How to Migrate from Things 3 (Complete Export/Import Guide)

TL;DR: Things 3 has no built-in export, but your data lives in a readable local database on your Mac. The fastest migration is Done Bear’s importer: install the CLI, run donebear import things3 on the Mac where Things is installed, and your areas, projects, and tasks (including Today, Someday, and scheduled dates) arrive in your workspace.

People stay on task managers they’ve outgrown for one reason: years of accumulated projects feel unmovable. This guide is the honest version of what moving out of Things 3 actually involves.

First: your Things data is not locked in

Things 3 famously has no export menu. What it does have is a well-understood local SQLite database on your Mac (inside the Things container in ~/Library/Group Containers). Every task, project, area, tag, note, and date you’ve entered is in there, readable by tools on your machine.

That gives you three realistic ways out.

Option 1: Done Bear’s one-command importer (recommended)

Done Bear ships a Things 3 importer in its CLI, built on that local database. On the Mac where Things is installed:

npm install -g donebear
donebear login
donebear import things3

What carries over:

• Areas → projects structure. Your organizational hierarchy is preserved.
• Projects and their tasks, including notes.
• View placement. Today stays Today; Someday stays Someday; Anytime stays available.
• Schedules. Start dates and deadlines map to Done Bear’s Upcoming view.
• Completion history heads to the Logbook, so finished work isn’t erased.

The importer is idempotent and read-only against Things. It never modifies your Things database, so you can run it, evaluate Done Bear with your real data, and keep using Things while you decide. The full walkthrough (flags, dry runs, re-imports) is in the import documentation.

Option 2: copy-paste for small setups

Underrated for light users: Things lets you select multiple to-dos and copy them as plain text, one task per line. Keep that list beside Done Bear and retype the tasks that still matter into your Inbox. If you have under a hundred active tasks and don’t care about dates or the Logbook, ten minutes of retype-and-sort may beat any tooling.

What you lose: schedules, notes formatting, completion history, and your area structure.

Option 3: fresh start with a Someday amnesty

Some people should not migrate. If your Things database is mostly archaeological (hundreds of Someday items you haven’t opened in a year), consider capturing only what your head still knows is active, and declaring bankruptcy on the rest. GTD’s founder would call this a weekly review that’s several years overdue.

A middle path: run the importer (Option 1), then spend one session in the Someday view deleting freely. Deleting in a new app is emotionally cheaper than deleting in the old one.

After the move: a one-week checklist

1. Do a triage, not a reorganization. Resist rebuilding your structure on day one; run the minimal five-view setup for a week first.
2. Set up capture everywhere Things couldn’t go. Log in on the web at work, install the Windows app if that’s your world, add the Raycast extension on macOS.
3. Try the parts Things never had. Share one project with a partner or teammate, or connect an AI assistant through the MCP server and let it file follow-ups into your Inbox.
4. Keep Things installed for a month. The importer didn’t touch it, so it’s a free safety net until the new system has earned trust.

Why people make this move

The push is rarely dissatisfaction with Things. It’s the boundaries: no teams, no web or Windows, no API. Done Bear keeps the calm five-view GTD workflow and removes those walls, with local-first sync so it stays as fast as the app you’re leaving. See the full Things 3 comparison, or start free. The import takes about a minute, and your Things data stays exactly where it was.