You’ve seen the screenshots. A clean white page, a short Today list, a This Evening section for the things you can only do once you’re home, and everything else folded away into Someday where it can’t stare at you. Maybe a friend with ADHD swears it’s the only to-do app that ever stuck. So you open Google Play, type “Things 3”, and get a page of other to-do apps.
Or maybe you ran your whole life in Things for years, then switched phones. Your Mac still has it. Your pocket doesn’t.
Either way, you end up in the same place. Cultured Code’s own support page lists Android among the platforms Things doesn’t run on, along with Windows and web browsers. So the useful question isn’t “where’s the Android version?” It’s “which part of Things was doing the work for my brain?” That’s the part you need to replace.
Why does Things 3 work so well for ADHD brains?
Things is famous for looking lovely, but pretty isn’t why ADHD brains stick with it. Three design choices do the heavy lifting.
The first is that capturing a task costs almost nothing. A new to-do is a title and not much else. Tags, a checklist, a start date and a deadline are, in Cultured Code’s words, “neatly tucked away in the corner until you need them”. When adding a task doesn’t demand five decisions, more tasks make it out of your head.
The second is that your day is a list you chose, not your entire backlog. Today holds what you picked. To-dos with a future start date hibernate in Upcoming and move into Today when the day arrives, and anything fuzzy goes to Someday. You see a day, not a mountain. The flip side is real, though. If out of sight tends to mean out of mind for you, Someday can quietly become the place ideas go to be forgotten. Whatever you switch to, you want the hiding and a reason to look back.
The third is that you pay once. Things is a one-time purchase for each platform, with no subscription, so there’s no monthly voice asking whether you’ve used it enough to justify the fee.
None of this is just taste. One CBT program, tested on adults with ADHD who were already taking medication, opens with sessions on organizing and planning, built around a calendar and a task-list system. In a 2010 randomized trial published in JAMA, 67% of the people who did it cut their ADHD symptom scores by at least 30%, compared with 33% of those who got relaxation training and education instead. The list wasn’t the whole treatment, but it’s where the treatment started. Which app holds yours matters less than whether you’ll keep opening it.
Which Android apps come closest to Things 3?
None of these is Things. Each one copies a different piece of it, so the right pick depends on which piece you actually used. All five were live on Google Play with no “Contains ads” label when we checked in October 2026.
| App | Ads | What it copies from Things | Account needed | The catch |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| TickTick | None | The feature set: checklists, natural-language dates, calendar | For sync | Free plan stops at 9 lists |
| Todoist | None | Projects split into sections, like headings | Yes | Free plan stops at 5 projects |
| Microsoft To Do | None | My Day, a Today list you pick each morning | Yes, Microsoft | My Day empties every night |
| Tasks.org | None | Start dates, sub-tasks and tags, offline | No | Its own sync and desktop app cost extra |
| Noodl | None | A Today list plus a no-pressure Someday | No | Android only, no projects or sync |
TickTick — the closest match for the full feature set
If you used every corner of Things, start here. TickTick has checklists inside tasks, natural-language dates, a calendar view, home-screen widgets, and apps for Mac, Windows, iOS and the web, which matters if you’re keeping your Mac.
The catch is that TickTick also has a Pomodoro timer, a habit tracker, an Eisenhower matrix and countdowns. For some ADHD brains that’s a playground. For others it’s a pile of new settings to tweak instead of doing the task. The free plan caps you at 9 lists, 99 tasks per list and 19 checklist items per task, and Premium is US$49.99 a year at the time of writing.
Best for: Things devotees who want everything, on every device.
Todoist — the best stand-in for projects and headings
If your Things was built from projects broken up with headings, Todoist’s sections are the nearest equivalent: a project, split into chunks, with sub-tasks underneath. Quick Add understands plain-language dates, and on Android you get a Quick Add tile and home-screen widgets.
The free Beginner plan stops at 5 personal projects, and deadlines, the calendar layout and custom reminders are Pro features, so a big Things library will push you toward paying. Todoist tends to reward people who enjoy maintaining a system, and we went deeper on whether Todoist is ADHD-friendly in a separate post.
Best for: project-heavy setups that need to work on every platform.
Microsoft To Do — a free Today list you rebuild each morning
If you mostly lived in Things’ Today list, Microsoft To Do’s My Day is the closest copy, and it’s free. You pick what goes into it, and Microsoft says it resets every night so you start with a blank slate. Anything unfinished drops out of My Day and turns up in the next day’s suggestions, so nothing is lost. Steps let you break a task into smaller pieces, a bit like a Things checklist.
The catches: you sign in with a Microsoft account, and the nightly wipe is love-it-or-hate-it. Some ADHD brains find a fresh page every morning freeing; others find re-picking the day one decision too many. There’s more in our comparison of Microsoft To Do with an ADHD-first task app.
Best for: people who only ever really opened Today.
Tasks.org — free, open source and no account
Tasks.org is the pick if you want start dates and sub-tasks without handing your list to anyone. The free version needs no account or internet connection and gives you unlimited tasks, lists, tags and reminders, plus start dates, sub-tasks nested as deep as you like, recurring tasks and location-based reminders. There are no ads.
It’s more practical than pretty, and the extras cost money: Tasks.org’s own cloud sync is $29.99 a year, and the desktop app, still in alpha, needs a name-your-price subscription starting at $0.99 a year. Free sync works through Google Tasks or Microsoft To Do. If any subscription is a dealbreaker, we keep a list of to-do apps with no subscription.
Best for: privacy-minded tinkerers who want start dates without signing up.
Noodl — for when Today and Someday were the whole point
Be honest with yourself for a second: did you use Things for projects and headings, or mostly for two screens? If it was Today and Someday, Noodl is built around roughly that shape. Today shows only today’s tasks, with the next one waiting in an “Up next” card. Everything else lives in Plan, either Scheduled with a date or Parked with no date and no pressure, which works a lot like Someday. It’s free, with no ads and no account, you can capture from a home-screen widget or a Quick Settings tile, and when a day slips the task simply waits in Plan instead of turning red.
What it leaves out matters just as much. It’s Android only, with no projects, headings, sub-tasks, recurring tasks or sync, so it won’t replace a Things library built on projects.
Best for: people who want the calm of a short Today list and nothing else.
How do you switch from Things 3 without losing a weekend?
Don’t move your whole Things library tonight. Setting up a new app is the fun part, and it’s very easy to spend a weekend building the perfect system and then never open it again.
Try this tomorrow instead. Write down the one Things screen you opened most. If it was Today, start with Microsoft To Do or the simplest pick above. If it was a project with headings, start with Todoist. If it was everything, TickTick. Move only the tasks with a date in the next seven days, and dump the rest, unsorted, into a single list called “From Things”. Then set a reminder for 30 days out. Anything you haven’t gone looking for by then didn’t need moving.