One of the most common tools we get asked about is the iPhone–specifically, our recommendations for syncing Tasks to an iPhone. Here’s some helpful information around that:
What does the David Allen Company recommend for implementing GTD® Task lists on the iPhone?
The iPhone was not built with a Tasks application, so you will need to find an App that will support the GTD best practices for a list manager (e.g. sort by category/context, allow but not force due dates, allows related notes to be attached to the Task, etc.) What you choose for the iPhone would depend primarily on what do you need to sync it to. The corresponding application you want to sync it to (Mac, PC or Web) would narrow down the best application for you to install on the iPhone for Tasks. The end result is that you would have a Tasks application on the iPhone–>syncing through a service–>that then shares that information with a corresponding application on the web or desktop.
Also, be sure you understand what makes a good GTD list manager. For example, if you read Getting Things Done, or even any of our Setup Guides, there are some key things a good list manager would need to have to work well. It’s not just about storing a flat list of To Do’s. If you understand the best practices, then you’ll find the sea of Apps in the iTunes store much easier to wade through. If you’re starting from scratch on all of this, read this post on How to Choose a GTD system.
The only platform we have any specific recommendations for is Mac. We recommend and endorse OmniFocus for the Mac and iPhone. For PC and Web users, there are many options, but we do not have any specific recommendations around that at this point. We will post updates if that changes.
I’ve been using Pocket Informant coupled with Toodledo which gives me a web interface on my pc and a great app with pretty great updates and support.
So where is the “helpful information”? The headline promises “options.” I see only one, and only for Mac users.
Using an iPod Touch and a MacBook Pro, I’ve had a great deal of success using Things by Cultured Code (http://culturedcode.com/) in managing my tasks using the GTD methodology. It has the ability to have next actions organized under projects, projects under areas of responsibilities, deferring actions/projects to someday, etc. Tags can be set up to make items context specific (i.e., calls, errands, at work, at home, etc.) and lists can be filtered by tag.
Hi Kevin,
We get dozens of emails a week on this question, so we wanted to share what we know. Sorry, we just don’t have anything specific to recommend or endorse for PC or Web users are this point, as we are still in research mode. We thought that was useful to at least let GTDers know what we know, with some helpful info on what to look for themselves.
Cheers,
Kelly
If you recommend and endorse Omnifocus, can you twist their arm to get them to finally create either a PC version or at least a web-based platform, this way I could use Omnifocus at home on my mac, on the road on my iPhone, and then at work on my PC!
Kelly, the subject is misleading, you guys should erase the word “options”.
Useless post
sorry
@Kevin: Obviously your options are to own a PC and not have a recommendation or buy a Mac and have a recommendation.
As a user of both iPhone and a Blackberry, I think the value in OmniFocus depends on being able to synch with the Mac version of the software or the fact that you can look at project tasks (such as those with a context for a grocery story) on a map view.
Since I have a PC and don’t care about map view, OmniFocus isn’t particularly beneficial for me and at $20, other applications (such as EasyTask, which also offers a PC application for $10) are free.
I would also suggest that no applications on the iPhone come close to the effectiveness of todoMatrix on the Blackberry, so if you have both devices, use the latter for task management.
For PC users (like myself), I am a HUGE advocate of ToodleDo for the following reasons:
1 – It is a web-based application – that is, there is nothing to install on my PC – I just do my listmaking/updating on http://www.toodledo.com – my info is always in the cloud, accessible from any connection to the internet
2 – There is a ToodleDo app available in iTunes, and I think it is free. Mine always syncs perfectly.
3 – Both the website and the app have a really nice “form factor” – the way the screens are designed and flow works very well for me. Each version is slightly different, but completely compatible – no learning curve between the two, in my experience.
4 – I like the “form factor” and usability of ToodleDo much better than other ones I have tried, specifically Remember The Milk (RTM)
If you have any further questions about ToodleDo, I’ll be happy to support you – give me a shout at [email protected].
Happy list making!
Hey, I hear you on the word “options” (if you read it a certain way) but something tells me, some people would have still been upset that we are not telling them exactly what to go buy.
Re: an option…
Its not perfect – but don’t forget Google Tasks. I have been using this for about 2 weeks. I am sure Google is not done beefing up its footprint in this area. I actually like it being fairly slim at the moment – encourages me to use the system and not tweak it.
“The end result is that you would have a Tasks application on the iPhone–>syncing through a service–>that then shares that information with a corresponding application on the web or desktop.”
I am currently using 2Do to sync with Toodledo on my iPhone. Toodledo also provides a web interface and syncing service to iCal on my Desktop. I also have a Toodledo gadget on my iGoogle page.
Yea, OmniFocus seems great until you see that after you pay for the desktop app ($80) you still have to pay again ($20) for the iPhone app. That is really high for an iPhone app and owners of the desktop app get no discount. sigh.
Kelly, I hear you, but is it that hard to do 30 minutes of Googling before writing a blog post? If you’re not going to provide any useful information to most of your readers, why write the post at all?
Having done that, here are some real “options” for PC users:
Remember the Milk – syncs with website
Toodleoo – syncs with website and Outlook when using third-party sync software
Todo – Seems to be the best, syncs with Remember the Milk, Toodledo, and Outlook.
I’m sure there are more. Unfortunately you won’t hear about them at this blog.
o OmniFocus on the iPhone is slick and done right. It’s made for GTD, not an app that can be adapted to do GTD. Despite OmniGroup’s indications to the contrary, I would NOT recommend Omnifocus for the iPhone if you use a PC. You’ll waste your $20 in my opinion since 1) there’s no way to sync it since OmniGroup is strident in its position to not offer anything on the PC or any conduit thereto, 2) lacking a PC conduit, you’ll have to enter all of your GTD system on the iPhone’s spartan keyboard, not fun if you have 50 projects and 100+ next actions, and 3) the iPhone app lacks many features of its Mac counterpart.
o Like OmniFocus, Pocket Informant is robust and pricy, but at least it syncs to a couple of web services so PC folks have some hope. I was drawn to Pocket Informant because it integrates a calendar and is well developed on other platforms. These features are slowly rolling out for the iPhone but with lots of bugs (some of which trashed data) to the point that I deleted it from my device–another $13 down the drain (it’s down to $10 now, I think).
3) I’ve used several other GTD-ish iPhone apps, but pound-for-pound the one that’s worked best for me is Toodledo’s app. They recently added the incredibly powerful ability to filter by multiple contexts, so, for example, I can select @Office, @Phone, and @Computer for a single list of everything I can do while at work without switching context views. Oh yeah, it’s $3.
For DA Co., I would like to see GTD Times reviews (not endorsements) of iPhone task apps from strictly a GTD standpoint.
Kevin,
Sorry you are so upset.:) We don’t just “Google” things to find out what to recommend and that wasn’t the purpose of this post. Anything we recommend goes through quite a vetting process before recommending it, which includes our staff and David Allen using and testing it extensively.
The purpose of my post to to educate people on what to look for and how the syncing works (many who write to us don’t understand that functionality,) not to necessarily tell people what to go buy.
Kelly
Things by Cultured Code rocks the Mac and iPhone. It’s beautimous too.
I thought this post was informative. But then, I didn’t expect to be given “the” answer, and I prefer to do my own Googling. I’ve had fun trying different software for GTD for years.
Larry Lewien // Mar 24, 2010 at 1:02 pm
Things by Cultured Code rocks the Mac and iPhone. It’s beautimous too.
I concur – if you are serious about managing your todos digitally, and own both an iPhone/Mac – this cannot be beaten, in my, and many others’ opinion.
I am a big fan of the GTD Outlook Add-in, and use it effectively at work.
Moving to the iPhone, there is no way for a tasks app to get past our firewall to sync with the exchcange server (the way Windows Mobile did) or the desktop/outlook directly.
As a work-around, I’ve been exporting my task list in Outlook to a file, and then importing into Toodledo, which I at least have ‘view’ access to on my iPhone.
I am a big Toodledo fan, and a huge Outlook add-in fan – I just wish I could get the two to talk to each other.
Over the past 6 months I have experimented extensively with Things, Remember the Milk and Omni Focus all being in sync with my desktop and iPhone. I have finally decided to use Omni Focus, it is outstanding and although a lot more expensive is has customisable perspective views which is such a winner. Omni have indicated on their website they are doing extensive work on the iPad version, so with the larger screen and keyboard this could be a real winner for PC users.
I have been using Evernote for a few months now and find it quite useful. It has synced online and desktop components, and is easy to use on my ipod touch.
I use it not only to organize and store my lists, but also to capture anything useful, fun or interesting I run across.
Only downside is there is no calendar/date feature- any dated items I add manually into my Google calendar.
Evernote is also a great app that syncs with both the “cloud,” your Mac or PC, and an iPhone. Love it!
For those who consider Google Tasks I wrote a native iPhone app GeeTasks that syncs with it. Unlike google’s iphone web site my app works offline, allows indenting and reordering tasks and is quicker to use. Google Tasks lends itself to this model of of GTD:
http://webworkerdaily.com/2009/03/16/getting-things-done-with-gmail-tasks/
I use Outlook with Exchange (I’m an academic and my University switched systems for all users last October), and found a nice solution which is working for me with the iPhone – it’s an app called iMExchange (I’m nothing to do with them, just a satisfied user). It’s nice and simple, sorts by categories or whatever else you like, highlights overdue tasks but doesn’t force a due date, and best of all for me – it holds a local copy on the iPhone and syncs when connected over wifi or 3G (we don’t have full wifi coverage in my building yet, and my labs are in the basement where I don’t get mobile phone signal, let alone 3G).
It is a pay-for app, but they have a free lite version (where you can only sync tasks, you can’t add them or mark as done on the phone) so you can check it works with your company firewalls/settings. I know it’s not a solution for those who don’t have exchange but it works for me.
I use Appigo’s ToDo for the iPhone and I wrote up how I apply GTD to it here:
http://docs.google.com/View?id=dg9kk9kc_94dcpg563v
This doc is slightly out of date and doesn’t take into account their new “star” feature which I use for Next Actions.
I have been using Google Tasks which has a Iphone app and is available online. It can be used alone online or through my Gmail or Google Calender. The point of the GTD system is not to make it complicated. Google seems to be simple enough to handle it all for me.
Don’t forget ThinkingRock. It has an iPhone app, albeit rudimentary, that supports your Mac and/or PC. It gets my vote.
Hi Kelly, thanks for hosting this discussion.
As you know, I have been working with the folks at Hughes Connect to create a version of ITANA (htto://www.HughesConnect.com)that will work with eProductivity for IBM Lotus Notes.
This is not a solution for everyone, but if someone uses Notes 8.5.1 and has an iPhone, this may be an “Option” for them to consider.
People can use the contact page at http://www.eProductivity.com/contact to request a beta preview.
Eric
Oops. Link to HughesConnect is: http://www.HughesConnect.com. That’s for a product called ITANA for Notes and it works with iPhone and Android phones.
I recommend Hiveminder. I assume most don’t know about it but it follows GTD as much a Thinking Rock does.
http://hiveminder.com
(Editor: Garfield–are you related to Hiveminder? If so, please disclose that when posting comments about this application. Reminder to ALL to please to disclose if you are related to the application you are commenting on. It keeps GTD Times fair and balanced and it’s the FCC law these days. We are not promising to publish comments if all you are doing is trying to market your product. Thanks. – GTD Times team)
I am an advocate for Things from Cultured Code when using a Mac and GTD. The software is build around the GTD methodology, uses tags as categories (including sub-tags, a useful way to organize bigger lists as I don’t work as well with more than about 10 tasks on a list…) and has a very good Project approach.
The Project piece is really key for me as I’ve never been able to figure out a good way to set up Projects and Next Actions with other approaches (including Outlook on the PC, an approach I prefer for PC’s…but it doesn’t interface with the iPhone…).
I’ve looked at OmniFocus in the past, but I’m going to revisit it now. But, extremely happy with Things — setup is great, works on a Mac, synchs with the iPhone and puts “today” stuff on your Mac and iPhone calendar.
It would be good to see a discussion of Windows apps for the iPhone here. That gets you to “options.” So far, it looks like Toodledo.
I have just tried perhaps 30 apps on iPod Touch to find out if there is anything comparable to the “old Palm OS” Tasks and Memos.
Sorry to learn that I’ve found nothing which I could use to replace Palm Desktop + Palm OS for GTD setup on PC.
Now I see that there is nothing DAC can reccommend either.
I just wanted to chime in here in case any of the Omni Focus or Things developers would like to know if non-Mac users would buy their product. We would. Please make a PC version! Or better yet, a cloud version that is platform agnostic!
I’m also a very happy user of Toodledo. It is very flexible so can be setup to suit your own specific GTD implementation.
I use it with Appigo’s Todo on the iPhone and they work beautifully together. No matter where I am, I have access to my lists and can add/change/checkoff/sync etc. Highly recommended and Toodledo has a great user community forum with a GTD section that contains lots of helpful discussion.
I’ve seen another iPhone GTD app that looks good although haven’t tried it – Action Lists. You can find more info here:
http://software.dazeend.org/action_lists/
and it also syncs with Toodledo.
I have been using a web based application for GTD that works well when you are on your desktop (with internet) and syncs seamlessly with a corresponding iPhone application.
It follows the GTD methodology as closely as anything I have seen. It also syncs with Evernote.
It is http://nozbe.com
I just wondered if anyone else is using this app or what your thoughts are about it.
It costs $7 per month, but has proved well worth the price.
Steve
For me the list manager needs to;
Not force a date
Specify context (for me that’s the main tool eg “Me” because I might need to do something like change a lightbulb, or “phone”, or “fast internet”, )
Specify location I might do the task (ie, “anywhere”, or “home”, because I may have physical reference material there, “office” etc)
deal with Projects & their subtasks
sync to web for desktop edit.
forwarding emails to it as tasks is pretty cool too.
Be fun, & not consume too much of my time.
They probably all do that, that’s all I need!
I use a PC and a Windows Mobile phone and am currently using Jello Dashboard (http://jello-dashboard.net/) with Outlook 2003 over my company exchange server. This is really working well for me as an integrated solution. I need a system that works both on and offline and that also has visibility on my Windows Mobile device. Jello has both a standalone application as well as an Outlook home page.
I am not in any way affiliated with Jello; it is simply my system of choice at the moment.
As CEO of a company I delegate a lot of tasks. Is there no solution which automaticly updates my task within outlook – so I don´t have to review all my “waiting for” tasks anymore. There is wrike – as a solution but it does not synchonice with outlook properly nor does it syncronize the projects.
I’m a PC user who was using OmniFocus for iPhone. I really like it, but I couldn’t trust it since I can’t sync to my PC or the cloud.
About two weeks ago, I found a new app called “Taska” which is similar to OmniFocus and Things, but syncs to Toodledo. It’s still a little buggy, but the developer is very helpful and prompt in his replies.
I’ve been using it in conjunction with Taskangel, which is a PC app that syncs with Toodledo.
Take a look at Vitalist.com for GTD on the PC and iPhone. It is free to try and very inexpensive to upgrade.
Like many people, I live in a mixed environment. Slaved a to PC and Blackberry assigned at work with Notes as the e-mail, etc client, but use a Mac and iPod touch at home. So my search when implementing GTD was focused on harmonization. To that end, Toodledo, being web based is accessible from any computer. It also syncs to a good number of other applications, over the air. In my case Todo for the iPod/iPhone by Appigo. The iPod is my portable list device when out and about.
Sorry I left very little information in my last post. Vitalist is all web based but does nicely when made a icon on your main menu. It also utilizes a lot of the new technologies:
* Can integrate into outlook calendar and I think CSS feeds
* Will send reminders via email or SMS
* Allows categorization by context and assignment to projects
* Makes a strong effort to make the web interface feel less webby
* Allows you to email to your inbox which is useful
* Allows repeating tasks
* Allows custom searches to be placed directly on the apps main menu (ie show me @grocery, or @work, or project based list)
I keep thinking there must a be better pure iPhone app out there but I haven’t found it.
I’ve used both Omnifocus and Cultured Code’s Things and they are both excellent. Plain and simple. They both do many of the same tasks, just go about it a different way. Overall Omnifocus has more structured GTD methodology, whereas things is a little more flexible.
I decided to refocus on Things when I got my iPad, since there was no Omnifocus HD app. There have been many improvements to Things, and they are about to make some important synchronization updates to the system.
I was honestly planning on going back to Omnifocus, however I am really enjoying Things at this point. It really is a beautifully designed UI to look at, and it is plenty powerful.
-Scott Spiro
http://blog.scottspiro.com
Check out “Smart time Pro” by leftcoastlogic.com
I am amazed that Apple have not done something about this. I love my iPhone, but committed PC user at work & home. Tasks should be a core offering with contacts, notes and email.
Maybe as frustrated users we should be partitioning Apple…
Have any of you ToodleDo fans tried the 3rd party Outlook sync software? Does it work well?
Hey, I’m a big fan of Remember the Milk. Cloud syncing. Great web app. Lots of access points (Ipod, Android, Web, Mobile Cell phone Browser, Gmail, Google Cal…). Simple interface but also has great features to delve into-tags, quick keys, smart lists, command line entry.
The developers are on the job. In the two years I’ve been on RTM I seen some great new features implemented. Active online forums with all kinds of helpful posts-GTD posts are active as you’d guess.
I love TaskTask for iPhone. It syncs with exchange server… So i use it with outlook. I have also used iMTasks, but prefer TaskTask – cheaper too!
I use Outlook with GTD addin which works good for me. Since a while I use Pocket Informant on the iPhone.
What I Like from it :
-The calendar is way better than the native iPhone calendar.
-I have tasks in the same app and dont’t need to switch between different apps.
-The possibilty to sync with the desktop exists. There are still some problems but this is due to problems with iOS 4 (at least the ones I have/had).
-The tasks support contexts which I can sync with the categories that I use with the GTD addin from outlook.
-The tasks sync the complete texts of my outlook tasks. So mails which are converted to tasks in outlooks are readable in the tasks on the iPhone.Comments I put into the tasks will be on the iPhone.
-Tasks can be filtered by context.In idle time I can go through my @waiting for’s or other tasks
-There is the possiblity to maintain location based reminders but I’m still not sure how good this helps me.
-The developer support reacts good and fast on requests. I already suggested Ideas and reported bugs which changed the app.
The price is more or less high compared to other apps but they do sales from time to time.For the price I paid I don’t regret to have bought it.
I have been looking into http://www.smartytask.com/
I am fairly new to GTD but it seems to be a lot like Omnifocus and has everything that I had got from the book. Hope it helps.
I kind of like the cross platform org-mode in Emacs for doing my organizing. Although the iPhone app – mobileorg – is a bit limited, the power of org-mode on the computer compensates for the limitations of the iPhone app. See http://orgmode.org/ .
Using Pocket Informant on iPhone 4,
Updates has made this app stable. Hasnt exp. crashes since.
Totally agree with Christian on this app functions that are unlike other apps.
Just wondering if any one has used gqueses ?
http://www.gqueues.com/GTD
Only one person has mentioned iMExchange so I thought I would second it.
If you set up Outlook according to the way that is suggested by the David Allen White Paper iMExchange then becomes a seemless system synching back to Outlook.
It is very simple and works very well. I don’t see it getting much publicity though.