Swipe Your Way Through The Day With This Elegant To-Do App

Swipes - Plan your daily tasks (Free) by Kasper Pihl Tornoee is a fast and simple to-do app for your iPhone.

We all have busy lives, with a lot of things to do. What’s the best way to keep track of all of these things? With a to-do list, of course. However, a mobile task list will want to be as quick as possible, with the least amount of friction between you and getting the task in the app. While I use OmniFocus for most of my work-related items, it just doesn’t fit for daily errands or chores. While there are also apps like Clear, it is definitely lacking in some features. Fortunately, Swipes is here to fill a gap.

With Swipes, it places an emphasis on your daily tasks, with extra leeway for things that need to be taken care of later. I love the interface of Swipes, as it’s minimal, elegant, and incredibly intuitive. Also, I’m glad to see that a different font is used here (I believe it is Avenir) than the standard Helvetica, making it easier on the eyes. Despite using a darker color scheme, I think this is an app that will fit in nicely with iOS 7 as well.

The app is divided into three sections, which are accessed via the tabs at the top of the screen: Later, Today (Tasks), and Completed. You can also pull the screen down a bit to reveal the Search bar and filter view. Swipes comes with some tutorial tasks to help you get a feel for the app. The bottom of the app will have a large, singular + button, which is what you use to add a new task to your list.

When adding a new task, it will do a neat animation where the screen will “zoom out” a bit, and then you have a text field to enter in your new item. To save it to your tasks for the day (or cancel), just tap on that chunky arrow button. Tasks can be edited after they are added by double-tapping, which brings up the option for setting reminders, adding tags or notes, and the name of the item can be changed with a single tap on the text in this mode. You can manually reorder your tasks by doing the hold-and-drag to move it to the spot you prefer.

If you perform a single tap on an item in the list view, it will change the + button into two separate buttons: delete or tag. The tag button will bring up a bar at the bottom with existing tags, and you can select as many of them to add to your task. New tags can be created here as well, thanks to the “ADD” button.

To complete an item, just swipe it to the right, until it changes to mint green with the checkmark. It will be moved to the Completed section, but you can undo this by swiping to the left on the completed task.

If you swipe left on an item in the Tasks screen, then it brings up a Mailbox-esque popover grid with various options of scheduling your task, just like you do with your email in Mailbox. You can put a task off for later today, this evening, tomorrow, the next day, this weekend, next week, unspecified (someday), or a specific date of your choosing. Whenever a task is put off, it will show up in the Later tab, so it doesn’t clutter up your Today view.

So far, I’m really enjoying Swipes. It’s fast, simple, and elegant. I think if someone is looking for a non-complex way of managing their tasks, then an app like this is exactly what they need. The only thing that could be improved is adding colors to various tags, so then it is easier to see what you have going on for each category, rather than everything looking the same.

Still, Swipes is free, and for what it’s worth, it’s an excellent option to consider if you just want a minimalistic solution to task management. It certainly doesn’t hurt to give it a try and see if it fits your workflow.

Swipes – Plan your daily tasks is available in the iPhone App Store for free.