Start dates and deadlines

1. Open the task and choose When to set the start date. This is the one that decides where the task shows up.
2. Choose Deadline to set the hard cutoff, if there is one. It appears in the Deadlines view and changes nothing about which day the task lands in Today.
3. Or type the date into the title when you create the task — call the dentist tomorrow, file the return on 30 april — and it is lifted out of the title into the start date.

One naming note, because the words differ on purpose: the app labels the field When, the same word Things 3 uses, while this site says start date because that is what people search for. They are the same field.

The start date schedules. A task appears in Today on its start date and sits in Upcoming, grouped by day, until then. Before that day it is out of your way — captured and planned, but not in front of you. Dragging it to another day in Upcoming reschedules it, and nothing else moves.

The deadline does not schedule. It is a fact about the world rather than a decision about your week, so it has its own view — a list of what is genuinely due and when — and it never puts a task into Today. A task can have one, the other, both, or neither.

The worked example is a tax return. Deadline: 30 April, because that is fixed. Start date: 12 April, because that is your choice. Move the start date to the 14th and the deadline stays where it was — which is the entire reason for two fields. See deadline vs due date for how to decide which a task wants.

The start date is free, along with unlimited tasks and the whole repeat engine. The deadline field and the Deadlines view are Premium — $3.99 a month, $34.99 a year, or $59.99 once. Worth knowing that this is the normal shape of the market rather than an outlier: Todoist gates its Deadlines behind Pro too.

• A typed time becomes a reminder, not a scheduled time. “Tomorrow at 9” sets the date to tomorrow, takes “at 9” out of the title, and sets a 09:00 reminder on the task. Neither date field stores a time, so nothing in Today or Upcoming moves to 9 o’clock.
• Giving a task in the Inbox a date moves it to Someday. This is automatic and the app does not explain it, so a task can appear to vanish from the Inbox. It is in Someday, with the date you set.
• A deadline cannot carry a reminder. Reminders attach to the start date only, so nothing fires when a deadline arrives — the Deadlines view is something you look at. To be nudged before a cutoff, set a start date a few days earlier and put the reminder there.
• The deadline field is Premium, not just the Deadlines view. On the free plan the field itself will not save, which is a clearer thing to know up front than to discover mid-edit.
• There is no calendar sync. If you want deadlines to sit alongside meetings, TaskPocket does not do that.