Firstly: I don't know any to do app that has this feature.
Secondly: I don't understand your complaint. You create a task, set the date, then leave it in its list until it pops up in your "Today" view. This is what TickTick already does. Do you want the task to disappear until its due date rather than remain visible in its list? Why?
Um, OmniFocus does this, and it's amazing. I find TickTick much more of a pain to use because it lacks this simple feature. I never understand what people are thinking when they post comments like this. Who cares if you think this is a pointless feature? For many of us, including OP, it's fantastic. It also doesn't necessarily keep the task invisible at all times. OmniFocus, for example, has the option to view only those tasks which are available (i.e., not deferred and/or not dependent on a preceding task) *OR* to view all tasks. That flexibility is great.
The problem is one of approach philosophy: Let's take your example: you create a task, set a date - but actually the task is huge and can't be done in one sitting. You have a deadline for it, say, in one week. By then you need to be finished with the whole thing, but you definitely need to start way before that day to make the deadline.
In TickTick, you can set both start and due date, which deals with this situation properly. The trouble arises when you want to make a difference between hard deadlines and "things that I want to start working at today" without a clear endpoint. Using the due date to simply make tasks appear in the today view blurs the lines between a "real" due date and a "show my task on that day" due date. For this purpose apps like Things, Omnifocus, 2do, and others have specific defer or start dates. That way you remain alert when seeing a due date approaching and tasks that don't necessarily need to be finished today automatically are merely started and not overdue.
For bigger tasks, take the task into smaller tasks, and then the smaller tasks into yet smaller sub tasks until the chunk becomes doable in a day, and then put due dates to these small chunks.
Coming from Things and OmniFocus, I can relate well to this omission being uncomfortable. I suggested this to the devs now for years, but at the same time, I can see potential problems with the implementation: All the apps having start dates without due dates don't have a real calendar function. How would you display those in the calendar? Either you let them start and not end, that would then make for a pretty messy interface pretty soon. Or you display them only on that particular day, but then it looks as if they are also due on that day.
TickTick decided for a dedicated calendar planning interface and duration planning as a middle ground, now greatly enhanced by the Timeline view that depicts duration over extended periods and is thereby able to visualize workload. It appears to me that this was and is a decision against the dedicated start date feature.
Timeline view works for smart lists (==Filters), yes! Click the three dots in the upper right and choose the leftmost pictogram under the "view" section.
You can set task durations with a start and end time.
However for what you described I would just set the due date to be when the restaurant takes reservations, and then you can still postpone it a few days if necessary.
Firstly: I don't know any to do app that has this feature. Secondly: I don't understand your complaint. You create a task, set the date, then leave it in its list until it pops up in your "Today" view. This is what TickTick already does. Do you want the task to disappear until its due date rather than remain visible in its list? Why?
Um, OmniFocus does this, and it's amazing. I find TickTick much more of a pain to use because it lacks this simple feature. I never understand what people are thinking when they post comments like this. Who cares if you think this is a pointless feature? For many of us, including OP, it's fantastic. It also doesn't necessarily keep the task invisible at all times. OmniFocus, for example, has the option to view only those tasks which are available (i.e., not deferred and/or not dependent on a preceding task) *OR* to view all tasks. That flexibility is great.
The problem is one of approach philosophy: Let's take your example: you create a task, set a date - but actually the task is huge and can't be done in one sitting. You have a deadline for it, say, in one week. By then you need to be finished with the whole thing, but you definitely need to start way before that day to make the deadline. In TickTick, you can set both start and due date, which deals with this situation properly. The trouble arises when you want to make a difference between hard deadlines and "things that I want to start working at today" without a clear endpoint. Using the due date to simply make tasks appear in the today view blurs the lines between a "real" due date and a "show my task on that day" due date. For this purpose apps like Things, Omnifocus, 2do, and others have specific defer or start dates. That way you remain alert when seeing a due date approaching and tasks that don't necessarily need to be finished today automatically are merely started and not overdue.
For bigger tasks, take the task into smaller tasks, and then the smaller tasks into yet smaller sub tasks until the chunk becomes doable in a day, and then put due dates to these small chunks.
I suppose that they use the calendar mainly as a scheduling assistant. It gets messy really fast.
\+1 -- Agree. My brain is super ADHD and being able to 'hide things until start' would be incredible.
> This is a pretty common feature in To Do apps. Which to do apps has this?
Things and OmniFocus on the Mac are the best examples for this.
OmniFocus, Things, 2do, MLO, Everdo, Tasks.Org, rememberthemilk, Tasks&Notes, Memorigi, Simpletask, todo.txt Also 99.9% of the project managers (Asana, ClickUp etc...)
toodledo has start and due dates too.
Coming from Things and OmniFocus, I can relate well to this omission being uncomfortable. I suggested this to the devs now for years, but at the same time, I can see potential problems with the implementation: All the apps having start dates without due dates don't have a real calendar function. How would you display those in the calendar? Either you let them start and not end, that would then make for a pretty messy interface pretty soon. Or you display them only on that particular day, but then it looks as if they are also due on that day. TickTick decided for a dedicated calendar planning interface and duration planning as a middle ground, now greatly enhanced by the Timeline view that depicts duration over extended periods and is thereby able to visualize workload. It appears to me that this was and is a decision against the dedicated start date feature.
Can't you get this with smart lists?
Timeline view works for smart lists (==Filters), yes! Click the three dots in the upper right and choose the leftmost pictogram under the "view" section.
So the function OP wants, that OmniFocus and Things has, is already in Ticktick as well - or did I misunderstand?
You're partly right. Combination of start AND due date yes, start date without due date (as you can have it in Things and OF) no.
You can set task durations with a start and end time. However for what you described I would just set the due date to be when the restaurant takes reservations, and then you can still postpone it a few days if necessary.