5 Things I Love About Firetask 5

Firetask 5 is a major upgrade over Firetask 4. It has a new, more streamlined user interface, a simplified navigation concept, and many new features its loyal user base has asked about for years. I really like working with it.

Although there have been a few bugs in version 5.0 (it was a total rewrite, so basically expected) it seems most of them are fixed now and the app feels pretty stable. Syncing is much better and more instant than in version 4. I also like that the app still uses iCloud for syncing, as this way I do not need a separate account and I trust Apple's approach to security and privacy.

This said, there is much to like about Firetask 5, but for me personally, there are five features that really stand out and provide a lot of additional value for my personal workflow:

1. For me, the best thing about Firetask 5 is the new navigation in combination with the newly introduced view types: By using a mainly list-based navigation and combining it with a view type I am now much more flexible in how I want to see my tasks. For instance, I can now quickly browse all open tasks of a portfolio, I can sort them by priority or due date, or I can see a Kanban view of any project or portfolio. The Calendar is now also a view type -- so same level of flexibility there as well.
2. Number two are the new Focus lists: "Next" and "Agenda". The Next list was actually always there, but now you can totally manage it yourself which makes a lot more sense. The Agenda list is nice as a kind of "inverted" Waiting list: I can use it to keep track of topics I want or need to discuss with other people. (I have recently also extended this to include Claude for bouncing back ideas etc.)
3. Next are file attachments. I actually do not need them this often, but if I need them it is nice that it is now easily possible to also attach files and not just links (which still works as well).
4. Also very nice, but should probably be more discoverable: Status Notes. If you use the context menu on the status icon of a task it also offers you the choice to add a status note: you can enter a short note and it will then visualize the presence of a status note using a small orange triangle (pretty similar to what Excel does with the red triangle for notes on cells). The nice thing about this is that this also creates a special kind of Journal entry, so you can look up your status notes also based on a timeline later on.
5. Finally, the Journal. The Journal is a view type that replaces Firetask 4's Archive view: it displays archived tasks in a vertical timeline together with Journal entries that you can manually add. I really like the combined concept: kind of a project diary in combination with an activity log -- very practical if you want to know later on when you did what and why :-).

There is also one more thing I really like, but this is Mac-only: the "Quick Navigation" which lets you very quickly navigate to any navigation item in the sidebar just by pressing CMD+K. You will especially like this one if you are frequently switching between projects ;-).

If you want to try it out yourself -- it is now free to use for up to 10 open tasks, so you can really check it out first and decide then if you like it: https://www.firetask.com.

There is also a limited free upgrade from Firetask 4, but it lacks file attachments and status notes, so I personally would go for the subscription.