Swift To-Do List

  • Article

To Do List management on the PC has been a long time struggle for me to find the right app.  A few weeks ago I posted what's proven to by my #1 most popular post yet (and it isn't even "technical"), Task Management Software.  Well I'm happy to say I think I've found the answer!  Out of the dozens of apps I tried, I've settled with Swift To-Do List and I'm loving it.

It is shareware and cost $35 to register.  I must say, I've gotten one of the best ROI on my $35.  It also includes free unlimited upgrades of all future versions!  Now that's a good deal.

Highlights

  • Super easy and lightweight!
  • Keyboard hotkeys including Win-A to pop up, Ctrl-T for a new Task, etc.
  • Unobtrusive, just hit ESC to hide it away.
  • Good GUI with a bit of color and a nice simple layout.  It has about 66 built in icons for lists.
  • Solid, never crashes or behaves unexpectedly... it just works.
  • Great note taking with rich text, auto URLs, etc.
  • Filters tasks so you only need to see the active tasks, all tasks, or other filters.
  • Bulk actions, including bulk add (great for copy/paste), bulk priority change, etc.
  • It has other features like export to XML/csv, printing, and find task that I seldom use but are nice to have.

You can see the lists I keep in the left pane of the app.  The "Agenda" list has entries like this "Mike: SQL Reporting", "Habib: Feature Crew Entries" which are topics I need to talk to Mike & Habib about.  It's been super handy keeping a list like that.

Suggestions

There are some little things I wish it did that I've been tracking and will let Dextronet know about.  Like setting hotkeys for specific lists (Ctrl-1 for "Agenda", etc), double-clicking a task in the Find dialog should open the task, and some way of pulling/streaming the tasks via XML instead of involving a manual "export" step, etc.  But theses are "suggestions", there really aren't any "bugs" that I've found yet.

Advanced

It does have some notion of time tracking and prioritization, with being able to set a due date, get warnings of upcoming or expired items, and marking one of 5 priority levels and sorting by priority.  But support for these features is relatively lightweight.  For heavy duty task management, including costing, scheduling & team lists, try my 2nd favorite app, TaskPilot Pro (free activation key in the blog comments).  For simple & effective task management, but something more than Outlook or OneNote, Swift To-Do List has been just perfect.

Update on 4/17/07: STDL creator Jiri and I have been having a lively e-mail discussion about product improvements.  He was quite receptive to my suggestions and has a lot of other great features coming in the next version, including drag & drop file/URL/folder/etc attachments.