Things 3 alternatives for Mac in 2026

Things 3 is great. The reason people search for “Things 3 alternative” is rarely that Things is bad. It is usually one of four specific things:

1. They need it on Windows, Android, or the web.
2. They cannot justify $80 across three Apple devices.
3. They wanted a workspace and Things felt too minimal.
4. They wanted something smaller and Things felt too heavy.

The right alternative depends on which of those four it is. This post covers the realistic options for each case.

If you need cross-platform: Todoist

Todoist runs on Mac, Windows, Linux, iPhone, Android, the web, Apple Watch, Wear OS, and a long tail of integrations. It is the obvious answer when “must work on Windows” or “my work phone is Android” is the constraint.

Pricing: $5 a month or $48 a year for Pro. Five years of Todoist costs about three times what Things 3 does on all three Apple devices.

What you trade away: native macOS feel. Todoist’s Mac app is essentially the web app in a window. It is not ugly, but it does not have the considered design that makes Things 3 a pleasure to open every morning. If software craft matters to you, this will be a noticeable downgrade.

What you gain: actual feature depth in filters, labels, sharing, and integrations. Todoist is genuinely more capable in those dimensions than Things. The trade-off is real in both directions.

Pick this if: you have a hard cross-platform requirement, or you want to share lists with other people. Things has no answer for either.

If you need cheaper cross-platform: TickTick

TickTick is the budget version of Todoist’s shape. $35.99 a year for premium, with a more generous free tier than Todoist or OmniFocus.

It runs everywhere Todoist runs. The feature set is roughly comparable, with a built-in Pomodoro timer, habits tracking, and a calendar view that Todoist has but locks behind specific tiers.

What you trade away: design polish. TickTick is functional rather than considered. Some features feel grafted on. The icon and the typography both feel like a slightly older era of software design than Things does.

Pick this if: you want Todoist’s shape at a lower price and you do not particularly care whether the app feels native.

If you want something simpler: TodoBar

The category of “menu bar utility, one-time price, does the obvious thing.” TodoBar lives in the menu bar as a popover. There is no Dock icon, no separate window, and no account. Tasks sync between your Macs through your private iCloud account. Free up to 10 active tasks, then a one-time unlock.

What you trade away: a real workspace. There are no projects, no areas, no shared lists, no iPhone app yet, and no cross-platform support. Things 3 is dramatically more capable. They are different categories of product.

What you gain: getting out of your way. The global hotkey opens the popover from anywhere. Natural-language date parsing handles “tomorrow at 9am” inline. There is no Dock icon to remind you the app exists. The app disappears when you click away.

Pick this if: you noticed that the Things 3 features you actually use are the Inbox, the Today view, and the quick-add hotkey, and the rest sits there untouched. The smaller scope is on purpose. The home page has the App Store link and the free tier is enough to test the workflow for a full work week.

If you want something more powerful: OmniFocus

If you wanted Things 3 but with custom filters, deferred dates, project review workflows, and a scripting layer for power users, what you actually wanted was OmniFocus. It is the most capable task app on the Mac, by a wide margin.

Pricing: $99.99 a year for the subscription, or $199.99 for a perpetual license that gets one major version.

What you trade away: ease of use. OmniFocus has a learning curve that is closer to Logic Pro than to a notepad. The first time you try to set up a custom perspective, you will have to look up what “perspective” means in the OmniFocus vocabulary. The depth is the point, but the depth has a cost.

Pick this if: you have read Getting Things Done, you know what a “next action” is, and you want software that implements the whole methodology carefully.

If you want free and built in: Apple Reminders

The default that has quietly gotten useful. Apple Reminders in current macOS supports tags, smart lists, location-based reminders, natural-language dates, and sharing with iCloud contacts. It is free, it is installed, and it syncs through iCloud.

What you trade away: design polish, keyboard ergonomics, and the feeling of using a product you chose for yourself. Reminders is intentionally bland because it is a system app. There is no real global quick-add hotkey on the Mac without setting up a custom Shortcut.

What you gain: zero cost, deep integration with Siri, Calendar, Mail, and the rest of Apple’s ecosystem. The “remind me about this email” flow alone is worth using regardless of what your main todo app is.

Pick this if: you mostly just need a place to write down “buy milk” and have it remind you tomorrow, and you are not actually shopping for a real productivity tool.

How to actually decide

The four reasons people leave Things 3 each map to a specific answer:

• Cross-platform: Todoist (or TickTick if you want it cheaper)
• Cost: TickTick or Apple Reminders
• More powerful: OmniFocus
• Smaller and simpler: TodoBar or Apple Reminders

The shape of your day decides. If you do not know which of those four describes you, you probably do not have a real Things 3 problem. Stick with Things 3 and save yourself a week of migrating.