One of the most common issues I see fellow Things users complain about on the Things Sub-Reddit is the frustrating experience with repeating tasks and the evening section of the Today view.

I always forget that this is an issue for people because I automated a solution long ago. Let me show you how.

The Problem With Repeating Evening Tasks

To clarify, the issue referenced above is that repeating tasks in Things can’t be set to repeat in the “This Evening” section of the Today view.

So, if you have a regular task that only makes sense to do in the evening, you need to manually move it to the “This Evening” section every day.

A task management app interface with a "This Evening" section highlighted. It lists tasks such as "Feed Walle Dinner," "Make Overnight Oats," and "Evening Journal," each tagged with "chore" and "evening." The task for feeding Walle is checked off, indicating completion. The simple and clean design of the interface emphasizes evening chores, aiding in personal organization and productivity.

Solution

Fortunately, I found an AppleScript-based solution online. I don’t want to take views away from the post with the code, so I will encourage you to visit the post from Coding Bull Junky to grab the code.

Once you have the code, you need to tag any of the repeating tasks that you want to move to the evening with “evening”. Be sure to tag the repeating task, not just the next instance.

Once you test the code and it is working, just create a Keyboard Maestro macro to run the script using whatever trigger you like.

Screenshot of a user interface for automation setup, with options to trigger actions at a specified time or by script. The focus is on an AppleScript code snippet, partially redacted, which interacts with the "Things3" application. It includes logic to handle tasks, involving tokens and URLs for updates, with conditions based on task properties such as whether a tag's name is "evening" or if a task is a project. The script is designed to automate task management based on time of day.

Since I have an always-on Mac mini for this type of thing, I have the script run at 3:30 am every day. You could also set this up to run the first time you open Things, whatever works for you.

Closure

While it would be ideal for Cultured Code to include repeating evening tasks as a native feature in Things, this AppleScript-based solution is so solid that I often forget it’s not already a native feature.