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Lists and List Groups

Use lists to organize tasks for work, home, or any other part of your day. Your lists appear in the lists panel on the left.

What Is in the Panel​

The panel holds three kinds of entry, in order:

  • Focus Lists: All, Today, Starred, Scheduled, and Done. They are not containers; they are built-in perspectives across every list you have. Tap one to jump to it, or press ⌘1 to ⌘5.
  • Your lists, gathered into groups. Lists you do not put in a group of your own sit together under the standard Lists group.
  • Smart Lists, saved searches that behave like real lists.

Inbox appears above the Focus Lists once Getting Things Done® Inbox is turned on under Settings > Tasks > New Tasks. It is a real list where captures land for triage, not a Focus List. Press ⌘0 to reach it.

For what each Focus List shows and how to keep a list out of one, see Focus Lists.

Creating a List​

  • iPad: tap the Add button at the bottom of the panel and choose New List or New List Group.
  • iPhone: tap the Add row at the bottom of the panel and choose New List or New List Group.

The list editor opens so you can name the list and choose its options. To choose how tasks are sorted in each new list, set New Lists under Settings > Tasks > Default Sorting.

The same Add menu lists Add Section under the name of the list on screen, plus Auto-Create Sections on devices with Apple Intelligence. See Task Sections.

The List Editor​

To change a regular list's settings, touch and hold its name in the lists panel and tap Edit. The editor holds:

  • Name.
  • Color, chosen from the swatches or from Custom for anything else. A list's color runs through every task in it, which is how you tell at a glance where a task belongs in All or Today.
  • Group, the list group this list belongs to.
  • Exclude From, with switches for All, Today, and Done. See Focus Lists.
  • Exclude From Sync keeps an ordinary list out of your sync service. If it was already syncing, 2Do deletes it from that service and your other devices. An iCloud shared list has its own sharing sync and cannot use this switch to stop syncing.
  • Archive and Delete at the bottom.

A list that is shared, published over Wi-Fi, or subscribed from another device is labeled as such beneath its name.

tip

Color-code by domain (Work, Home, Personal), use tags for contexts that cut across lists such as @phone or @errands, and save the combinations you keep repeating as Smart Lists.

Touch and Hold a List​

Touching and holding a list opens its quick actions. Exactly which appear depends on the kind of list:

  • Lock or Unlock for a password-protected list. See Password Protection.
  • Edit opens the list editor described above. It is not available for All or Today. To keep a regular list's tasks out of All, edit that regular list; see Excluding a List from All.
  • Change Statuses offers Mark all as Done and Mark all as Undone across the whole list, which is handy for a shopping list you have finished or a routine you are about to reuse.
  • Manage Lists opens the reorder and visibility screen.
  • Manage Groups opens the list-group screen.
  • Publish to LAN shares the list with other 2Do users on your network, and reads Published on LAN once it is live. See Share Lists over Wi-Fi.
  • Duplicate appears on Smart Lists, so you can copy a saved search and adjust the copy.
  • Auto-Create Sections uses Apple Intelligence to organize the list's unfinished, unsectioned tasks. It prefers suitable existing sections and creates new ones where needed. It appears on your own lists and the Inbox on devices that support Apple Intelligence. See Auto-Create Sections.
  • Share via iCloud… invites other 2Do users to a regular list. A shared list instead offers Manage Sharing… and Stop Sharing… for its owner, Leave List… for a member, or Remove List… after access ends.
  • Archive puts the list away without deleting it.
  • Delete removes the list and everything in it.

Managing and Reordering Lists​

Manage Lists shows active lists, including hidden ones. Use it to reorder lists or change their visibility with the switches beside them. At least one list must stay visible. Tap Create New List... at the top to add a list. To restore an archived list, use Settings > Security > Archived.

Manage Groups does the same for list groups: create a group, rename one, reorder them, or delete one. To move a list into a group, open the list editor and change its Group.

Tap a group's header in the panel to collapse or expand it. Collapsing a group hides its rows without changing the lists' visibility settings.

tip

If your panel is getting long, group related lists and collapse the groups you are not working in. It costs one tap to open a group again and it keeps the panel readable.

Excluding a List from Focus Lists​

Some lists should not feed All or Today: a Someday list, an archive of reference material, recurring chores you only want surfaced by their alerts. Touch and hold the list, tap Edit, and turn on the matching switch under Exclude From. The list and its tasks stay exactly where they are and remain reachable; they simply stop appearing in the Focus List you excluded them from.

Archiving a List​

Archive a list to keep its tasks while removing it from the lists panel. This can be useful for a finished project or a packing list you use once a year.

To archive a list, touch and hold it, tap Archive, and confirm. The list leaves the panel, but nothing is deleted. Its tasks can still appear in Smart Lists and the Done Focus List.

To restore a list:

  1. Open Settings > Security and select Archived.
  2. If Security settings are locked, tap Unlock and enter your passcode.
  3. Find the list, tap Unarchive, and confirm.

Archived includes archived lists even when their List Visibility switch is off. Restoring a list keeps its visibility and password-protection settings. If it is still hidden, open Privacy and turn it on under List Visibility to show it in the lists panel.

Archive, Exclude, and Hide​

Choose the option that matches what you want to change:

  • Exclude From All / Today / Done keeps the list in the panel and excludes its tasks from the Focus Lists you choose.
  • List Visibility, under Settings > Security > Privacy, lets you hide a list from the panel. Hidden lists and their tasks still sync.
  • Archive removes the list from the panel and keeps it available under Archived until you restore it.

Shared and Subscribed Lists​

Use iCloud list sharing to invite people to a list and receive each other's edits wherever you are. The list's tasks, sections, and manual task order are shared. List names, colors, sort views, Focus filters, and alert choices remain personal. Read-only members can view the work but cannot change it.

You can also share over Wi-Fi with people on the same network. Lists you own, received lists, and read-only copies have marks in the lists panel so you can tell their roles apart.

Indicators on List Names​

Each row can carry:

  • Counts: overdue on the left in red, and tasks not yet done on the right. What appears is set by Counts on lists under Settings > Today & Lists: None, Overdue items, or Overdue + Undone. Sub-tasks are not counted here; their counts sit on the project or checklist itself.
  • A small glowing dot: white when the list holds a task due today, red when it holds an overdue task. It never appears on All, Done, or Scheduled.
  • A color band that changes to mark a Smart List, a list excluded from All, a published or subscribed Wi-Fi list, a shared calendar, or a locked list.

The Default Capture List​

Two related settings sit under Settings > Tasks > New Tasks:

  • Getting Things Done® Inbox turns on the Inbox, a real list where new captures land for triage.
  • Default list picks which list new tasks go to, and Always Use Default List sends every new task there regardless of which list you were looking at. Always Use in Quick Add applies the same rule to Quick Add only.

To send one new task somewhere else as you write it, type a slash and the start of the list name in the title, as in Buy milk /errands or Clear out the loft /homeproj for Home Projects. Capitals and spaces are ignored. The list banner in the editor, or the list button in Quick Add, shows the matching destination as you type. A closing slash is optional, so /Health/ works too. If nothing matches, the words stay in the title and the task keeps its current list. If two lists share a name, 2Do picks the one shown first in the list picker. Web addresses and file paths are left alone. A list whose name ends in a slash is matched by typing the start of its name. See Natural Language Input.

Dragging Tasks onto Lists​

The lists panel is a drop target. Touch and hold a task, drag it onto a list, and it moves there. The Focus Lists accept drops too, applying a state change instead of a move: Today sets the due date to today, Starred stars the task, Done completes it, and Scheduled asks for a start date. See Drag and Drop.

Drag a section's title onto a list in the lists panel the same way to move the section there with all of its tasks.

Smart Lists​

Smart Lists live in the panel alongside your real lists. They are saved searches, so their contents change as your tasks do, and they hold nothing of their own. See Smart Lists.

Sections Inside a List​

To give a long list some order without splitting it into several lists, divide it into named sections, such as Fruit, Vegetables, and Pantry in a grocery list. The Inbox can have sections too. The list's sort still applies inside each section, and you can collapse, reorder, and move sections with their tasks. See Task Sections.

When you add or move tasks, the list picker shows each list's sections under its name, so you can file tasks straight into a section, one at a time or several at once in batch editing. See Sections in the List Picker.

Projects and Checklists Are Task Types​

Projects and checklists are not lists. They are kinds of task, created from the type picker while you are composing, or by converting an existing task. See Projects and Checklists.

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