Turning Todoist into a standalone app on macOS

Searching for the Todoist Mac app turns up an answer immediately, which is the confusing part. There is an official Mac build, it is free to install, and it has been maintained for years. So the question is never whether one exists. The question is which of the available installs belongs on this particular Mac, given the macOS version it runs, the number of accounts the person signs into, and whether a second copy of a browser engine on the disk is a cost worth paying. Those three factors point in different directions often enough that picking by reflex produces the wrong result.

Two official downloads, and they are not the same file

Todoist distributes the Mac build through two channels, and most people only ever notice one of them.

The Mac App Store listing shows a size of 151.6 MB and states that the app requires macOS 12.0 or later. Installing from there means Apple handles the update channel, the app runs inside the App Store sandbox, and the install is tied to the Apple Account signed into that Mac.

The download page on todoist.com offers something different. There are two separate buttons, one labeled for macOS Silicon and one for macOS Intel, and they resolve to distinct disk images. The Apple silicon build is 117,655,845 bytes, roughly 112 MB. The Intel build is 120,361,219 bytes, roughly 115 MB. The filenames follow the pattern Todoist-darwin-9.30.0-arm64-latest.dmg, and the host serving them is named electron-dl, which is a fair description of what is inside: a web application packaged with its own runtime.

Neither channel is better in the abstract. The App Store copy updates without being asked and survives a migration to a new Mac cleanly. The direct download is the one to use on a Mac where the App Store is restricted, or where the person managing the machine wants to control when versions change. What matters is knowing they exist separately, because a Mac that cannot reach one can usually reach the other.

The same download page lists the rest of the surface: Linux, Windows, iPhone, iPad, Android, Apple Watch, WearOS, browser extensions, and email add ons. That breadth is worth noticing for a different reason. A tool available in that many places tends to be one people sign into from several machines, which is exactly the situation where the account question below starts to matter.

The macOS 12 floor decides this before anything else

Both official Mac builds state the same requirement: macOS 12.0 or later. That single line settles the decision for a large group of readers before any of the other trade offs come into play.

A 2017 MacBook Pro that tops out at macOS 12 is fine. A Mac that Apple stopped supporting earlier, or one deliberately kept on an older release because a piece of audio or design software will not survive the upgrade, is not. On those machines the official app is simply unavailable, and the choice narrows to the browser or something built on top of it.

This pattern is not unique to one vendor. Minimum OS requirements on Mac apps have been climbing steadily across the category, and each increase strands a group of machines that are otherwise working fine. A browser based approach behaves differently here, because the floor becomes whatever the installed Chromium browser supports, and browsers tend to keep supporting older releases for longer than individual apps do.

Check the macOS version first. If it is below 12, the rest of this decision is already made.

Offline is not the reason to install it

The usual argument for a native build is that it works without a connection. For this particular service, that argument does not hold, because the browser version works offline too. Todoist documents the behavior directly.

In Todoist, you can add, delete, or make changes to your tasks even without an internet connection. You'll see the offline icon at the top-right is automatically activated the moment you disconnect from the internet. Source: todoist.com

Conditions attach to that. The account has to be signed in before the connection drops, because signing in offline is not possible. Changes made while offline sync back automatically once the connection returns, with one warning worth repeating: do not close Todoist, shut down the computer, log out, or clear local data before the sync finishes, because those changes are deleted.

Read that carefully and the native build loses its distinguishing feature. A standalone window built on the web version sits under exactly the same conditions. Stay signed in, leave the window open, and the offline behavior is the same one described above.

The limits that decide whether it fits at all

Before picking an install, it is worth checking whether the plan on this account can hold the work being planned for it. The published limits are specific.

Limit Beginner Pro

Active projects 5 300

Filter views 3 150

Activity history 1 week Full

File attachments 5 MB 25 MB

Some limits apply on every plan regardless of payment: 300 active tasks per project including sub tasks and recurring ones, 20 sections per project, 100 labels per task, and 15,000 characters per comment.

Pricing sits at $5 per user per month for Pro, billed yearly at $60, and $8 per user per month for Business, billed yearly at $96. The team tier raises active team projects to 500 and team file attachments to 100 MB.

Five active projects is the number that surprises people. Anyone running separate projects for work streams, home, and a side effort hits that ceiling within a month, and at that point the interesting decision is about the subscription, not about which installer to download.

Two accounts is where the installed app runs out of room

The situation that pushes people away from the official build has nothing to do with performance. It is having a work account and a personal account and wanting both visible at the same time.

An installed application holds one signed in session. Getting to a second account means signing out and signing back in, or accepting that one of the two lives permanently in a browser tab. Neither is a disaster, and plenty of people live with it for years. But it is a friction that repeats several times a day, and it is the exact friction that browser profiles were designed to remove.

A standalone Mac app built from the web version sidesteps this, because each app can be tied to a specific browser profile. Two apps, two icons, two Dock entries, two accounts, both open at once, neither aware of the other. The same structure covers a consultant who works inside a client's workspace and their own in parallel.

The related benefit is that extensions carry over. Password managers, clipping tools, and anything else already installed in the browser keep working inside the window, because the window is that browser. An app that packages its own runtime starts from an empty profile with none of that available.

The capture shortcut is the one thing the installed build genuinely owns

Most arguments for a native build fall apart once the web version is checked against them. This one does not, and anyone whose method depends on it should stop comparing and install the official app.

Todoist exposes a global Quick Add shortcut. It fires from whatever application currently has focus: a mail client, a terminal, a video call, a text editor. A small input box appears, the task goes in, the box disappears, and the previous application still has focus. Nothing is switched to and nothing has to be switched back from. The help documentation states plainly where that behavior lives.

Global Quick Add is only available on the desktop apps. Source: todoist.com

The key combination is not fixed. Opening Settings, then the Desktop tab, then the Quick Add global shortcut entry lets it be set to something that does not collide with the rest of the keyboard. That configurability matters on a Mac already carrying a screenshot tool, a clipboard manager, and a window tiler, all of which claim modifier combinations of their own.

A standalone window built from the web version does not reproduce this. The window can be focused with Command Tab or a launcher, and once it is focused the in app shortcut for adding a task works the same as it does in a browser. But that is two deliberate steps instead of one reflex, and the current application loses focus in the process. For someone who captures a dozen scattered thoughts a day while working inside something else, the difference is the whole method.

For a reader who mostly reviews, reorders, and closes tasks rather than capturing constantly, the shortcut is not decisive, and the account and OS questions above carry more weight. The useful test is to count how many tasks in the last week were typed while working inside a different application. A high count settles the question in favor of the installed build.

What a wrapper does and does not replace

Being straight about the trade goes both ways. A standalone app built from a website is a real application: its own icon, its own Dock entry, its own entry in Command Tab, its own window with no tab strip. It is not a bookmark and it is not a browser tab pretending to be more.

What it does not do is add features the website does not have. Anything the vendor built specifically into the native build, such as system level integrations that reach outside the browser sandbox, stays in the native build. The honest way to choose is to open the web version, use it for a week in a normal browser window, and note whether anything is missing. For a task manager whose interface is already fully available on the web, that list tends to be short.

On disk the difference is straightforward. The official build occupies somewhere between 112 MB and 152 MB depending on the channel, because it carries its own rendering engine. A tool that builds on the Chromium browser already installed, whether that is Chrome, Brave, Edge, or Vivaldi, does not ship a second engine, so it inherits browser updates and sign in state instead of duplicating them. The Features page describes what that structure does and does not carry over, and the Supported services list covers more than 300 sites that are preconfigured, so most of these apps take a minute rather than an afternoon.

What to change first

Check the macOS version, then count the accounts. On macOS 12 or later with a single account, install the official build from the App Store and stop reading. With two accounts, an older Mac, or a dependence on browser extensions, build a standalone app from the web version instead and give each account its own icon. Kagemusha walks through the second route step by step.