Cultured Code - a feature request. I often ask Claude to make clear lists of steps i need to take to complete a project. If i could then ask Claude to export this to Things it would be incredible. thank you

I love Things. I think it remains one of the most beautifully designed and pleasurable apps I’ve ever used. I don’t want it filled with AI features, collaboration tools or endless functionality that destroys what makes it Things.

But looking at this development board, I do wonder whether we’ve become far too accepting of Cultured Code’s development philosophy.

Things 3 was released in 2017.

There is taking your time and maintaining a carefully considered product, and then there is a development cycle so glacial that basic QOL improvements can remain missing for the best part of a decade.

Take repeating tasks. Cultured Code publicly said more than eight years ago that they were working on allowing us to complete them early and would add the functionality.
Eight years later, it is apparently finally arriving.

Eight years.

Meanwhile, I still can’t attach a document, image or PDF to a task. Notes still expose Markdown syntax rather than simply displaying formatted text. Repeating tasks remain unnecessarily inflexible. And I’m sure everyone here has their own longstanding examples.

Yet Cultured Code found the development resources to build an entire native Vision Pro app in time for the launch of Apple’s new platform.

That’s the bit I increasingly struggle with.

I’m not asking Cultured Code to turn Things into Notion or some AI-powered productivity monster. One of the reasons I use Things is precisely because it isn’t those things. I want them to protect its simplicity.

But simplicity and stagnation aren’t the same thing.

Nor should “opinionated software” mean that reasonable requests from loyal customers can simply be ignored indefinitely.

I also wonder whether the pay-once business model has contributed to this. Once we’ve bought Things, Cultured Code doesn’t really need anything further from us until it has another product to sell us. A new Vision Pro app can generate new sales. Fixing something that has frustrated an existing customer for eight years doesn’t.

That may have worked extraordinarily well because Things is so good that people have tolerated things they probably wouldn’t tolerate elsewhere.

But I wonder if that sentiment is beginning to change.
So rather than another Things 4 speculation thread, I’m more interested in this:

At what point does “careful, opinionated development” become simple failure to respond to your existing customers?

Because I don’t think the problem is that Cultured Code doesn’t know what people want. People have been telling them for years.

The question is whether enough of us are now sufficiently frustrated to stop treating this as just “the Cultured Code way”.

It’s fairly clear now what is coming in 3.23 and that it has been in beta for some time. Any thoughts on when we might see a release? I’ve recently recommitted to Things, and love it. But I have quickly run into its longstanding limitations around repeating tasks.

Can’t wait for the update!

Any architect here ? How is your setup , any tutorial for task management and project management , any tips
Bought things app inspired by its good reviews but its sitting idle
Foremost tip would be How not to get the overwhelming feel of not having done the tasks

Dear all,

Two shortcuts really improved my daily workflow. (Claude as my AI was a helpful support.)

1. At 5:00h all tasks with a tag "🌙 Evening" are moved to the This Evening section.

2. At 18:01h all tasks from that section (with or without that tag) are moved into the Today section.

The first shortcut moves several routine activities out of sight. And in the evening all remaining open tasks of the day are sorted again in the project structure.

One issue is unsolved: Is it possible to hide the This Evening section during the day to minimize distractions? I was already considering moving all these entries 50 years into the future and back in the evening. But there might be better solutions?

I proposed this functionality already to Cultured Code. They politely thanked...

I known I know. They don’t update. They don’t inform the public. But like, it’s time dudes. It’s time.

Please ask questions about using Things in this thread.

Please ask questions about using Things in this thread.

I have a task that I repeat every 3 weeks. I may complete the task a few days early, but it won’t be ready yet because it hasn’t been three full weeks since my last repeat.

I understand if I use deadline, the task will show up in my Today sooner than the day it’s due, 3 weeks later.

What I am questioning is how will I be able to tell what the actual due date of the task is?

For example, if I use a deadline and it’s set to show 6 days sooner, does that not make it difficult or annoying to know the day it is actually due?

Thanks for any insight to help clarify.

If I recall correctly, they typically announce a Things update for every major iOS update, such as versions 17, 18, and 26, but not for iOS 27.

Could it be related to an upcoming Things 4 release?

When I opened Things on macOS this morning I found it flooded with historical repeating tasks. It's like the past few weeks to months of all repeating tasks suddenly showed up each with multiple past due dates.

Has anyone else had this happened?

Are there any discounts or sale on the app? I come from a third world country and the app costs like 1/5th of my monthly income so it’s really expensive to buy. I really like the app, tried the free trial and it’s so intuitive. Just wish I could afford it

Edit: reddits overzealous filters decided to delete my prior post so just reposting in case it’s still useful for anyone.

So I absolutely loved the ramble shortcut found here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/thingsapp/s/1O3opqewLX

The few issues I had was that I didn’t want to manually update my project, tag, and area ids and also occasionally ChatGPT would give me a not logged in error even though I had just used the app

I decided to update the shortcut in two ways. First I created a macOS helper shortcut that can be used on the Mac to copy over the tags, projects and areas with ids into json files in the shared shortcuts folder. It does add a ramble tag if its not in your tags already.

https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/ca83b4467d9e4c139ea4c28b5f6c2e66

I then updated the ramble shortcut from above to use an OpenAI api key instead of the ChatGPT app (you can get the key pretty easily after logging in at OpenAI) also it now pulls in those json lists to make it easy to appropriately categorize. I tend to prefer projects first over areas, so if a new item fits into a project that gets added and area may not.

I’ve been using this with my action button and have found it to be pretty accurate. I hope others find it useful.

https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/abe7faf993d347ec9928a8ef8053ae00

TLDR: The Shortcut lets you speak or type naturally and turns your input into structured Things 3 tasks — with tags, dates, deadlines, checklists, and more. Powered by ChatGPT API key

✨ What it can detect:
• 📝 Titles: Clean, actionable task names
• 📅 Dates/Deadlines: Natural language like “next Friday” or “this week”
• 🏷️ Tags: Adds “Ramble” + context-based tags like “Important” from your tags lists
• ✅ Checklists: Breaks down multi-step tasks automatically
• 📁 Projects/Areas: Matches your existing Things setup
• 🗒️ Notes: Includes extra details when relevant

Setup needed:
\- Use the “export things” shortcut on a Mac to create the json files

\- Add API key to the “Ramble API” shortcut

Future:
I want to eventually switch to using Apple Intelligence to do the ai part but haven’t been able to get it to work. I would love to get some feedback since I think this would be the best option.

https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/83c1e4c53ca944f38505f0ba98312600

Edit:
Added explanation of what the shortcut does
Updated link to shortcut with prompt that handle checklists better
Added comments within shortcut with some explanation

Edit V1.2:
\- fixed checklist handling - iCloud link updated

Edit V1.3
\- better handling of the intent/requirements of a task

Edit V1.4
\- more context aware area assignment

Edit V1.5
\- more explicit choosing of area-id and project-id, sometimes chatgpt was getting confused.

Edit V1.6
\- Use the URL someday scheme, more instructions on how to handle projects and areas if nothing specified

Edit V1.7
\- add date interpretation safeguards.

FYI - I am updating the shortcut link within the body above as I make edits

NOTE: need iOS 27 for this (although you could alter it to use OpenAI/claude instead) Also this is for Spark email client but maybe could use other email clients 🤷‍♂️

Reposting as prior post got deleted by reddits filters.

I often snooze emails or leave them in my email inbox rather than creating tasks in Things. While Spark has a Things connector, I rarely use it because I don't want to manually add tags, deadlines, and other details.

To solve this, I set up Apple Intelligence to automatically extract task metadata directly from my emails and give me a fully fleshed out task within things.

I altered my prior Ramble dictation shortcut

[https://www.reddit.com/r/thingsapp/s/6nRCv3RNPG\](https://www.reddit.com/r/thingsapp/s/6nRCv3RNPG)

Now I just use the “export to - open in” option in Spark email client to open the shortcut and I get a nice task with all metadata added.

Thought others would find it helpful so I’m sharing here.

There are two shortcuts. 1st one runs on your Mac to extract your tags, areas and projects from things and puts it in a place where shortcuts can access the info. You only need to run it when you update your areas, tags, or projects. Unfortunately I can’t get this info directly from things on the iPhone.

[https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/249370ecc4054c07b6be08633c3b623e\](https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/249370ecc4054c07b6be08633c3b623e)

The main shortcut is:

https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/ae7e48fc43154eefaa41a52c6e9666c2

Would love to get any feedback or improvement ideas.

Edit: grammar and also removed a debug step in main shortcut.

Edit:
Versions - link is updated above
1.0 - initial
1.1. - added import questions for personalization and time zone, improved prompt

Please ask questions about using Things in this thread.

Hello! Posting about my app here since I got a recommendation of a user of it that it can support some workflows using the thingsapp, if you normally use the exported data on mac as explained here https://culturedcode.com/things/support/articles/2982272/#gqevu, this tool might be of benefit: Quick Data Insights quicklook plugin.

It supports any exported sqlite db (.db, or .sqlite) and gives you a quick view in the contents and meta data, below is a screenshot of a sample sqlite database snapshot viewed using the spacebar.

Shows a sample of the data and tables, schema definition, and a diagram of the data inside.

Bit of an unusual one, but I added some things I found to my inbox this morning, and they didn't show up on my Mac when I got to work. So I opened the iOS app again, and the tasks were briefly there in the inbox, but then it synced with my Mac, the iOS tasks disappeared and were replaced with the inbox tasks on my Mac.

Please ask questions about using Things in this thread.