As a heavy addict of hoarding to-do apps, I’ve always had more than ten different task managers installed on my phone—ranging from cross-platform tools like TickTick and Todoist to Apple-ecosystem exclusives like OmniFocus 4 and Things 3. Every time I discover a new to-do app, I download it immediately, try it out, and sometimes even buy it on the spot. And with the rise of AI vibe coding, the App Store has seen an explosion of new indie to-do apps, most of which are hastily made and nowhere near usable.

So after all the switching, circling, and experimenting, the only app I’ve managed to stick with has been OmniFocus—until I came across an app called Locus GTD.

When I first found it, I searched Xiaohongshu to see if existing users had shared any experiences. To my disappointment, I couldn’t find a single post about it. Back in the App Store, I realized it had only recently launched, and the developer hadn’t promoted it anywhere. Riding the wave of excitement, I made a post myself. Just like I said in that post: I finally found an app that can genuinely “replace” the OmniFocus I both love and hate.

Can it really replace OmniFocus?

Before sharing my thoughts on Locus, I want to first explain why I’ve stuck with OmniFocus for so many years:

• A complete GTD workflow. Among mainstream productivity apps, OmniFocus is probably the only one that fully adheres to the GTD collect–process–review flow without adding unnecessary extras (such as habit tracking or Eisenhower quadrants).
• Unlimited task hierarchy. Because of my work, I deal with all kinds of complex tasks. The ability to nest tasks infinitely is absolutely essential to me—and it’s the primary reason I never chose Things 3 for long-term use.
• Perspectives. This is OmniFocus’s killer feature, ensuring that I always know which tasks require my attention at any given moment, with maximum efficiency.

But with the update to OmniFocus 4, my dissatisfaction has only grown.

First, the interaction design: to this day, I still haven’t adapted to its page-switching logic. And with the adaptation to Apple’s Liquid Glass design, the strange interactions combined with frequent stutters have made using the app feel nothing short of disastrous.

Second, syncing: after Jianguoyun WebDAV stopped working years ago, I switched back to the official sync service. Anyone who has used it knows how unreliable it is in mainland China. Sure, I keep a VPN on constantly, but it still feels uncomfortable relying on such a fragile system.

My love–hate relationship with OmniFocus is precisely why I was so excited when I discovered Locus GTD—it practically fulfills all my needs:

• A complete (and in some ways better) collect–process–execute–review workflow
• Unlimited nested projects and tasks
• Custom filters (Perspectives)

At the same time, Locus GTD solves two major pain points: it is built entirely on iOS native interaction design, and it supports iCloud sync!

Over the past few months of using it, I’ve sent the developer many emails with bug reports and feature suggestions. I also learned that they currently have no plans to promote the app on any platform. So I volunteered—after receiving their permission—to write this article for 少数派 and share my experience. After all, most of the tips and expertise I’ve gained for similar apps came from here, and I want to return the favor by sharing my own findings.

I’m not a professional writer, nor am I a GTD theorist, and I don’t intend to write a “tutorial.” First, Locus’s overall product logic is very similar to OmniFocus, Things 3, and others. Second, my goal is simply to highlight the details and interactions that impressed me during actual use. If you want to understand the full workflow of the app, I encourage you to download and try it yourself. My biggest selfish hope is that more people join me in pushing the developer to keep building new features.

A Thoughtful Inbox Processing and Project Review Flow

According to GTD principles, the countless thoughts squeezed into our minds quietly drain our energy and attention. That’s why GTD encourages us to record everything—no matter how big or small—into an “inbox,” clearing our minds so we can focus on the task at hand, and then return later to process whatever has accumulated.

GTD also requires regular “review” of ongoing projects, updating their status and pushing them forward until completion.

Locus GTD is the only app I’ve used that truly treats these two GTD rituals as core user experiences and weaves them deeply into product design. Take “processing the inbox” as an example: in most apps, the workflow is dry and mechanical—you scroll through a long list, tap dates, choose tags, assign projects. Locus, however, offers perhaps the most elegant “inbox clearing” experience on iOS. It turns inbox processing into an immersive “card game”: the screen shows only one task card at a time, forcing you to truly confront the item in front of you. What is this? Does it need to be done now? What information should I add?

Once a task is processed, you move on to the next card. Instead of feeling like I’m sorting things just for the sake of sorting, I actually enjoy the sense of clearing my inbox. The entire flow is smooth and gratifying. It dramatically reduces the problem of my inbox piling up endlessly, and it helps me escape the helplessness and avoidance that often arise when facing a mountain of unprocessed tasks.

A similar interaction is used for the project review flow as well. I won’t repeat the details here—you can experience it yourself.

Unlimited Hierarchical Structure

Every time I get fed up with OmniFocus and try switching to Things 3 for its top-tier interaction design, I end up abandoning it after a few days because my projects are simply too complex. Things 3 supports, at most, a four-level hierarchy—Project → Heading → Task → Checklist—and that’s far from enough for my workflow.

Locus GTD, however, supports unlimited hierarchy in two dimensions: At the task level, subtasks can be nested infinitely. At the project level, the structure is Category → Folder (also infinitely nestable) → Project.

Locus GTD also puts a lot of thought into the interaction for hierarchy management: long-press and drag to reorder tasks, and hold on a task for one second to convert it into a subtask. Although in terms of fine details and smoothness, it still lags behind Things 3, overall, “drag-to-create unlimited hierarchy” combined with “excellent animation and interaction” creates a satisfying balance between the power of OmniFocus and the elegance of Things 3.

I believe this is also one of Locus’s core design philosophies: striking a balance between powerful functionality and graceful interaction.

Custom Filters with Huge Potential

The custom filters in Locus are essentially the same as Perspectives in OmniFocus: by combining a series of conditions, you can filter out exactly the tasks that matter most at the moment. For example, you might create a perspective called “Tasks that require a computer and take less than 30 minutes.” When you happen to be at your computer with a 30-minute window, you can open this perspective to see what you can do right now.

Perspectives have long been one of OmniFocus’s killer features, and they were exclusive to the Mac version—you can view them on mobile but cannot create them. Locus brings this capability to the mobile side: I can create custom filters directly on my iPhone. Although the available conditions are still not as extensive as OmniFocus, given how frequently the app updates (Locus has been updated nearly twice a week so far), I believe this feature has enormous room to grow.

Others

Finally, I want to mention Locus GTD’s syncing experience. Since it natively supports iCloud, we don’t need to register or log into any account, nor do we ever need to think about syncing. All data changes sync to iCloud almost instantly. For someone who has suffered for years under OmniFocus’s syncing limitations, this smoothness feels almost unreal—I often find myself opening the settings page just to double-check that sync really worked.

The one drawback is that Locus currently only supports iPhone. The iPad and Mac versions are not yet fully usable (though you can run the iOS version on them), so iCloud sync still can’t reach its full potential. I sincerely hope the developers can release cross-platform versions soon.

Wishlist

Even after all the praise above, I have to admit that Locus GTD, as a relatively new app, still has plenty of room to grow. So here’s a small wishlist—hopefully the developer will see the requests of a devoted user like me.

• A due date for projects. This is absolutely essential!
• A data statistics feature. Since the app already supports powerful filters, adding analytics and chart visualizations shouldn’t be too difficult, right?
• An improved UI design. I’m picky about aesthetics—while the current UI is clean, I still feel there’s room for refinement.

Lastly

Locus offers monthly, yearly, and lifetime subscriptions. The lifetime version, priced at ¥328, includes all future cross-platform versions (though the developer hasn’t given a timeline for their release). The subscription prices fall somewhere between mainstream to-do apps and OmniFocus. Considering the existing features and the app’s rapid update cycle, I personally think it’s well worth it—so I bought the lifetime version early on.

If you value native iOS experiences, believe in the GTD methodology, or simply want a beautiful, smooth, and intuitive task manager, Locus GTD definitely deserves a place in your Dock. Borrowing a line from the developer behind the paywall: they hope Locus GTD will become “the last productivity tool you’ll ever need.”

Let’s wait and see—together.