My task manager is packed with personal and work tasks. I rely on it to keep me on track day-to-day and week-to-week. The reason my task system works though is that it doesn’t include absolutely everything. If I started adding the minute-to-minute minutiae of life, I’d get bogged down in the volume of tasks each day.
For a while now, I’ve been using Apple’s Reminders app to keep track of one-off tasks, little things I might forget to do, errands, and tasks with deadlines. I’ve found that it’s a great way to stay on top of items that don’t have a home in a formal project. For the past couple of weeks though, I’ve largely replaced Reminders with Due, which was updated to version 3.0 today.
Due is a pro-user implementation of reminders and timers. The app has one of the best quick-entry UIs I’ve used in an app. Picking dates and times is a clunky, laborious process in most apps, but Due gets it right making it simple to add a date and time to a reminder with a combination of natural language recognition and a unique date and time grid. The app also makes fantastic use of gestures.
Development of Due has been slow and steady focusing on improving the core functionality of the app without cluttering it up with new features, which I appreciate. Version 2.0 of Due, which was released in early 2015, added the quick-entry grid system, which we covered in-depth in our review, so I won’t repeat it here. Since then, the app’s developer, Lin Junjie, has added a companion Apple Watch app, which enables you receive alerts and mark items as completed or snooze them. Due also added integration with Apple’s Reminders app, which lets you designate Reminders lists from which you can manually or automatically import tasks.
Above all else, it’s Due’s integration with Reminders that drew me back to using it. Whether I’m at my desk with my iPhone X sitting on its Qi charger or walking around the house within earshot of my HomePod, I’ve gotten into the habit of asking Siri to remind me of tasks as I think of them. I’ve even started to use Reminders while out running. Reminders is one spot where Siri works well nearly every time, and with the Due integration, I benefit from alert and snooze features that Reminders doesn’t offer.
Today’s update to Due adds three new features. The first is haptic feedback, which has been added throughout the app. Swiping down to search or add a reminder provides a little tap, as does swiping left to mark an item complete or delete it. There’s also a little feedback as you tap the quick-entry grid. The haptics work particularly well with the existing swipe gestures letting you know when you’ve swiped far enough to trigger an action.
The second new feature is a Pure Black Theme, which looks fantastic on the OLED screen of the iPhone X. Everyone has had inconvenient times when they want to add a quick reminder but don’t want the light of their phone to disrupt people around them. Pure black is perfect for those occasions. Plus, it just looks cool.
Finally, Due 3.0 adds custom snooze times for notifications. Due notifications provide three snooze options. If you turn on the custom snooze setting, tapping the third option displays the same quick-entry grid used to create reminders. It’s a handy way to dial in the exact amount of time you want to snooze a reminder.
Of the three new features, haptic feedback is available for no extra charge to existing users. The black theme and custom snoozes are included in the $4.99 purchase price if you are a new customer. Existing users can add those two features via a $2.99 In-App Purchase.
Due used the same upgrade process for version 2.0. However, the features added with version 2.0 were more fundamental to the day-to-day use of the app than today’s update. Due is an excellent app that I think is well worth its $4.99 price for new users. However, while I like the black theme and custom snooze option a lot, the $2.99 price feels high relative to the price new users are charged for the full app. Both are features I could probably live without, but I plan to buy them anyway because over the eight years I’ve used Due on and off, I’ve gotten multiple times its cost in value.
Due 3.0 is available on the iOS App Store for $4.99, existing users can add the black theme and custom snoozing for $2.99, and there is also a macOS version on Mac App Store for $9.99.
