Clearing Out the Cruft

there’s a new minimalist todo app on the scene called clear by realmac software. clear is not a bad app, per se, but it’s certainly lacking on some of the most basic features: no sync, no backup, no undo, no due dates, no export.

clear is essentially a two-layer, gesture-based app. you’ve got a list layer, which contains a list of your lists, and then the item layer, which contains all the todo items for the selected list. new elements (both the lists and items) are all added via well-placed taps, pulling down the elements or pulling apart adjacent elements. pinching elements together moves up a layer.

similarly, elements can be marked complete or deleted by swiping them. sometimes, when trying to mark an item as complete, i inadvertently deleted it. since there’s no undo, it was gone. on the item layer, not a big deal, but the same gestures work the same way on the list layer. marking a list as done vs. full on deleting a list is very different. my confusion is almost certainly because i haven’t internalized the gestures. but still…no undo?

on the plus side, it’s fast to enter a todo item–way, way faster than omnifocus. (clear is also way, way cheaper than omnifocus. way cheaper.) sometimes, however, omnifocus is the overkill of a sledgehammer, and you need a snappy list app for something list a grocery list. now i’m not suggesting that omnifocus couldn’t be used for an itemized shopping list (i user the built-in reminders.app for that), but that’s not to say you should. omnifocus can be slow to load, slow to sync, and slow to update. entering tasks can become a task of itself.

i hope clear is not trying to compete with omnifocus-type apps, because that’s no contest.

clear makes for a good shopping list-type app, but anything beyond that is where its utility (and novelty) seems to stop.

a fun little side note, someone made a web-based version. here’s a screenshot of a list in the native clear.app and a re-creation of the list via HTML5 Clear.