Lista is built to stay simple as it grows. Its design rests on a small set of building blocks that combine with each other: a minimal structure, a few item properties, and the filters that bring the two together.
Two axes
Picture Lista's design as two axes.
The vertical axis is structure: where your items live. The horizontal axis is filters: how you look at them. Every view of your items is where the two meet — a place in your structure, seen through a particular filter.
Neither axis depends on the other. Filters are there wherever you are, and your structure is navigable with or without them. Together they give you many ways to look at the same items, and you never have to define any of those views.
Structure
Lists hold items, and sections break a list into parts.
When lists start to belong to different parts of your life, spaces separate them. Put your work lists in one space and your personal lists in another, and each becomes its own context, so one never adds noise to the other.
That structure is yours, and none of it exists until you add it. Lista adapts to how much you need, from a single list with a few items to several lists across separate contexts.
Two places are always there: the Inbox, for items without a home yet, and Overview, which covers everything. In the sidebar, they sit above your spaces and lists.
A few properties
Items carry a deliberately small set of properties. Each one covers a common need in its simplest form, and each is visible right in the list as you go through your items.
A star. A single star, rather than a scale of priorities. It flags whatever you want to keep in sight, independently of any date: what matters most, or anything else. What it means is up to you.
A date. Scheduling an item means it shows up when it becomes relevant, with an optional reminder and an optional repeat.
Assignment. In a shared list, an item can be assigned to someone. Each person knows what they are expected to handle, and items assigned to someone else step out of your way. If another person is taking care of something today, it does not appear in your Today or count toward your badge. Unassigned items stay visible to everyone, since anyone might pick them up, and items assigned to you behave like any other item of yours.
Filters
Lista's filters give you different views of your items by combining structure and properties:
- All Items
- Starred
- Today
- Scheduled
- Assigned to Me
- Assigned
- Completed
There is nothing to define. Every filter is built in, and every filter applies at every level of the structure: the Inbox, Overview, any space, any list.
That is where the two axes pay off. Today in Overview is everything scheduled up to today, across all of Lista. Today in your work space is the same question asked of work alone, with nothing personal in sight. This is what makes spaces more than folders: inside one, every filter focuses on that context alone.
Lists narrow it further. Starred in a single list is what is flagged in just that list. Completed in a list is where you go to find something you already finished there. At the other end, All Items in Overview is simply everything you have, wherever it lives. Any combination just works.
Filters also follow the same principle as structure: they appear when they mean something. The two assignment filters are only available when the scope you are in contains a shared list. If you never share a list, you never see them, not even in Overview.
Moving between them
Once you have selected a place in the sidebar, you can switch filters as often as you like, and the selection stays where it is.
Moving to another place starts fresh: the Inbox, a space, or a list always opens on All Items. A new place is usually a new context, and you are rarely asking it the same question you asked the last one. Overview is the exception. It opens on Today by default, and you can choose a different default filter in Settings.
Without noticing
Taken together, this is a fairly powerful filtering system. Any filter at any scope, across items you organize however you want. But it does not feel like one, because there are no rules to write and no views to save. You pick a place, you pick a way of looking at it, and Lista shows you exactly that.
Structure tells Lista where things are. Properties tell it what they are. Filters bring the two together, at any level, with nothing to set up.
Lista is on the App Store for iPhone, iPad, and Mac.