For iPad
Milestones puts your projects, their milestones and the tasks of the one you’re working on side by side, works with a keyboard and trackpad, and syncs with your iPhone and Mac through iCloud.
Free for two projects · Works on iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Updated October 25, 2026 by Yassine Zeriouh, the developer of Milestones
Milestones is a project management app that uses the iPad’s width: your projects in the sidebar, the open project’s milestones next to them, and the tasks of the selected milestone on the right, all on one screen. It’s free for two projects, and one purchase covers iPad, iPhone and Mac.
It’s made for people who run their own projects: students, writers, freelancers, indie developers. It isn’t a team tool, and it doesn’t draw Gantt charts.
The problem
What people tend to run into before they find an iPad project app they keep.
Many task apps on iPad are their iPhone app made bigger: one list at a time, a lot of empty space and a back button to get anywhere. On a screen that could show a whole project at once, you end up tapping back and forth between a list and its details.
Browser-based project tools on iPad mean small targets, menus built for a mouse, sign-in screens and often nothing at all without a connection. They work, but the iPad starts to feel like a worse laptop instead of the device you chose to work on.
A to-do app is fine until a project has stages. A thesis, a launch or a client job turns into one long list where nothing says which stage is late or how far along you are, so you start keeping a second plan in a note next to it.
If you work with a Magic Keyboard, many apps still send you back to the screen for everything but typing: no shortcuts, no moving through a list with the arrow keys, no way to jump to a project. Every step that isn’t a word is another reach for the glass.
Features
The iPad app, feature by feature. Most of the keyboard work arrived with Milestones 2.0.
Projects and their progress sit in the sidebar, the open project’s milestones in the middle, and the tasks of the selected milestone on the right, grouped into in progress, to do and done. Today, Upcoming, Inbox and simple lists use the whole window instead.
Give Milestones a narrow window next to another app and it switches to the iPhone layout; widen it again and the columns come back. When you open it, it goes straight back to the project and milestone you were last working on, so you pick up where you left off.
Milestones fills the iPad’s menu bar with its commands, and holding ⌘ shows every shortcut. You can change any of them in Settings, jump to any project or milestone with ⌘K, move through lists with the arrow keys and open the selected task with Return.
Drag a task onto another milestone to move it there, or onto the To Do, In Progress and Done bar that appears at the bottom of a list to change its status. Drag a milestone onto another project in the sidebar and it moves there with all of its tasks.
On a full-width iPad the new-task field sits above the list instead of over the keyboard. Type the date in plain words, like “tomorrow at 5pm” or “every Monday”, add #tags and !1 to !3 for priority, and edit any task in place on its own row.
With Pro, any project and Today, Upcoming and Inbox can be shown as a board with To Do, In Progress and Done columns, and the iPad has room to show all three at once. Columns grow with their cards, and you drag a card from one column to the next.
Choose Select Tasks, Select Projects or Select Milestones from the More menu and pick each one with a tap. Then change their status, date, priority or tags together, move them to another milestone or project, or delete them, from one bar at the bottom of the screen.
Your projects sync through your own iCloud to iPhone, Mac and Apple Watch, with no Milestones account to create. You can print a task list or save it as a PDF, and with Pro, widgets put your projects on the Home Screen and Lock Screen.
Other options
Milestones isn’t the right iPad app for everyone. If one of these describes your work better, start there.
Not for everyone
For students
Every course, every deadline, one clean view.
Milestones gives students a calm planner for the semester: a project per course, milestones for exams and term papers, tasks for the readings. Works on iPhone in line, iPad in the lecture hall, Mac at the desk.
For freelance designers
One client per project. One milestone per phase. No agency tools.
Milestones gives freelance designers a clean way to track every client engagement (kickoff, concepts, revisions, handoff, invoice) without a 12-seat agency PM tool that bills by the user.
For content creators
Treat every video, episode, and issue like the project it really is.
Milestones turns your editorial calendar into real projects with research → script → record → edit → publish milestones. Native on iPhone, iPad, and Mac. No production team required.
Use case · Dissertation planning
Make a dissertation feel finishable.
A dissertation is a multi-year project pretending to be a document. Milestones gives you the structure your supervisor assumes you have: chapters as milestones, work sessions as tasks, deadlines that stick.
Milestones on other devices: Mac
FAQ
Milestones is free for two projects on the iPad, with no time limit, and archived projects don’t count toward that. Pro unlocks unlimited projects, repeating tasks, Kanban boards and widgets for $5.99 a month, $29.99 a year or $79.99 once, and covers iPhone and Mac too.
Yes. Its commands fill the iPad’s menu bar, holding ⌘ shows every shortcut, and you can change any shortcut in Settings. ⌘K jumps to a project or milestone, the arrow keys move through lists, and Return opens the selected task for editing.
Yes, through your own iCloud, with no Milestones account. Turn on iCloud sync and your projects, milestones and tasks appear on every device signed in to the same Apple Account, including the Apple Watch app. One purchase covers iPad, iPhone and Mac.
Yes, with Pro. Any project, and Today, Upcoming and Inbox, can be shown as a board with To Do, In Progress and Done columns. On an iPad all three columns fit side by side, and you drag a card from one column to the next.
Yes. When the window is narrow, Milestones switches to its iPhone layout with one list at a time; give it more room and it goes back to showing projects, milestones and tasks side by side. Nothing about your projects changes between the two.
Not together. Milestones has no shared projects, assignees or comments, and workspaces are personal. It’s built for people who run their own projects. Teams usually do better with Trello, Notion or another tool built for sharing.
Free for two projects, on iPad, iPhone and Mac. Split one real project into milestones and see how the three columns feel.
