The 3 Best Modern Task Manager Apps for macOS

Our daily lives seem to be getting busier, both professionally and personally. Whether it’s emailing an important client or buying a gift for your child’s birthday, there’s always something that needs to be done. Like many others, I thought I kept tasks in my head and remembered everything I needed to do. A few years ago, I started using task management apps to help me organize everything I needed to get done. They have become essential tools that I use in my daily life.

I wanted to highlight three apps that I found useful and effective, each with their own secret sauce: Taskade, Any.Do, and Sunsama. Let’s take a closer look at these apps and what makes them so great.

Before we begin

I am an active user of all three platforms and I think they are all great in their own way. The goal is to show them all and see if they fit into your daily life. At the end of the day, use the app or service that works best for you and helps you achieve your goals.

Taskade was the most used task management app. It is a powerful and flexible task management application that allows users to easily create and manage tasks, notes and projects. One of the most important features of Taskade is its ability to create a hierarchy of tasks and subtasks, which makes it easier to break down larger projects into smaller, more manageable steps. This is where the name comes from, the idea of ​​creating lists of varying importance in stages. The app also supports collaboration, making it a great choice for teams and groups. Taskade is an extremely robust application with many features that can help with a simple to-do list or a larger project involving more people and moving parts.

Work areas

Taskade’s interface is intuitive and customizable, allowing users to create a workspace that fits their needs and preferences. What drew me to the app was that I used workspaces to divide all my tasks. I have a workspace for YouTube work that only I can see, another for working with colleagues, and a personal one. By breaking it down into these workspaces, you can view the task in multiple ways. Their mind map feature might be my personal favorite.

The app also supports integrations including Google Drive, Slack, and Trello, making it easy to incorporate Taskade into your existing workflow. Overall, Taskade is a versatile and user-friendly task management app suitable for both individuals and teams.

Price and availability

Taskade has a few tiers for licensing costs. But what I like about it is that if you’re just looking for a personal task management tool, the free version is more than enough. Taskade doesn’t limit features in the free version – it only limits the amount. I recommend trying the free version for yourself if you want to incorporate it into your professional workflow! See prices below:

This is the new kid on the block. I’ve been using Any.Do for a few months now and three main things stood out to me. First was the UI. It’s easy to use, self-explanatory, no real tutorials are needed to get started, and it’s nice to look at. Second is the dashboard. The dashboard provides a simple overview of the tasks to be performed. You simply log in and the first thing you see is To Do. It is then broken down into projects for more specific project tasks. Finally, the Scrum board feature works amazingly. Being able to create a project and then move it along a chronological timeline has been a lifesaver for my work.

Daily View, My Lists and Workspaces

Like Taskade, Any.Do breaks down tasks into three main views: the dashboard view, the My Lists view, and the workspaces. All these views work together to help you accomplish your task. Start by creating your list categories. You then start adding tasks to these lists. Once this is done, you can drag these tasks into the daily dashboard view to complete them. Finally, you can drill down on these tasks within the workspace view. The workspace view is the only view that can be shared with others, which is great in team settings.

Any.Do also includes many useful features, such as setting reminders, annotating tasks, and attaching files to tasks. The app also integrates with many other productivity apps, including Google Calendar, Evernote, and Slack. Overall, Any.do was an absolute joy to use because of its simplicity while also being extremely feature rich.

Price and availability

Any.Do also uses a tiered approach to pricing its service. They provide a free tier that allows you to use everything except workspaces. Again, I recommend trying the free version to see if it’s worth upgrading. They provide a 14-day free trial for their highest tier, which helps introduce some awesome features. The prices are also very reasonable: $3/month for the premium tier and $5/month for the Teams tier.

Sunsama is the last task manager app I wanted to mention. They take a unique approach to productivity. Instead of focusing solely on tasks and projects, Sunsama aims to help users plan and prioritize their time more effectively. The app encourages users to think about their goals and objectives and then helps them create a daily schedule that aligns with those goals. The idea is that it’s okay to put tasks off until the next day instead of losing sleep trying to finish everything at once.

Sunsama daily routine

Every time you log into the Sunsama dashboard for the first time, it guides you through a daily exercise. Know what you accomplished yesterday and what you plan to accomplish today and help you prioritize tasks. The idea is similar to waking up and writing down what you’re grateful for—Sunsama wants to start the day on a positive note by showing what you’ve accomplished. We have a detailed article on Sunsama if you want to dive in a bit more.

Sunsama organizes its tasks in a calendar view. This prompts you to write down each task and then drag it to the date you want to complete it. It also allows you to integrate with other productivity apps like Asana, Trello, and Google Calendar. This allows users to easily import tasks and events from other apps into Sunsama and see all their tasks and events in one place. So if you have a 10:30 meeting in Google Calendar, it will show up in the Sunsama view.

Sunsama’s interface is clean and simple, making it easy to use and navigate. You can separate tasks by channels or tags and easily categorize them; the user interface makes it easy to get a complete overview of your priorities. Overall, Sunsama is an innovative and powerful tool for anyone looking to improve their productivity and time management skills.

Price and availability

Sunsama is the only platform that is a paid service. They provide a 30-day trial by clicking here to play with the full app. The free trial version has no feature limitations. One interesting thing is that they allow you to restart the free trial after 30 days, but start from scratch. This removes all existing tasks and calendars. They are $16/month to use after the trial period – well worth it in my opinion!

Roll it up

As I mentioned in the introduction, I recommend that you use the best for you! If the Apple Notes app does the job, stick with it! But if you’re looking for something extra that gives you a little more functionality, you might want to try one of these. All of them have either a free tier or a free trial, so there’s no harm in trying them out.

All have corresponding iOS apps. I say Any.Do has the best iOS app because it has most of the features of the macOS version; the iOS apps from Sunsama and Taskade are a bit more watered down versions of the desktop apps.

What do you think? Which of the following apps or services would you most like to try and why? What task management app do you use that wasn’t mentioned? Let’s discuss this in the comments!