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· Done Bear

Things 3 for Teams: Why It Doesn't Exist (and What to Use Instead)

Things 3 has no shared projects, no team accounts, and no web access. Here's why Cultured Code built it that way, the workarounds people try, and what to use when your GTD system needs collaboration.

TL;DR: Things 3 has no team features: no shared projects, no assignees, no team accounts, and no web app. That’s a deliberate design choice, not a missing update. If you love the Things workflow but need to share projects, you need a GTD app built for collaboration. That’s the exact gap Done Bear exists to fill.

Search for “Things 3 for teams” or “Things 3 shared projects” and you’ll find a decade of forum threads asking the same question. The answer hasn’t changed.

Does Things 3 support collaboration?

No. Things 3 is a single-player app by design. There are no shared areas or projects, no way to assign a to-do to another person, no comments, and no team billing. Things Cloud syncs your devices to your account. It is not a multi-user system.

Cultured Code has been consistent about this for years: Things is a personal task manager, and its calm, focused design is partly a consequence of that constraint. Every collaboration feature is also a notification, a status field, and a sync conflict waiting to happen. Keeping the product single-player keeps it quiet.

That’s a legitimate trade-off. It’s just the wrong trade-off once your work stops being entirely your own.

The workarounds people try

Before switching tools, most Things users try to bolt collaboration on. The common attempts:

  • A shared Apple ID for Things Cloud. This technically syncs two people into one database, with no permissions, no identity on tasks, and constant risk of stepping on each other. Cultured Code advises against it, and it breaks the moment a third person joins.
  • Copy-pasting tasks into a work tool. Your system splits in two: the calm personal one, and the team one you resent. Every task now needs a decision about where it lives, which is exactly the overhead GTD is supposed to remove.
  • Email and screenshots. The task leaves the system entirely. Nothing tracks it. The “trusted system” now has a hole in it.

The pattern in all three: the workaround costs more attention than the collaboration is worth. GTD works because capture is frictionless and the system is trusted. Workarounds break both.

What a team-ready GTD app actually needs

If you’re evaluating alternatives, the bar isn’t “has sharing.” It’s keeping what made Things great while adding what it refuses to do:

  1. The five GTD views stay personal. Inbox, Today, Upcoming, Anytime, Someday. Your day view should stay yours, even when projects are shared. Collaboration should not turn your Today list into a team dashboard.
  2. Projects can be shared without ceremony. Invite someone to a workspace or project and changes appear in real time. No sync buttons, no per-task permissions homework.
  3. Offline still works. A team app that stops working on a plane is a downgrade from Things. Local-first sync (where tasks live on your device and reconcile in the background) keeps the instant feel.
  4. A migration path exists. Years of projects and someday lists shouldn’t be retyped by hand.

Where Done Bear fits

We built Done Bear for exactly this moment: people who have outgrown single-player task managers but don’t want project-management software.

It keeps the Things-style GTD structure (Inbox, Today, Upcoming, Anytime, Someday, and a Logbook) and adds the things Things won’t: a full web app, Windows and Linux support, real-time shared workspaces, and a CLI, GraphQL API, and MCP server so your tools and AI assistants can work with your tasks.

Migration is one command: donebear import things3 brings your areas, projects, and tasks across. The Things 3 import guide walks through it.

Done Bear is free to start with no credit card (see pricing) and works alongside a personal Things setup if you only want to move your shared projects first.

The honest recommendation

If your work is genuinely solo and Apple-only, keep Things 3. It’s a beautiful app, and switching costs attention.

But if you keep asking a task manager for teams to feel like Things, stop forcing workarounds through a tool that’s proudly single-player. Move the shared work to a system built for it, and let your task manager be trusted again.