DotList vs Project Planner

DotList is a simple, colorful checklist app for iPhone and iPad. Keep groceries, errands, packing lists, work tasks, and everyday plans organized in one place. Tap a dot to check something off. Pin important items, arrange things your way, and share lists with family and friends to work through them together. • Share Lists Together Share a grocery list, plan a trip, or organize tasks with family, friends, or a group. Add items, make changes, rearrange them, and check things off together through iCloud. Sharing is included free. No Pro purchase is required. You choose which lists to share. Your other lists stay on the device where you created them and don’t automatically sync between devices. Choose Send Copy to send a separate copy without sharing future changes. • Organize Your Way Create, rename, and reorder lists. Pin important tasks, drag items into place, sort alphabetically, or move completed items below everything still to do. Choose whether newly typed items appear at the top or bottom in Preferences. Edit longer items in a text box that grows as you type. Undo recent edits, item deletions, imports, and reordering. • Copy, Reset, and Reuse Duplicate a list or choose individual items to copy into another list. Copies keep item order, checkmarks, and pins without copying reminders. Use Reset Dots to uncheck items and work through a favorite checklist again. • Keep Going Offline Keep using lists you’ve already opened without an internet connection. Changes to shared lists are saved on your device and sent when your connection returns. • Reminders That Fit Your Schedule Set one-time reminders for individual items, or repeat them daily, weekly, monthly, or on a custom schedule. View and manage your reminders from one place. Reminders are available on lists you aren’t sharing. • Home Screen Widgets Keep your own lists or upcoming reminders visible without opening the app. Choose from List and Reminders widgets for your Home Screen. • Themes to Make DotList Yours Choose a theme and switch between light and dark appearances. Preview every theme, including premium themes, before deciding whether to upgrade. • Bring Your Lists Along Import a checklist from your clipboard, or select text in another app and share it to DotList. Review the items and choose a new or existing list. Save shared text for review later. You can also export a readable copy of your available DotList data from Help. Included Free Create up to 10 lists, set 5 reminders total, and choose from a selection of free themes. Lists shared with you don’t count toward your 10-list limit. Group collaboration, Home Screen widgets, list copying, text import, and the everyday checklist tools are also included. Optional DotList Pro One purchase unlocks unlimited lists, unlimited reminders on lists you aren’t sharing, and every premium theme, including Firefly, Midnight, Gold, Rose Gold, Blue, Green, and Yellow. No subscription. DotList has no ads and requires no separate DotList account. Everyone collaborating needs an up-to-date version of DotList and must be signed into iCloud.

Most projects stall not because you lack motivation — but because "finish the project" is too vague to ever act on. You open a blank to-do list, dump in a dozen tasks, and within a week it's either abandoned or buried under newer ones. Milestones is built around a different idea: every project deserves structure, and structure is what makes finishing possible. A smarter way to plan Milestones introduces a three-tier hierarchy — Projects, Milestones, and Tasks — that mirrors how real work actually happens. A project isn't one thing; it's a series of phases. Each phase has its own focus, its own deadline, its own definition of done. Milestones makes that structure explicit so you always know where you are and what's next. Break goals into phases Every project is divided into named milestones — the chapters of your work. Whether you're building an app, writing a thesis, planning an event, or launching a side project, milestones give you a natural way to chunk the journey into stages you can actually complete one at a time. Track progress visually Each milestone has its own live progress bar showing task counts and completion percentage. At a glance, you can see how much you've done, how much is left, and which phases are moving. No more guessing whether you're close or far. Focus on what matters right now Mark one milestone as Active. It pins to the top of your project, pulses with a live indicator, and becomes your single point of focus. Everything else stays visible but secondary — giving you clarity without losing context. Organized from every angle Milestone statuses — Draft, Planning, In Progress, In Review, Released — give each phase a clear stage in the lifecycle. Tasks are sorted into To Do, In Progress, and Done sections automatically. Tag tasks to group related work across a project. Store unscheduled ideas in the project backlog so nothing falls through the cracks. Designed to look as good as it works Give every project its own icon — choose from a curated set of symbols or use your own photo — paired with a custom color. Your project list becomes a visual dashboard that's satisfying to open every day. Manage projects with AI Milestones includes a built-in MCP server — connect Claude and other AI agents on your Mac to create projects, add tasks and move milestones forward just by asking. Your project planner, now AI-native. Built for iPhone, iPad, Mac & Apple Vision Pro On iPad, Mac and Vision Pro, Milestones expands into a full three-column layout: your project list, milestone list, and task list all visible at once. On iPhone, everything is one tap away. Sync seamlessly across both with iCloud. Whether you're a developer shipping a product, a student finishing a dissertation, a designer managing client work, or anyone with a goal worth finishing — Milestones gives your projects the structure they've always needed.