Introduction to projects

Whether you’re planning a presentation or creating a website, create a project to save all the important details in one central place! 

Create a project

Start by creating a project to add your tasks to.

  1. Find the workspace where you want to create your project in the sidebar.
    • Personal projects: Click the Add icon next to My Projects.
    • Team projects: Click the Add icon next to the team you want to create the project for. Then, select Add project.
  2. In the Add project window, type the name of your new project. Use letters, numbers, or special characters, like # " ( ) | & ! _ - or , in the name.
  3. Click Add to create the project.

Quick tip

  • Click the Color menu to choose a different project color.
  • If you're creating a team project, click the Access menu and choose whether to give either all or selected team members access to it.
  • Click Folder and select an existing folder to add the project to.

Use a project

Now that you've created your project, it's time to add and organize your tasks. Below are some tips for how to make the most of a project in Todoist.

Quick Add tasks to your project

Load up your new project with every relevant task you can think of. It’s a brainstorm, there are no bad ideas! You can add a task directly to your project by clicking/tapping the Add task or + button in the project.

Quick tip

When using Quick Add to add a new task, you can immediately move it to a project. Type # directly into the task name and enter the name of the project.

Favorite a project

For easy access to the project, click the toggle to add it to your favorites.

Set due dates

Some work needs to be done now, other work can wait. To make sure you get things done on time, set each task’s due date.

Set the due date by typing the date into the task name, like “Today”, “Next Thursday” or “March 12”.

Set task priorities

Some tasks are more important than others. Go through your project and set your most important tasks as priority 1. They’ll show up in red and at the top of the list, so you know what to work on first.

Organize your project using sections

If you want to break your project down into different parts, you can do so by creating sections and adding your tasks to their relevant section. Learn more in our introduction to sections.

You can then drag and drop tasks to change the indent and rearrange them as sub-tasks.

Edit a project

Need to make some changes to your project? No problem! Simply follow one of our guides below.

Edit a project name

Whether you need to correct a typo or you've completely changed the title, here’s how to edit a project name in Todoist:

  1. Click the three dots icon next to the project name.
  2. Select Edit from the menu.
  3. Enter the new project name.
  4. Click Save.

Quick tip

If you already have the project open in Todoist, click the project name at the top and make your changes. Then, click Save to confirm.

Change the color of a project

Brighten up and organize your Todoist by color-coding your projects. Here's how:

  1. Click the three dots icon next to the project name.
  2. Select Edit.
  3. Select the color you want for your project from the Color drop-down menu.
  4. Click Save.

Organize your project list

In the Todoist web app and desktop apps, drag projects manually to their preferred location in the projects list to change their order.

If you're using Todoist for iOS or Android, follow these steps to reorder projects:

  1. Tap Browse in the navigation bar.
  2. Touch and hold a project.
  3. Drag the project to a new location in the list.

Team projects are sorted alphabetically and can't be rearranged. If sorting your team projects manually is important to you, share your feedback with us!

Archive a project

Archive a project to remove it from your project list, which is handy when you want to view and restore it later.

  1. Hover your cursor over the project in the sidebar.
  2. Click on the three dots icon next to the project name.
  3. Select Archive project.
  4. Click Archive again to confirm.

To restore an archived project:

  1. Click My Projects or your team workspace.
  2. Click Active projects. This opens the Project type menu.
  3. Select Archived projects. You'll see the list of archived projects.
  4. Find the archived project and click the three dots icon next to its name.
  5. Select Unarchive.

Delete a project

Get rid of old projects and keep your project list nice and tidy.

Note

If you're sharing a project with others, you'll only see the option to leave or archive it.

  1. Hover your cursor over the project you want to delete in the sidebar.
  2. Click the three dots icon next to the project name.
  3. Select Delete.
  4. Click Delete again to confirm.

Quick tip

If you're a Pro or Business customer, Todoist automatically backs up your data every time you log in to your account. You can store up to 21 backups. If you deleted a project by accident, create a new project and import a backup.

Get started

We hope this guide has got you excited to start working on that idea that you've got in your head! If you're not quite sure where to get started, check out our template gallery, which contains dozens of curated templates.