Things 3 vs TaskPocket

Two honest readings of that table. Things wins every row about hardware and polish, and it is not close. TaskPocket wins the rows about where you can open it and what happens at the edges of a repeat rule. Almost nothing in the middle separates them any more.

Things 3 is a better piece of software than TaskPocket in the way most people mean when they say a task app is good. Its interaction design, typography and animation are the benchmark for this entire category, it has been stable for nine years, and it does not change under you. TaskPocket does not match it and pretending otherwise would waste your time.

So this page is not an argument that Things is worse. It is a narrow question: what do you do if you love Things and cannot run it? That is the situation almost everyone comparing these two is actually in — a Windows machine at work, or a household drifting off Apple hardware — and it is a hardware problem rather than a software one.

Where you can open it. The whole comparison, really. Things runs on Mac, iPad, iPhone, Apple Watch and Vision — and nothing else, with no browser access of any kind, not even a read-only sign-in to Things Cloud. TaskPocket is a web app first, so a Windows laptop, a Linux desktop and an Android phone are all fine, and there is an iPhone app for the pocket.

Recurrence, honestly. This used to be the headline difference and it mostly is not any more. Things 3.23, on 19 August 2026, added completing a repeat early, rescheduling a single copy, and Make Exception. After-completion repeats have been a labelled option there for years. What is still missing is an end condition — Cultured Code document no way to stop after six occurrences or on a date. That is the whole of it: a repeating to-do there can carry a deadline, through an “Add deadlines” checkbox on the template. If your repeats are open-ended, the two engines are equivalent. See recurring tasks.

Structure. Things is the more flexible of the two, and this is not a close call. Its areas hold loose to-dos as well as projects, it has tags, and it can cancel a project or a to-do as a distinct outcome from completing it. TaskPocket’s areas group projects only, it has no tags, and only tasks can be cancelled — a project can be completed and nothing else. See projects and areas.

Reminders. Things has them and TaskPocket has none, on any platform. Combined with Siri capture, the Watch app and widgets, this is the largest functional gap on the page and it has no workaround here.

Worth noting because people assume the older product must. Cultured Code state that Things “does not provide a public API at this time”; what exists is on-device automation — Shortcuts, and AppleScript on a Mac. TaskPocket has none of the four, and no public API either. If automation is how you work, both products are the wrong answer today. See does Things 3 have an API.

The arithmetic people want, and it is closer than anyone expects. Things on a Mac and an iPhone is $49.99 plus $9.99 — $59.98 paid once. TaskPocket’s lifetime plan is $59.99, also paid once. A penny apart.

What the penny buys is different on each side, and this is the part worth reading slowly. Things gives you two native apps of exceptional quality on two Apple devices, and stops there — a third device means paying again ($19.99 for iPad, $29.99 for Vision). TaskPocket gives you any browser on any operating system, plus an iPhone app, and no further purchases — but no Mac app, no Watch app, no iPad app and no Android app, and the browser is not a native application however well it behaves.

Two things that are not about the money. Things has no free plan, so evaluating it beyond the 15-day trial means buying it; TaskPocket’s free plan is unlimited in time, with 5 projects and 2 areas. And Cultured Code publish no price at all on their own site — the figures above come from Apple’s listings, and a 30% Mac sale is running as this page is written, so check the store before you decide the numbers are wrong.