A to-do list with a calendar view: Upcoming, as a list or a month

A list grouped by day is good at one thing: telling you what’s next. That’s the right shape for the next few days and the wrong one for a month. Ten tasks on the 14th and nothing on the 15th look the same as you scroll past, and you find the pile-up on the morning you reach it.

A list also forgets. Once a task is done it leaves, so the list can’t tell you that last Tuesday was the day you cleared six things, or which day the overdue task was meant for.

Then there are repeating tasks. A repeating task is one task with one date, so “every Monday” shows up once, on the next Monday. That’s true of TaskPocket’s own list too. The rest of the month looks emptier than it is until each Monday turns up.

The Upcoming header has a switch with two options, List and Month. Both show the same tasks. A task sits on its start date, or on its deadline if it has no start date, and the browser remembers which layout you picked.

List is the default. It’s free on every plan, on the web and in the iPhone app. Each day after today gets a heading, and its tasks sit under it in the order you put them. Drag a task within a day to reorder it, or under another day to move it there. Anything due today or earlier lives in Today instead, which is where overdue work belongs on a list.

Month is a calendar grid of the whole month, past days included. It’s a Premium layout in the web app. On the free plan the Month button has a small Premium mark and opens the upgrade dialog instead of switching. Everything the list shows stays free.

A day lists its open tasks first, in your order, then its coming repeats, then whatever was completed or cancelled on it. A cell has room for three rows. The rest wait behind a “+N more” button that opens the whole day, with each task’s project and reminder time.

An open task has an empty box. If it’s overdue, it stays on the day it was planned for and gets a red box instead of sliding onto today. On a month view that’s the useful version: you can see the interview guide was meant for Wednesday, not only that it’s late.

Finished work stays where it happened. A completed task gets a check and a cancelled one gets a cross, and both are struck through on the day they were planned for. Page back through earlier months and the grid reads as a record of what you actually did. Premium keeps the whole history, so nothing drops off the back of the calendar.

With a mouse or trackpad, drag an open task onto another day. Only today and later days take the drop, and past days dim while you drag, because you can’t plan work for yesterday. Dropping changes the start date and nothing else. The reminder time comes with the task.

If a task has only a deadline, dropping it gives it a start date on that day and leaves the deadline where it was. That’s the two-date model working as intended: one date for when you’ll look at the work and one for when it’s due. There’s more at start dates and deadlines.

Completed and cancelled tasks don’t move. They’re the record of that day, so to move one you reopen it and then drag it. You can also drag a task straight out of a “+N more” list, which gets out of the way as soon as you pick the task up, or drop it on Today or on a project in the sidebar.

A repeating task in TaskPocket is one task whose date rolls forward when you finish it, which is why a list shows it once. The month grid goes further. For a repeat that runs on a schedule, like every Monday, the 1st of the month or the last weekday, it works out the coming dates and puts each one on its day with a dashed box.

It only does this for scheduled repeats. A repeat that counts from the day you finish it, say every three days after the last one, has no next date until you finish the current one. So the calendar shows nothing ahead for it. A guess would move the moment you checked the task off. The difference has a name, the recurrence anchor, and recurring tasks covers the whole repeat engine.

The preview stops where the series stops. A repeat set to end after five times, or on a date, shows nothing past its end. If the current one is overdue, the coming dates start after today. They’re the same dates you’d get by finishing it today.

A future repeat is a preview, not a task, so you can’t tick it off or drag it. Clicking one opens the series’ current task, and that’s where you change the rule or move the date.

Plenty of task apps have a calendar of tasks, and it’s often on the paid plan. The table below only states what each vendor documents. Where a cell says unknown, the vendor doesn’t publish the answer and this site won’t guess.

Todoist puts its calendar layout on Pro, the same way TaskPocket puts the month grid on Premium, so neither one gives you a calendar for free. TickTick does, in a basic form, and adds time ranges on tasks with Premium. If you plan your day in hours, or you want the calendar at the centre of your planning, TickTick is built for that and TaskPocket isn’t. The rest of the differences are in TaskPocket vs TickTick.