- Benefits of Using a To-Do List Manager on Your Apple Mobile Device
- Some of the Best To-Do List Management Apps for Your iPhone or iPad
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Some of the Best To-Do List Management Apps for Your iPhone or iPad
Dozens of to-do list managers for the iPhone and iPad are available from the App Store. You can find them by doing a keyword search using the phrase "To Do List" or search for each app by its exact name.
The following, however, is a sampling of five extremely well-designed to-do list managers, each of which takes a different approach to helping you handle all aspects of creating, managing, prioritizing, and completing your to-do list items. Depending on your personal work habits, chances are at least one of these apps could become an extremely valuable organizational tool in your everyday life.
2Do
Price: $6.99
Developer: Guided Ways Technologies, Ltd.
Compatibility: Apple iPhone and iPad
2Do is a highly useful to-do list manager. As you create each of your to-do list items, you can assign deadlines and alarms, have them also appear within your calendar, and prioritize them as you go. Individual items or entire lists can be synced with your PC or Mac; emailed to others; Tweeted; password protected for privacy; and incorporate text, photos, graphics, URLs, and audio clips as attachments.
Individual to-do items can also be associated with GPS map locations, allowing you to obtain maps and directions and utilize other features built into your iPhone or iPad's Maps app.
As you can see in Figure 1, 2Do's user interface is easy to navigate and customizable, so you can display all your most important information at once, and simply tap on an item to view all content associated with it. Managing multiple lists and projects, each with numerous individual items, is a simple and straightforward process.
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The sorting, searching, and prioritizing of items or entire lists is done using a simple, on-screen drag-and-drop method, which allows you to navigate around and access information quickly, with a few taps of your finger. As a result, this impressive and inexpensive app can help you juggle a wide range of responsibilities, tasks, or tidbits of information; stay organized; and more easily plan for upcoming deadlines. It is highly customizable, so the 2Do app can adjust to your established work habits.
IdeaWallets
Price: $5.99
Developer: Winzz, Inc.
Compatibility: Apple iPad
The IdeaWallets app is much more than a basic, text-based to-do list manager. It is capable of helping a user brainstorm, organize ideas, manage entire projects, or juggle numerous to-do lists simultaneously.
IdeaWallets allows you to create virtual cards on the iPhone or iPad screen. Each card can contain text, photos, graphics, voice memos (sound clips), sketches, and elements created using other apps and imported into IdeaWallets. Cards can be color-coded as they're created, and can contain information on both their virtual fronts and backs.
Each card can be named, dated, include a text-based description, be associated with a project, and/or tagged with related keyboards. Individual cards can then be grouped together and organized into projects, and later reorganized or prioritized.
As you can see in Figure 2, the user interface of IdeaWallets is sleek, visually impressive, yet surprisingly simple and intuitive to utilize.
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Index Card
Price: $2.99
Developer: DenVog, LLC.
Compatibility: Apple iPad
On the surface, Index Card (shown in Figure 3) looks like a simplistic app. It transforms your iPad's screen into a corkboard and then allows you to create simulated index cards that you can place on the board. However, the app offers a lot of extra features and functions that make Index Card a powerful to-do list manager, as well as a comprehensive, yet easy-to-use project management tool.
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For example, you can capture ideas, notes, or to-do items on individual simulated index cards (covering both sides of the virtual card with text-based content), color code the cards themselves, arrange them in any order on your corkboard, and edit the cards at anytime. Each card can represent one item on your do-to list, which you can then prioritize by moving the card around on the corkboard display, or by assigning a different color to it.
You can create multiple virtual corkboards to manage different projects or keep everything on the same board, but utilize many index cards. From within the app, you can email individual index cards, or copy and send your entire corkboard (including all cards) to your desktop or laptop computer via iTunes file sharing (syncing).
In addition to creating and managing to-do lists, the Index Card app is also ideal for outlining text-based content, as well as organizing projects, brainstorming, and gathering research notes. To learn more about this app, visit http://www.denvog.com/iphone/IndexCard.
Manage
Price: $2.99
Developer: Kerofrog
Compatibility: Apple iPad
Many offices and conference rooms are equipped with a whiteboard and colorful (and erasable) markers. The Manage app (shown in Figure 4) for the iPad is designed to simulate a whiteboard on your tablet's screen and give you access to a handful of colorful markers and highlighters with which you can create to-do lists in a traditional outline format.
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In addition to creating text-based lists, complete with headings and subheads, which can be displayed on the screen and later saved in PDF format and emailed or synced with a computer, you can also use the virtual markers and highlighters to sketch out or hand write ideas, concepts, or designs on the screen, and associate those hand-drawn or written elements with items within your do-to lists.
As you create your lists, they can be displayed on the iPad's screen and easily prioritized. Using the virtual highlighters, items can also be color coded, and deadlines can be associated with individual to-do list items or entire lists.
What's really nice about Manage is that it is a powerful to-do list manager, yet it's easy to use, and the on-screen displays are uncomplicated and not at all cluttered. Using a traditional outline format, you can create headings, plus many levels of subheads using text and the iPad's virtual keyboard. Using your finger, items can be moved around on the screen, and with a single tap, you can add a checkmark to a checkbox that's associated with an item to signify it has been completed.
The "scribble pad" that can be associated with each text-based heading or subhead allows you to use colorful virtual markers to write, draw, and brainstorm ideas in an unstructured format that does not involve typing. However, you're not required to use this feature as you create and manage your detailed to-do lists.
Things
Price: $9.99 (iPhone Version), $19.99 (iPad Version), $49.95 (Mac Version)
Developer: Culture Code
Compatibility: Apple iPhone, iPad, and Mac
As opposed to calling itself a to-do list manager, Things is an "intuitive task manager" with three distinctly different, but fully compatible versions available for the iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Thus, your projects, outlines, to-do lists, and related files can easily be synced wirelessly or via an iTunes connection between devices. Each version has the same core functionality, but is scaled to work well on the device it was designed for, taking into account the size of the screen, for example.
Things (shown in Figure 5) allows you to manage multiple lists or projects simultaneously, keeping track of each item with separate deadlines associated with it. Thus, it becomes easy to take a massive project; divide it up into smaller, more achievable goals; set deadlines for each goal; monitor your progress; adjust priorities as you go; and work toward your primary objective(s) while all the while staying well organized.
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One of the most appealing aspects of Things is that the user interface is simple. Each screen is easy to navigate and is intuitive, so you can focus on creating, managing, prioritizing and tracking your projects and lists, as opposed to figuring out how to work the program itself.