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Projects and Checklists

2Do has three structures for breaking work into smaller pieces: Projects, Checklists, and Sub-Tasks. They look similar but serve different purposes. This page explains how they differ and when to use each.

Tasks​

A Task is the basic unit. It can carry notes, dates, alerts, tags, a location, an action, and sub-tasks, a quick inline checklist that lives entirely inside the task. Sub-tasks are best when the children are tiny and only meaningful in the context of the parent: "Pack: passport, charger, headphones." If you want each child to act like a real task with its own due date, alarm, or tag, use a Project instead.

Projects​

A Project is a parent that contains real tasks. Each child task carries its own properties, including its own due date, alarm, tag, and action, and shows up individually in your Focus Lists. Changing or removing the project's own dates reschedules it and sets completed children back to active; see Dates and Durations.

A project containing several tasks

Use a project when:

  • You have a goal made of multiple actions that don't need to happen in order.
  • The individual actions deserve their own tags, dates, or alerts.
  • You want each action to appear in Today on its own due date. Examples: Plan the conference talk, Hire a new designer, Refresh the kitchen.

Creating a Project​

  • File > New > New Project (⌥⌘N)
  • The + button in the toolbar, using its dropdown to pick New Project.
  • Select existing tasks → File > New > New Project from Selection (⌥⇧⌘N) to bundle them under a new project parent. The same command is on the task list's right-click menu under New.

Project View​

When you're inside a project and want to focus only on the work inside that project, toggle Task > Toggle Project View (⌥⌘J). The rest of the list collapses out of the way and you're left with just the project's tasks.

Sorting Inside a Project​

A project or checklist keeps its own sort order, separate from the list it sits in. Select it (or any of its sub-tasks), right-click, and use the Sort Project submenu, which reads Sort Checklist for a checklist, to sort its children by Status, Priority, Start Date, Due Date, Creation, Note, Title, Tag, Location, Duration, or Manually, ascending or descending.

So a list sorted by due date can still hold a project whose steps stay in the manual order you dragged them into. The submenu only appears when a project, checklist, or one of their sub-tasks is selected.

Collapsing Projects​

Projects and checklists expand and collapse in place:

  • C (Task > Collapse Project) folds the selected project.
  • ⌥⌘↓ / ⌥⌘↑ expand or collapse every project in the list at once.

Collapsed or not, a list's projects and checklists are always reachable from the disclosure triangle in the Lists Panel.

Checklists​

A Checklist is also a parent, but checklists hold items, not full tasks. A checklist item has a title, can be marked complete, and can carry its own tags, but it has no dates of its own. It inherits its scheduling from the checklist, so it can't have its own due or start dates, repeats, or date-based alerts. The whole checklist behaves like one task in your Focus Lists. Use a checklist when:

  • You have a sequence of small steps that only matter together.
  • You don't want each step to clutter Today on its own. Examples: Packing list, Pre-flight checklist, New-hire onboarding steps.

Creating a Checklist​

  • File > New > New Checklist (⌃⌘N)
  • The + button in the toolbar, using its dropdown to pick New Checklist.
  • Select existing tasks → File > New > New Checklist from Selection (⌃⇧⌘N).
tip

Checklists are perfect templates. Duplicate a checklist (⌘D) when you need a fresh copy for the next trip, the next launch, or the next onboarding.

Converting Between Types​

You're never locked into your first choice. Task > Convert lets you switch:

  • Task → Project: promotes the task; existing sub-tasks become full child tasks.
  • Task → Checklist: converts sub-tasks into checklist items.
  • Project → Checklist: collapses children into items (you'll lose per-task dates and related properties, so 2Do warns you first).
  • Project → Task: turns the project into a single task with its children flattened into sub-tasks.
tip

Start with a regular Task. Promote to a Project only when you find yourself wanting to put dates or alarms on a sub-task.

Behavior in Focus Lists​

  • Project children appear individually in All, Today, Starred, etc., wherever their own dates and properties qualify them.
  • Checklist parents appear as a single item in Focus Lists, regardless of how many items they hold.
  • Sub-tasks of a regular task appear inline under the parent and are not surfaced separately.
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