Due is an indispensable app that I depend on daily on both iOS, the Apple Watch, and the Mac. There are three things that immediately come to mind when I think about why I like this app over the basic Reminders app.
- Its design is beautiful, intelligent, and easy to read.
- Its natural language parsing is a breeze... "remind me to help with lunch duty at 11:27 am" adds a reminder with the time just as I type it.
- The swipe down gesture to add a new task is very intuitive.
- By far, most important: you can set the notifications to keep pinging you until you check the task as done. You can even customize the amount of time it snoozes when you tap the snooze button.
I don't use this app to manage big projects. For that, I use OmniFocus. But for tasks that have to be acted on in a very specific moment, Due is the tool for the job.
It just got a major Mac update. Most of the changes are design focused, which I can appreciate because the Mac app, while it functioned, was starting to look pretty out of date. If you want to read more of the specifics, I recommend the MacStories article linked below.
Due for Mac Modernized with New Design and Features:
A full-fledged task manager is terrific for many projects, but if you dump your entire life into one, it can quickly become a cluttered mess. At the same time, if you’re focused on a big project, it’s easy to let everything that’s not in your task manager slip through the cracks. One strategy for attacking the problem that has worked well for me is using a separate, lightweight app for tasks like remembering to take out the garbage, pick up medicine at the pharmacy, or publish an article when an embargo lifts.
In the past, I’ve used Due on the iPhone and iPad for these sorts of tasks. There has been a Mac version of Due for years too, but it hadn’t been updated in about two years and was showing its age. However, with today’s update, Due for Mac joins the iOS version with a fully-modern design and slate of new features, putting it on par with the outstanding iOS version, which I’ve covered in the past.