Things 3, the long-anticipated update to Cultured Code’s popular to-do app, is here with an all-new design and some delightful tricks up its sleeve.

The most clever of these tricks is the new Magic Plus Button, which not only lets you create new tasks like you’d expect, but can also be dragged to different places in the UI to perform actions contextually. In this comprehensive review, Ryan Christoffel of MacStories lists a few ways you can use the button:

Tap and drag the button into your list of projects to create a new project. Drop it into a list of tasks in Today to create a new task in that exact spot. Drop it into the Inbox icon that appears in the lower left corner to create the task in your Inbox. And, my personal favorite, when viewing your Upcoming list, drag and drop the button on to the day when that task needs to be acted on, and you’ve just assigned its start date.

Also new in Things 3 is a section on the Today screen called “This Evening” that helps you easily distinguish daytime and nighttime tasks. As someone who tends to run errands during the day and get my writing work done at night, this is a nice feature.

And I’m barely even scratching the surface of what’s new:

• An all-new “Upcoming” list that shows everything on your agenda for the coming days.
• Extremely fast in-app search, dubbed “Quick Find”.
• The ability to add headings to your task list in order to create structure and keep projects separated.
• Your schedule of calendar events now displays together with your to-dos; you can choose which calendars to see in Things (Personal, Family, Work, etc).
• The “Jump Start” popover makes it easy to set dates and reminders, put things on hold for later, and add tasks to the “Today” or “This Evening” sections.
• The Mac app now supports the Touch Bar and has the ability to open multiple projects in different windows.
• …and much more.

Things 3 is a paid update for all users, and each version must be purchased separately:

• Things 3 for iPhone + Apple Watch ($10 $8 until May 25th, 2017)
• Things 3 for iPad ($20 $16 until May 25th, 2017)
• Things 3 for Mac ($50 $40 until May 25th, 2017) — Free trial also available

Whichever version you prefer, this is world-class software and absolutely worth what you pay. Congratulations to Cultured Code on such a big release, and we look forward to what Things 3 has in store.

Update: We’ve heard some (understandable) concerns about Things 3 not yet supporting repeating tasks. Thankfully, they’ve told us that it’s being worked on and will be released in an update soon.

Posted By Chris Gonzales