Lists and List Groups

Lists are the basic organizational unit in 2Do. They live in the Lists Panel (left sidebar) and group your tasks by area of responsibility, project, or any system you choose.

Three Kinds of Lists

There are three kinds of lists shown in the Lists Panel:

• Focus Lists — built-in saved perspectives across all your tasks: All, Today, Starred, Scheduled, Done, Inbox. Always pinned to the top of the panel. See Focus Lists for the full reference.
• Lists — your own lists, holding tasks, projects, and checklists. Color-coded, optionally grouped, optionally locked.
• Smart Lists — saved searches that behave like real lists. See Smart Lists, Smart Filters, and Search.

Focus Lists

The top of the panel always shows your Focus Lists. These are not real lists: they're saved perspectives that pull tasks from across your real lists.

• All — every task, across every list, that isn't hidden by a paused tag or scheduled to start in the future.
• Today — tasks due today, plus tasks whose duration window covers today. Depending on your Today & Lists settings, Today can also include overdue tasks, starred tasks, and tasks you're still working on.
• Starred — tasks you've starred.
• Scheduled — tasks with a future start date that are still hidden by Smart Scheduling.
• Done — completed tasks.
• Inbox — your GTD inbox: tasks not yet sorted into a list. New tasks captured via Quick Entry (when the global option is set), or those that flow in from the iOS Email-to-2Do add-on via sync, land here by default unless the email subject sends them to another existing list.

New tasks pick up the focus you're viewing: a task added while Today is open is due today, and a task added while Starred is open is starred automatically. The Today behavior is on by default — turn off Use today's date in the Today list under Settings > Tasks to have your default due date apply there too.

Use the keyboard shortcuts ⌘0–⌘5 to jump between Focus Lists.

Excluding a List from Focus Lists

Some lists shouldn't contribute to All or Today: a "Someday/Maybe" list, recurring chores you only want surfaced by their alarms, or a list staged for future work. Right-click the list and choose the matching command (the menu names the list itself, e.g. Exclude from 'All' or Include in 'Today'). You can independently exclude a list from:

• All
• Today
• Done

Sync exclusion is separate and lives under 2Do > Settings > Sync > Exclusions. A small indicator appears next to the list name once any global-visibility option is customized. The list and its tasks are still visible when you click into the list directly; they just don't show up in the Focus Lists you've excluded them from.

The same menu carries a fourth, related switch: Exclude Completed keeps the list's finished tasks out of view (the item reads Include Completed once it's on). Useful for a list that accumulates a lot of ticked-off history you never need to look at.

Creating a List

• File > New > New List — opens a sheet to choose a name and color.
• [+] button at the bottom of the Lists Panel.

Each list has:

• Name — what shows in the sidebar. Up to 200 characters; longer names are shortened automatically. On a CalDAV account the server stores a 25-character version of the name, while the list keeps its full name in 2Do.
• Color — color-codes every task that belongs to the list. Useful for at-a-glance scanning when several lists' tasks appear together in All or Today.
• Sort order — any of the sort methods, from Due Date and Priority through Tag, Duration, and Manually.
• Focus rule — whether tasks contribute to Focus Lists.
• Lock — see Password Protection.

You can edit any of these later from Task > Edit List with the list selected, or by right-clicking the list.

Duplicate List Names

Two lists are allowed to share the same name. A list's identity is internal, not its name, so renaming accepts any non-empty title even if another list already uses it; name your lists whatever reads best for you.

note

The lists: search token matches every list with a given name. lists: Work selects tasks from all lists named "Work" at once and can't tell two identically-named lists apart. Keep names unique where you rely on lists: to target one specific list. See Smart Lists, Smart Filters, and Search for the search tokens.

List Groups

A growing system needs a way to keep the sidebar calm. List Groups are folders for lists. Create one with File > New > New List Group, drag lists into it, and collapse the group when you don't need to see what's inside.

• Expand all List Groups / Collapse all List Groups — see the View menu.
• List groups can be color-coded too.

Disclosure Triangle: Jump to a Project or Checklist

If a list contains one or more projects or checklists, a small disclosure triangle appears next to the list icon in the Lists Panel. Click it and the panel reveals every project and checklist inside that list. Click any of them to highlight it directly in the task list, without scrolling or expanding everything inline.

This is the fastest way to navigate to a specific project hidden inside a busy list.

Projects and checklists always appear here, even when they're hidden from the task list by a paused tag or a future start date; paused ones just render slightly dimmed. That's deliberate: the task list keeps your working view clean by hiding what's paused or scheduled, while the Lists Panel is for reaching things, so nothing you've set aside ever drops out of sight entirely.

Reordering and Drag-and-Drop

Lists are fully drag-and-droppable:

• Drag a list up or down to reorder.
• Drag a list onto a List Group to move it inside.
• Drag tasks onto a list in the sidebar to move them into that list.
• Hold ⌥ (Option) while dropping to copy instead of move.

note

Moving a task to another list (by drag-and-drop or Move To, including dropping it into a project or checklist) refreshes the task's list-entry time. Preset sorts use that time as a tie-breaker, so tasks you just moved surface together where you can see them instead of scattering into the middle of the list. Your list's sort direction decides whether they gather at the top or the bottom.

The List Right-Click Menu

Right-clicking a list gathers everything you can do to it in one place:

• Rename… — edit the name in place.
• Color ▸ — pick from a curated palette of swatches, or choose Custom to open the macOS color picker for any shade you like.
• Exclude from 'All' / 'Today' / 'Done' and Exclude Completed — the visibility switches described above.
• Delete all Tasks — empties the list but keeps the list itself, its color, and its settings. 2Do asks for confirmation first. This is the difference between it and Delete, which removes the list as well.
• Lock / Unlock — see Password Protection.
• Publish List to LAN… — share the list with other 2Do users on your network. See List Sharing.
• Archive List — see Archiving a List.
• Delete — removes the list and everything in it.

warning

Delete all Tasks acts on the whole list at once, including tasks currently filtered out of view. ⌘Z undoes it, but take a moment before confirming.

Right-clicking a List Group gives you a shorter menu: Rename…, Color grouped lists… (recolors every list inside the group in one step), and Delete.

Smart Lists

Smart Lists also live in the Lists Panel; they're saved searches that behave like real lists. See Smart Lists.

Locking a List

Right-click a list and choose Lock to require a password before its contents are shown (the same menu shows Unlock afterwards). Locked lists can be excluded from Focus Lists too, so a lock can hide the list completely. For details, see Password Protection.

Archiving a List

To get a list out of your active workspace without deleting it, right-click and choose Archive List. Archived lists are accessed from 2Do > Settings > Security > Archived and can be restored at any time.

Archived lists and their tasks stay out of active views, except Smart Lists and the Done Focus List. They still sync unless you also exclude the list under 2Do > Settings > Sync > Exclusions.

GTD Inbox and Default Capture List

Two related settings under 2Do > Settings > Tasks shape where new tasks land by default:

• Getting Things Done® Inbox — when on, the Inbox Focus List is your true inbox: tasks captured from Quick Entry, the share extension, and iOS Email-to-2Do captures that sync in without a subject-selected list land here for triage. The Inbox lives in a special Collect list group that can't be renamed or moved.
• Always Use Default List — when on, every new task goes to the chosen default list, regardless of which list you were viewing when you created it. New tasks created while a Focus List like Today or Starred is selected still inherit that focus list's nature (they're due today or starred), but their home list is the default. The due-today part follows the Use today's date in the Today list setting under Settings > Tasks.

The combination makes capture predictable: hit ⌘N from anywhere, capture, triage during the daily review.

Indicators on List Names

• Undone count — to the right of a list name, the number of dated or undated tasks, projects, and checklists that haven't been completed. Sub-task counts appear on the project / checklist icon, not the list.
• Overdue count — to the left of the list name, in red, when a list has tasks past their due date. Always shown alongside the Undone count.
• A faint white glowing dot indicates a task due today is hiding inside that list. A red glowing dot indicates an overdue task is hiding inside.
• Visibility indicator — one or more of the list's Focus List visibility options have been changed.
• A lock icon indicates a locked list.
• A down-arrow indicates a collapsed group or project.

These counts are live: each number is an animated wheel that rolls up or down the moment a task is added, completed, or moved, so the panel always reflects your current workload at a glance. See The 2Do Window for more on the Lists Panel and its counters, and set what the counts include under 2Do > Settings > Today & Lists.

Tips

tip

Color-code lists by domain, not by priority. Use Tags for cross-list contexts and the Focus Filter for what's important right now.

tip

Keep your Inbox truly empty by reviewing it daily; anything in the Inbox is something you haven't yet decided what to do with.