!—you’ll be able to install it as soon as your watches start arriving later this week. Just pair the new device with your iPhone and all of your to-dos for the day will appear on your wrist.

We look forward to hearing what you think of the latest addition to the Things family!

If you like Things for Apple Watch, you can share today’s news on Twitter or Facebook. Also, a big thank you to Peter Gromer for writing the great music for our video.

Of all the features we’ve added to Things over the last few months, we think you’ll find today’s new widget the most useful. It puts your most important to-dos in the most accessible place, and makes managing your day so much easier.

Curate Your Day

Things’ core principle is pretty simple: focus on what you can do now, to the exclusion of all else. This is epitomized by the app’s Today feature—which allows you to curate a selection of to-dos from multiple different projects, and work on them throughout the day in a single, focused list:

New to Things? See how it works.

At Your Fingertips

With today’s release of Things 2.6, this curated Today list is now available in the Notification Center on your iPhone and iPad. No matter what app you’re in, you can access these to-dos with a quick swipe from the top of your screen.

The new widget allows you to mark items complete (or canceled), and provides a button for quickly creating new ones: it launches the app ready to type, and saves the new item in your inbox. Have a look:

One of the great things about this feature is that you don’t even have to unlock your phone to use it, so it’s easy to take a quick glance at your list while you’re out shopping or running errands in town. And because your to-dos are listed alongside your calendar events, it’s the perfect place to get an overview of your day.

Things 2.6 for iPhone and Things 2.6 for iPad are available for download now, and the Today Widget has already been added to Things for Mac.

We hope you enjoy this feature!

Today’s updates also include some URI scheme improvements for developers and pro users. You can read more about the schema here.

We’re pleased to say that Things Cloud has handled the considerable surge in traffic flawlessly. There’s no better way to test the merits of a cloud service than to have it scale so quickly, and it’s great to know that Things Cloud has the chops.

Things for Mac also rose to #1 in the Mac App Store in many countries. We had planned to keep it on sale for just the week, but decided to extend it so that anyone still using the trial has time to take advantage of the deal—get it before Friday, December 5th and save 30%. This promotion has now ended.

Apple’s promotion has driven a lot of traffic to our website, and we were excited to see that over half a million people have already read the Getting Started guide since last week. If you’re new to Things, it’s a great place to start.

We’ve now turned our attention back to Things 2.6 for iPhone and iPad, which includes the new Today Widget for Notification Center. That update is now in alpha and we hope to be able to submit it to the App Store soon.

As a special gift for Thanksgiving, Apple has chosen Things for iPhone and iPad as their Free App of the Week—a worldwide promotion that makes both apps free for everyone, for the first time ever. This is a fantastic opportunity to get your hands on these award-winning productivity apps.

All three versions of Things have recently been updated with a fresh new design, and had great new features added for iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite—such as the Add to Things extension for creating to-dos from other apps, support for Handoff across all your devices, background refresh, support for the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, and a Today Widget for OS X.

Only the iOS apps are being promoted by Apple this week, but that doesn’t mean we can’t help you get the Mac app, too! So this week only, you can get 30% off Things for Mac as well. This promotion has now ended.

Download

Download

Get Trial Buy

This promotion will run from November 20-28.
This promotion has now ended.

Getting Started with Things

Things provides a world-class sync service that keeps all your devices up-to-date. It’s fast, reliable, and entirely free. Once you’ve installed the app, just go into the settings, turn it on, and create an account. Be sure to log into the same account on your other devices, and all your projects and to-dos will instantly sync between them.

As you begin using the apps, you’ll find that they are designed to be very light-weight and easy to use—getting organized with Things is fun. To get you started, we’ve prepared a short guide on how to get the most out of Things.

Of course, you can also find information about the apps on our support page, and our support team is always here to help with any other questions you might have.

Spread the Word

We hope you’ll find a lot of benefit from using Things. If you think your family or friends might also like the apps, be sure to let them know about this promotion before Friday, November 28—that’s when it ends!

You can share the news on Facebook or retweet our announcement on Twitter.

Happy Thanksgiving!

See it in action.

We’ve been getting a lot of positive feedback from everyone on our recent redesigns of Things for Mac and for iPhone—thanks a lot! We hope you’ll also like today’s update for iPad. Let’s have a look at what’s new in this release.

A Quick Tour

Things 2.5 for iPad is a refinement of the existing interface. Everything has been finely tuned with new custom artwork. You can see the transformation here:

New

Old

You’ll also notice that we’ve traded the metaphorical project booklets for a normal list view. While this makes the design a little less playful, it’s far more functional and makes it easier to manage your projects.

This update also includes a nice improvement to navigation: when you’re holding your iPad in portrait, you can swipe in from the left to reveal your lists and quickly change to another view. This replaces the old popover from the previous version, and makes navigation a lot more intuitive.

Finally, we’ve built in a feature Apple calls background refresh. The app will now automatically update your to-dos in the background; i.e., it will generate your repeating tasks, move scheduled and due items into Today, sync with Things Cloud, and update the app’s badge on your homescreen.

The New “Add to Things” Extension

The new “Add to Things” extension is definitely one of the best new features in Things 2.5. By closely integrating with system sharing, it now makes it easier than ever to get new to-dos into your inbox—a link to a website, a GPS location from a map, contact details from your address book—pretty much anything.

The new extension allows you to send to-dos to Things from other apps.

This feature is now available on iPad, iPhone and Mac. Any apps on your devices that support extensions can send to-dos into Things with just a tap. And, of course, Things Cloud will pass them seamlessly to your other devices in the background.

Handoff on All Devices

We already added Handoff support to Mac and iPhone a few weeks ago, so today’s release for iPad makes the ensemble complete. It doesn’t matter now which device you’re on, you can immediately pull up the same project or area on another device with just a swipe.*

Things 2.5.3 for iPhone, Things 2.5 for Mac, and Things 2.5 for iPad are available for download now.

Two months ago we set out to revitalize all three of our apps. With the great new features, usability improvements, and custom design work in Things 2.5, these are the best apps we’ve ever shipped.

Next, we’ll finish our work on Things 2.6 for iOS, which will introduce the Today Widget for iPhone and iPad. Stay tuned!

Refreshed UI

Things for Mac receives a fresh coat of paint today; you’ll notice subtle visual refinements throughout the app—including new icons for the sidebar and preferences, new designs for the toolbar and tag filter bar, and tweaked windows for quick entry and tag management.

New

Old

It looks perfect on OS X Yosemite—but it’s the great new features that really make today’s update shine. Let’s have a look at what’s new.

Today Widget for Mac

Things’ unique Today list—which shows you all of your tasks for the day—is now built directly into the OS X Notification Center. With a quick two-finger swipe on the trackpad, you can reveal your to-dos while working in any other app, and mark them complete as you go:

This is a major boost for productivity; you don’t have to switch back to Things any more to see what’s next, your to-dos are always just a swipe away. And because they’re listed alongside your calendar events, it’s the perfect place to get an overview of your day.

Handoff for Mac & iPhone

By utilizing Yosemite’s new Handoff technology, Things now allows you to switch context between devices seamlessly. When you’re reviewing a project on your Mac, for example, and need to head off to a meeting with your iPhone, just swipe up Things’ icon from the lockscreen and you’ll be taken directly into the same project.

This is a great time-saving shortcut that turns Things into a single, unified experience across your devices.

“Add to Things” Extension for Mac

Things for Mac has a great feature called Quick Entry, which allows you to send to-dos into Things while working in other apps. Today’s update makes it even better by adding a new extension that integrates it directly into Yosemite’s share sheet:

This new integration means you can do things that were previously impossible with Quick Entry. Integration with Maps is a great example: if you need to run an errand at a particular address, you can look it up on your Mac, Add to Things, and save the location in your to-do.

When you’re out later, running errands with your iPhone, you’ll know exactly where to go.

There are already many uses for this new extension, but it will become even more useful in the coming weeks as other apps begin to add standard sharing in Yosemite. We look forward to seeing what’s possible!

Things 2.5 for Mac and Things 2.5.2 for iPhone are available for download now. We hope you enjoy them!

Our plan next is to update Things for iPad with all the great features that have come to iPhone in the last few weeks, and we’re also working on a Today Widget for both iPhone and iPad. We’ll let you know as soon as those updates are ready.

We’ve optimized Things so that it looks great on the new iPhones and takes advantage of the extra space. Here are the three sizes for comparison:

We’ve also added a new feature that allows you to share to-dos out to other apps; you can send a single to-do, or an entire project. Just tap the share button inside of an item.

Things 2.5.1 for iPhone also includes numerous bug fixes and stability improvements for iOS 8, and is available for download now.

As a reminder, we’re also working on our Today Widget, an update for iPad, and some great improvements for the upcoming release of OS X Yosemite—all of which are coming along nicely.

First we want to walk you through the changes in Things 2.5. Then we’ll share our plan for the months ahead, including some news about Things 3.

A Quick Tour of Things 2.5

When you install the update, the first thing you’ll notice is the beautiful new app icon.

When you open it up, you’ll see an interface that feels familiar, yet looks quite different. We’ve removed superfluous ornamental elements, adjusted the fonts, and updated almost all icons and graphics. Here’s what it looks like:

Things now also supports the swipe-back gesture for easier navigation, as well as the new keyboard. (Finally!)

We’ve also built in support for a feature Apple calls background refresh. Things will now periodically launch in the background and make sure your to-dos are up to date; i.e., it will generate your repeating tasks, move scheduled and due items into Today, update with Things Cloud, and update the app’s badge on your homescreen.

Things 2.5 also brings full 64-bit compatibility for the iPhone 5s, 6, and 6 Plus.

The New “Add to Things” Extension

One of the features our users absolutely love in the Mac version of Things is Quick Entry with Autofill. Say you’re browsing the web and you stumble across some information you want to act on later. You can simply select the relevant text, invoke a keyboard shortcut, and a new to-do is saved to your inbox with that information—all without ever leaving Safari.

With iOS 8, the very same thing is now also possible on iPhone. You can see it in action here:

The new “Add to Things” extension allows you to send to-dos to Things from other apps.

Note that this is not limited to Safari. Other Apple apps that already work great with this feature are Notes, Maps, Contacts, Podcasts, and the various stores (App Store, iTunes Store, iBooks Store, etc.).

As third-party developers start to adopt iOS 8, the list of apps that can “Add to Things” will grow, and we’re very excited about the new workflows this will enable.

Things 2.5 for iPhone is available for download today.

Our Plan for the Months Ahead

Today’s release is a slight change of plans. Things 3 is still taking some time to finish and we want to give it the time it needs, but we also want you to have a great app you can use today — especially with the great new features iOS 8 enables.

Most importantly, Things 2.5 for iPhone finally introduces a visual refresh which was long overdue (our original plan was to ship a new UI with Things 3). We’re sorry to have kept you waiting.

We have a new development plan we’d like to share with you. Here’s what to expect in the coming months:

Bug fixes for Things 2.5
We’ll be keeping our eye out for any bugs that might arise, and ship fixes as they become available.

Today Widget
Yes, this is another great iOS 8 feature that seems like it’s made just for Things: the ability to see your Today list right inside Notification Center. Our implementation is coming along nicely and we’re happy to show you a sneak peek right now. Beta testing of this feature will start very soon and we’ll blog again when it’s ready.

iPad Version
We’re currently integrating all the enhancements of Things 2.5 into the iPad version as well, so expect some updates in the coming weeks that include the “Add to Things” extension, Today Widget, background fetch, and 64-bit support. Visually, it won’t be such a big change as the iPhone version, but it will receive some polish. In the meantime, Things for iPad has already received a 2.3 update to ensure it continues running smoothly on iOS 8.

Mac Version
We’ll also polish Things for Mac for the upcoming release of OS X Yosemite. Yosemite is currently rumored to be shipping in late October, so expect a Things Mac update and blog post next month.

Things 3 Private Beta for Mac
Even though our development plan for Things 3 has been pushed back by the recent changes, we’re expecting to start a private Mac beta of Things 3 with our core group of testers at the end of November. The iOS versions will join when they’re ready, and we’ll gradually expand our tester pool as the beta progresses. We’ll have more info on this once the beta starts.

We hope you’ll like the fresh UI and new features that have shipped today in Things 2.5 for iPhone. As usual, you can visit our Status Board to stay up to date on our latest developments.

We seriously love helping out however we can. Day in and day out, we answer your general questions, lend a hand with your technical problems, and talk to you about your ideas. It’s always exciting to hear from you – to find out what you’re doing with Things, and, more importantly, to learn about what we can do better.

Looking back over the many discussions we’ve had, we’ve noticed that one question comes up again and again: “How do I get the most out of Things?” So while the rest of the team works on Things 3, the three of us have been reviewing your feedback and thinking about how we can make your experience with Things better.

How do you get the most out of Things? The team has a vision for the apps, but we also understand that everyone’s needs are unique. With that in mind, we want to start collecting and sharing some of the tips that have resulted in countless “ah-ha!” moments across the tens of thousands of emails and tweets we’ve exchanged with you over the years.

First off, we set our sights on writing a guide to help you master the basics. Our goal was to teach you the apps’ essentials, together with some of the pointers that have really helped others to stay productive with Things. The result, Getting Started with Things, is now available. If you’re new to Things, this guide contains everything you need to hit the ground running. If you’re a long-time user, we think you might still learn a thing or two.

Read the Guide

There’s a lot more we want to tell you about using Things to its full potential, but we wanted to get these fundamental tips into your hands now. Julia, Mick, and I are continuing to work on more material behind the scenes. As always, we’d love to hear what you think, so drop us a line with your thoughts on Getting Started with Things – or just to say hello!

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A Million Thank-Yous

First and foremost we want to thank every one of you. Because it is you who have made all of this possible. When we first set out to build Things, we were making a tool that we would love to use, uncertain if it could become a viable long-term business. After all, few people seemed to take “to-do list” apps seriously at the time. Fast forward to today, Things is available on the Mac, iPhone and iPad, and we’re able to sustain a team of 11 people who care deeply about making beautiful software. We love productivity, and being able to work together every day on a project we care about is an incredible privilege for us—and it’s only possible because of you.

But there is a deeper reason we want to thank all of you and that is for the incredible feedback you’ve sent us over the years. Your encouragement and passion for productivity has inspired us from the beginning. It is deeply humbling and hugely motivating to see that so many people are more productive each day because of Things.

This is the number one reason that keeps us going. We have the highest respect for our users, and in everything we do, we want to make the right decisions in that light.

It hasn’t always been a smooth ride, however. Many of you will remember the struggles we had building our cloud sync solution. We had to embark on two different approaches, and learn the hard way how not to do it, before finally settling on what would become Things Cloud. If we’d known at the beginning how long it was going to take we might have been deterred. But even today, many apps are still struggling to deliver a stable and fast sync, and even Apple has found this to be a hard problem. What had once been Things’ achilles heel is now one of its most stellar features: when it comes to sync, Things has got you covered like nobody else. Again, our thanks go to you—because you stuck with us during that time, and believed we would come through.

Celebrate With Us

Today marks an important milestone for Things and you’ve helped us get here. We want to celebrate by giving you a chance to win some new hardware—and since we make Things for the Mac, iPad and iPhone, what better gifts could there be? Up for grabs are one MacBook Pro, one iPad Air and one iPhone 5s. Additionally, we’re giving away 50 copies of Things for each platform. Update: All gifts have now been awarded and the contest is closed.

Participating is easy, here’s how:

1. Retweet this.
2. Follow @culturedcode so we can DM you if you win.

That’s it! We’ll randomly choose the winners on December 25th (Christmas Day) – make sure you retweet before then, and best of luck!

A Million Things Yet to Be Done

If you’ve read our September blog post, you’ll know that ever since shipping Things Cloud, we’ve been hard at work on what we’ve somewhat shyly implied is “the next iteration of Things”. Well, today we’d like to reveal what exactly this means:

For a little over a year now, we’ve been working on Things 3, which will be available for the Mac, iPhone, and iPad. It introduces a fresh new visual style, a revised user interface, more structure for your lists, and an array of great new features that are designed to make you more productive. We’ve revisited many areas of the app that have been neglected in the past, and renovated much of our codebase. It’s the most ambitious update we’ve ever undertaken.

Now, we know that the question on everyone’s mind is when this will come. We had actually hoped to show you a preview before the end of the year, but we’re sorry to say that the apps are just not ready yet. While we understand the desire for a concrete time estimate, they are notoriously hard to get right. So instead, we’ll make good use of our status board and keep you updated on the progress of development, from now until Things 3 ships.

With respect to iOS 7 we were faced with a pretty straightforward decision back in June. Apple had just unveiled iOS 7, and we were knee-deep in the development of Things 3. The decision was to either continue development of Things 3 as planned, or to halt development, revive the old Things 2 code, and ship a half-hearted re-skin of our app. It’s clear now what we chose to do. This means that you’ll have to stick with the Things 2 design a bit longer, but it also means that Things 3 will ship much sooner than it would have otherwise.

We think you will love Things 3—we have all started using it internally, and we couldn’t be more excited. Please sign up for our newsletter or follow us on Twitter so you’ll know once we’re ready. Until then, we hope you’ll keep being as productive with Things as you’ve always been.

Thanks again for all your support throughout the years! Happy holidays, and see you again in 2014!

Today’s release improves the stability of several features and brings full compatibility with the new operating system. In particular, it fixes some issues we were seeing with Quick Entry and Reminders & Siri.

As always, if you have any questions or encounter any issues, please let us know on Twitter or contact our support team – we’re always ready to help.

We’ve been testing the current version of Things (2.2) over the past few months and it works great on iOS 7. Just update your devices to iOS 7 and you can continue using Things without missing a beat. The app looks and works just as it did before.

But let’s talk about the elephant in the room.

iOS 7 looks, feels and functions quite differently. You can easily spot the graphical changes – its flatness, the absence of shadows, and its distinct icon style. But it’s the underlying design principles that make iOS 7 truly exciting – the focus on content, the clever use of animation, and the restraint on ornamentation. Above all, it challenges us to rethink how we interact with an app. So what about Things?

Shipping Things Cloud last year gave us tremendous freedom to shift our attention back to Things itself. It was time to start innovating again on its core features – reimagining how you interact with the app and how your content is presented to you. We also evaluated many of the feature requests we had received, and decided which ones would be a great fit. Then we started developing. When Apple unveiled iOS 7 three months ago, it only added fire to our plans and encouraged us to go even further.

We are incredibly excited about what we have in the pipeline. Things is going to feel right at home on iOS 7, and we can't wait to show you more—a bit later this year.

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Dates and Time Zones

When you go traveling, you shouldn’t have to think about time zones. Your phone automatically detects your location and sets the correct time zone for you. Apps can then use this information, adjust as necessary, and make sure that everything happens on the correct day.

Due to the way Things previously stored and processed dates, however, it was possible for a to-do to show up on the wrong day when you traveled to a different time zone. For example, an item that was due on the 17th could show up on the 18th instead. While this would only happen in certain situations, it was unacceptable – and something we just had to get right.

For this release we’ve been through and carefully adjusted all the date-related functionality in Things. It’s been a considerable amount of work, but these improvements – which affect scheduled dates, due dates, repeating tasks, local notifications, and the Daily Review – are a good and necessary foundation going forward.

After updating to 2.2, you’ll never have to worry about time zones again when you go traveling; Things will know where you are – or should we say, when you are.

Better Performance in Things for Mac

When we first developed Things, our dream was to make a tool that people would use to manage the many aspects of their day-to-day life. Now all the time we hear people say things like “My whole life is in here”, “I can’t imagine working without it”, and “Things is my brain”. It’s amazing to us how central Things has become in people’s lives, and many of you have thousands of to-dos in your library by now.

There’s been a downside to having such a large library, though: in some cases, our Mac app wasn’t efficient enough to handle the processing of so many to-dos. For example, it could be quite slow when deleting a large number of to-dos all at once, often leading to an encounter with the nefarious beach ball.

We’ve identified the resource hogs and improved performance in key areas that were troublesome in the past. Below are some measurements we took before and after these improvements. Overall, the app now feels much more responsive, especially when you perform an action on multiple items at once:

(Even) Faster Things Cloud

Things Cloud is really fast in day-to-day operation, but there is one use case where we wanted to make it even faster: If you have a really large database, downloading it for the first time onto a new device (or a fresh install of Things) could take a considerable length of time. We’ve managed to improve this procedure significantly, and it’s now more than three times faster than it was before. This isn’t something you’ll do often, but it’s there when you need it – and makes moving to your next new device that much more seamless.

On top of these three enhancements, Things 2.2 includes more than 50 additional bug fixes and tweaks, and is available for download now on Mac, iPad, iPhone and iPod touch.

If you have any questions or encounter any problems with this update, let us know on Twitter or contact our support team – we’re always ready to help.

During this period, Things Cloud has performed admirably. It’s had only two minor hiccups with less than 3 hours of interruption, and only for a small portion of our users. That’s an uptime of 99.9%.

We get an awful lot of feedback from users praising the speed and reliability of Things Cloud; some even say it’s the best experience they’ve had with a cloud service.

For us, and for our users, it has been an incredible success. We couldn’t be happier with how things are going.

New Status Indicator

Like all cloud services, Things Cloud is an ever-changing landscape; it’s always taking on new users and more data as it becomes increasingly active.

If we should ever run into any kind of issues, it would be great to have an easy way to communicate the status of the service – so we’ve placed a new status indicator at the top of our redesigned Status Board:

In addition to showing the current state of Things Cloud, it shows historic information about the service over the past 7 days – and also provides a place for users to report any problems as they arise. If problems do occur, we’ll change the status for minor hiccups or major outages.

Of course, we plan to continue on the success of our last six months, and hope that the status indicator sees very little action indeed.

As the new year gets into full swing, the Mac App Store is holding a Get Stuff Done sale. It starts today, and you can get Things Mac for a whopping 50% off the normal price.

Download on the Mac App Store

This sale runs from January 24-31. If you've been holding out on getting Things for your Mac, this is a wonderful opportunity.

Things for Mac also updates seamlessly with Things for iPad and Things for iPhone via our free Things Cloud service.