10 Things 3 Tricks Only Power Users Know

Things 3 is the only reason I've never moved away from iPhone. I've flirted with MANY other task managers over the years, but none of them have knocked it off the top spot. Here's everything I've learned about squeezing the most out of it.

Quick Entry with Autofill 📥

Let's start on the Mac, because this one alone will save you a ton of time. There's a global shortcut you can set up in the settings called Quick Entry with Autofill. Hit it whilst you're sat in an email in Mail, or looking at a webpage in Safari, and Things doesn't just open a blank box. It actually grabs the content you're looking at and pre-fills the to-do with a link back to it.

So if a client emails me something I need to action later, I hit the shortcut, it's already titled, already linked, and I'm back to what I was doing in about two seconds. It removes basically all the friction between "I need to do this" and it actually being captured properly. I really hope they find a way of bringing this to iPhone too, so I can add to-dos from anywhere.

How to use it:

• Open Things on your Mac
• Go to Things → Settings → General
• Set your Quick Entry with Autofill shortcut
• Try it from inside Mail or Safari, it'll pre-fill the title and link automatically

Mail to Things 📬

Sticking with capture, every Things account gets a unique Mail to Things email address. If you're on your iPhone or iPad, you can forward literally any email to it, and it lands in your Inbox as a to-do, with the original email content sitting in the notes.

This is brilliant for people who live and work out of their inbox. I always try and get to a zero inbox, and treating what comes in as either something I need to do right now, or something to schedule for later, keeps things moving. If it's the latter, I get it out of email and into Things 3.

How to use it:

• Open Things Settings on Mac → Mail to Things
• Copy your unique Mail to Things address
• Forward any email to it from your phone, tablet or desktop
• It lands in your Inbox as a to-do, with the email content saved in the notes

Quick Find's Hidden Lists 🔍

Most people use Quick Find just to search for a task by name. But type certain keywords into it and Things generates entire lists on the fly. Type "Deadlines" and you get every upcoming deadline sorted for you. Type "Repeating" and every repeating to-do in your whole system shows up in one place. Type "Tomorrow" and you get a focused view just for planning your next day.

It's basically a set of hidden reports built into the search bar, and barely anyone knows they're there. If Cultured Code are reading this, please add that Tomorrow view to the sidebar, that would be amazing.

How to use it:

• Open Quick Find (⌘F on Mac, or pull down on mobile)
• Type "Deadlines", "Repeating", or "Tomorrow"
• Select the generated list from the results

This Evening 🌙

Under Today, there's a separate section called This Evening. Anything you schedule there sits apart from your daytime tasks, so your Today list doesn't get cluttered with things you're not going to do immediately, sat next to your actual work deadlines.

It kind of acts like a priority line of things you want to do now versus later on. It's a small separation, but it genuinely changes how manageable your day feels.

How to use it:

• Open a to-do and tap the "When" field
• Select "This Evening" instead of "Today"
• It'll show up in its own section under Today, separate from your daytime tasks

Headings 📑

Inside any project, you can add Headings to break your to-dos into sections. A video project for me might have headings for Scripting, Filming and Editing, all within the same project, all collapsible. It turns a long flat list into something that actually mirrors how the work happens, separating a project into different stages of a workflow.

Again, if you're watching this Cultured Code, having AI auto-generate the headings would be a really cool feature. But there's no real native AI capability in Things 3, so yeah.

How to use it:

• Open any project
• Tap the "+" and choose "New Heading"
• Name it, then drag your existing to-dos underneath it

Spotlight and Siri Integration 🔮

Things now feeds your entire database, every to-do, every project, straight into Spotlight, so you can search for a task without even opening the app. And it works alongside the new Siri too. You can just speak a to-do naturally, then keep talking to add notes, start dates and alerts, all without touching the screen.

How to use it:

• Make sure Spotlight indexing is enabled in Things Settings
• Search for any to-do or project straight from Spotlight on Mac or iOS
• Use Siri to add a to-do by voice, then keep talking to add details

Tags & Filtering 🏷️

Tags in Things aren't just labels, you can use them to sort your to-dos in lots of different ways. I use them to prioritise my Today list using an Eisenhower Matrix style set of labels. That way, if I've got a lot on my plate in a day, I can filter on urgent and important things first, which gives me a better sense of focus on what to work on next. It sort of clears all the clutter without removing it completely.

How to use it:

• Create tags like "Urgent", "Important", or a full Eisenhower Matrix set
• Apply them to your to-dos as you create or review them
• Use Quick Find or the tag filter bar to view only what matches

Widgets 📲

You can also use widgets on your home screen to only surface certain tasks, not just a generic Today list. On my iPhone home screen, for example, I have "Urgent & Important" tagged tasks only showing. That way, I've always got a glanceable view of what's important for me to get done on a particular day.

How to use it:

• Long press your Home Screen and tap the "+" to add a widget
• Search for Things 3 and choose your widget size
• Tap the widget to configure which list or tag it should show

iOS Shortcuts 🎙️

On iPhone, I've built a Shortcut called "Dictate". I just dictate whatever's on my mind, it uses Apple Intelligence to pull out the actual tasks from what I said, capitalises each one properly, and adds them straight into Things 3. So if I'm walking and thinking out loud about three or four things I need to do, I say them all in one go, and they land in my Inbox as clean, separate to-dos, no typing, no tidying up afterwards.

If you want the exact prompt I use in Apple Shortcuts, just ask me in the comments down below.

How to use it:

• Open the Shortcuts app and create a new shortcut
• Add a "Dictate Text" action
• Pass the dictated text to an Apple Intelligence action to extract and format tasks
• Add an "Add To-Do" (Things) action to send each one to your Inbox

The New Repeating To-Do Flexibility 🔁

Repeating to-dos used to be really rigid in Things. If your Tuesday gym session repeated every week and you actually went on Monday instead, you'd have to manually juggle the whole thing. Now you can just mark it done early, or reschedule that one instance, without it messing up the pattern for every future week. It's a genuinely long requested fix, and it makes repeating tasks feel far less robotic.

How to use it:

• Open a repeating to-do
• Mark it done early, or tap to reschedule just that one instance
• The rest of the repeat pattern stays untouched

Duplicating Projects as Templates 🗂️

I've got a "Video Template" project sitting under Resources, with headings for Pre-Production, Production and Post-Production already built in, so all of the repeatable steps for every single video are already there. Whenever I'm starting a new video, I just duplicate that project, drag it into Active Projects, and give it the real title. Everything's already structured, I'm not sat there rebuilding the same checklist from scratch every time. It's such a small thing, but it's genuinely saved me hours over the year.

How to use it:

• Build out a project with all your repeatable headings and to-dos
• Move it under an "Area" like Resources once it's set up
• Duplicate it whenever you start a new instance of that workflow
• Drag the duplicate into Active Projects and rename it

How I Actually Use It: PARA and the Inbox 🗃️

If you're wondering how I've structured my projects in Things 3, I'm using the PARA method, so my Areas and Projects map onto Projects, Areas, Resources and Archive rather than just a random pile of lists. It gives everything a home, so nothing just floats about with no clear purpose. I've also split projects up into active and holding projects, and limited myself to working on a max of 3 projects at any one time.

And the Inbox is doing a lot of heavy lifting for me too. I treat it purely as a capture point. Whatever comes into my head during the day just goes straight in there, no thinking about where it belongs yet. Then a few times a week, I sit down and properly process it, sorting everything into the right Area or Project. That just keeps the moment of capture completely frictionless.