Clear: To Dos & Reminders App Reviews

Beautiful design. Love that you can mark an item completed, but leave it there to be brought back, or just get rid of it. Two suggestions: 1 make it such that you can opt to keep listed items in same order as you complete them. I have some lists that are best listed in a particular order. Others are fine with putting completed ones last. 2 allow for choosing different colors for lists. That would make it easier to locate, and know which list you are on.

I dearly love Clear for iPhone and Mac. What’s there is solid and elegant and FAST. But features are missing that I realize I can’t live without (see below for full list of pros & cons). NOTE: This is a joint review of Clear 1.1.7 for Mac AND Clear 1.7.4 for iPhone. They were designed to be used together. This cross-device capability was a requirement for me, and I have used them together. Thus, they warrant a review together. WHY CARE ABOUT THIS REVIEW? I’m a professional software usability expert. I worship sources like Consumer Reports for trying to say how easy something is going to be to use, in addition to other factors like reliability, etc. I have a lot of projects, and lead a busy life. I’ve used Clear exclusively for 2+ years, and have tried out many Mac + iPhone To Do List apps before settling on Clear: Apple iCal (later Calendar, now Calendar + Reminders) OmniFocus 1, ToodleDo, ToDo, Google Wunderlist, Fantastical 2, Google gTasks, Timeful, Workflowy, Carrot and a few others. I have read reviews of countless other apps. Before Clear I used Omnifocus v1 (OF1) for 3+ years. I liked OF1’s support for GTD but task input took a long time, and OF2 costs $80 JUST TO TRY on Mac+iPhone. (!) Before OF1 I used iCal and its children — until discovering that pre-iCloud MobileMe could only sync ~100 tasks btwn devices. After that, iCal sync just broke. Before iPhone, I used (and loved) Palm PDAs and their task management apps — and their ability to sync with my Mac. CLEAR FOR MAC + IPHONE PRO’S + Basic features are very easy to use + Really fast to use for most purposes (adding, editing, deleting & completing a task, moving a task up or down in a list, managing lists) + Ability to create, edit, manage & delete multiple lists of tasks + Sync between Mac & iPhone Clear (this has gotten MUCH more robust in recent releases. It used to be a lot more flaky.) + Ability to batch-create a number of items in sequencefast and easily eliminates concept of the “Inbox” of other, more complex ToDo list apps + A task can be short or really, really long, retain imported bullets and other basic formatting, and even new paragraphs (OPTION + Enter) + Effortless and fast to add due date / time to any task + Brief, 1-line tasks aren’t dwarfed by much longer items on Clear for iPhone, which only shows the 1st 5 lines when task is not selected + Ability to show multiple lists at the same time on Clear for Mac (COMMAND + T to "tear off" the current list into a new window) + Ability to add multiple items to a list (copy items from another source, separated by paragraph; select the desired list in Clear, but don’t start a new item; paste) + Effortless to drag and drop items on the Mac from one list to another—as long as you know that you can show multiple lists (COMMAND + T) CLEAR CONS – No way to find anything via Search in Clear for Mac or iPhone. My lists can grow long, and sometimes items can be misfiled or not fit clearly in one category. – The way to create a new item on Clear differs between platforms, leading to frustration when I try to use a strategy on the wrong device. For iPhone you drag down on the top of a list, or "reverse pinch" to open up a space between items. For Mac, neither two-fingered scrolling at the top of a list nor reverse pinching with the cursor between items works. You either press Enter or dwell your cursor at the border between items, then wait for a few seconds, to open up a space between them. To me, Clear is about speed, and NOT about waiting a few seconds. Also, trying to use strategy A on device B is called an “AB-AC mapping error" in Usability parlance. – On Clear for iPhone, pinching to collapse a list into the "list of lists" can sometimes unintentionally delete a task instead. Liability here IMHO. – No support for keeping a record of completed tasks. When an item was created, when it was completed — thats all I want. Clear doesnt make it possible to keep this info, and makes it a bit too easy to DELETE all completed tasks — esp. on Clear for iPhone. – No way to move a bunch of items from one list to another at once. – No way to create a backup of all your Clear data. – No way to export all data without a lot of hassle. You CAN email each list to yourself, then copy the list and paste it into another document. But no due dates make the journey. – No way to export any completed items. The makers of Clear assume that you don’t care about the tasks you’ve done once you’ve done them, and that you can’t wait to delete all completed tasks. I’m happy to get them out of my face, but I REALLY like keeping a record of what I’ve done, and when I did what I did. – While the character count for each task is large in Clear, there IS a limit. Clear does NOT make this limit clear (npi) however, and it’s left as an unpleasant surprise to the user. For eg a giant copy/paste job will show up fine in a task item on Clear for Mac, but then the item will show up truncated on Clear for iPhone — and vice-versa. THE TAKE-HOME: As wonderful and simple as Clear is, its limitations are too limiting for me. It may be PERFECT for others though, esp. those who dont care as much about its limitations. For such folk, I heartily recommend Clear. And who knows, I may come crawling back to it myself — after my current attempt to leave it (for either Habitica or Todoist, FWIW; I’ll try them in that order). At the very least, I will keep Clear on my iPhone, for a quick & dirty (temporary) text entry place on my iPhone. And if Realmac (Clears makers) can address these limitations, I will quite likely come back.

Everything is great, other than the fact that I cant make a to do that repeats everyday. For example I take meds now that I have to take everyday, Ive been using an app called (wunderlist) for a long long time and its perfect but I thought this app looked cool lets change things up a bit. On W list I can say take meds and to remind me at 9 pm everyday, so the reminder comes I tap complete and it reminds me the next day and again and again. With this app when you compete something thats it which is good for things you do once like you make a list of things you buy you buy them thats it but for someone like me its very annoying and I regret getting the app because I did not know it was not able to do so. So for anybody that wants to get it for stuff to do everyday the same task, wunderlist or todoist! Are great. But other than that its all good.

if it had split screen it would be great

;)

They have stopped development on this app. Its a great app but they havent updated it in a year. 1 star for now due to abandonment. Ill change it if they bring it back to life...

Warning! Realmac has apparently abandoned this app without saying so. I certainly wouldnt pay for it now since there is no support for the app. They have erased all traces of it from their website! Clears development seems to have stalled. Its been a year since the last update and "big features" were promised then. It feels a lot like Cultured Codes "Things" app where youre never sure if there is any intention to actually support the app. Update: I like the reminders feature theyve added. It makes Clear more useful. New themes are cool, too. I still wish there were a simple way to move items from one list to another. With that I would have no more complaints! Old review: I picked up Clear early on and used it for a while. Its certainly simple but in daily use its a little bit awkward. I cant help wondering if there will ever be any further development as it has gone largely unchanged for a long time now. As another reviewer has pointed out sometimes an app can be too simple.

good thnx

This app has definitely helped me organize my business tasks with its list system. Its my go to app for writing down to do lists and goals lists. Highly recommend this to anyone seeking easy organization that you can use in many ways.

This is the best app I have ever used, in any category. I am not exaggerating; it is the simple truth. It is not just incredibly functional, it is joyous. Other developers should study this app to improve their own UI design. The only thing I would change is to make the "add reminder" button bigger and give us a number pad for entering the time.

The app does not show any badge icon. I also checked the setting for that app and notification is set to allow and show badge is also on, but still no badge icon appers. Otherwise it is the best app.

I use this daily and its a quick simple solution for setting reminders and making To-Do lists. There might be more fully featured apps out there but nothing beats the ease of use of Clear.

This app is very straightforward, but has enough options to make it perfect. This is my go to list app and it covers all my needs.

This app has become part of my daily life, and has helped to tame the chaos in so many ways! That said, I would love to see one particular update to its functionality: Please create the ability to have layered (or folder-like) tasks, where you are essentially able to create "tasks within tasks". While you are currently able to create a "List", and tasks within said list, there might be several conditions that would require a task to be completed overall. It would be extremely advantageous to be able to itemize these conditions within an overall singular task. Such a function could also work very well as a form of note-taking. Thank you.

This app is one of the many reasons that the elitist "designers" in the valley all jump on the political fan-wagon that is flat or whatever it is called now Yeah, Im sure buttons and shading and icons and everything else that SJ put in place before he passed on are meaningless and kitschy (Homer Simpson: In case you cant tell, Im being sarcastic.) Clear is super ugly and user unfriendly .... Wunderlist is a way better app. Unfortunately, even the once beautiful Wunderlist and almost every other app were "forced" to hop on the flat bandwagon thanks to crap like this, but at least WL maintained its basic structure that was put in place thanks to the intuitiveness of skeuomorphism. Flat is a shallow empty trend that will eventually die off, and in its place will come a new trend, because geniuses like SJ dont come around often. Flat is so cheap and ugly that any "designer" can build and app now in 5 minutes. At least with skeuomorphic design, you had to have actual talent. Ugh Gross

This should be a simple fix but seemingly a regular issue. Also, itd be nice to remember/auto populate repetitive tasks

Ive written many reviews of this app over the years, from 5 star to 1 star. Sync was once awful, but has improved so much, thanks to iCloud improvements. I own the phone, iPad and Mac versions. Im sad its discontinued, although it continues to work, without support. Major flaw that will never be addressed is that items cant be moved between lists on the iPhone.

I love this app! I use it everyday! Thank you!

This is the cleanest simplest most satisfying list app out there. Reminders could be improved and so could the watch app. Also allowing collaboration on certain lists would be awesome. Other than those things I love clear. As a graphic designer the look of the app is fantastic. Maybe allow more colors and dont charge for them.

I can no longer recommend this app. Its clear that Realmac has abandoned this app. Save your money.