For personal projects
Milestones turns a renovation, a side project, a course or a book into milestones with their own tasks and progress, so it moves forward a little every week. It runs on iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple Watch and keeps everything in your own iCloud.
Free for two projects · Works on iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Updated October 26, 2026 by Yassine Zeriouh, the developer of Milestones
Personal project management is project management for one person: taking something you want to finish outside of work, like a kitchen renovation, a side project, a course or a move, and breaking it into a few milestones with the next tasks inside each. It doesn’t need Gantt charts or a team tool. It needs one place that shows every project you’ve started, how far along each one is, and what to do next.
Milestones is built for exactly that: a project per goal, milestones for its stages, tasks for the work, and a Today list that pulls what’s due from all of them. It’s free for two projects at a time, and finished projects you archive don’t count toward that.
The problem
It’s rarely a lack of time. Usually it’s one of these.
A side project, a garden plan and a half-finished course all compete for the same evenings. When none of them is written down as a project with a next step, you spend your free time deciding what to do instead of doing it, and the one you care about most quietly stalls.
Reminders or a single to-do app holds “buy tiles” next to “renew passport” next to “write chapter 3”. Everything is a task, nothing shows how far the renovation or the book has come, and a big project turns into a long list you stop opening.
Asana, ClickUp or Jira can plan anything, but using them at home means workspaces, boards and settings built for a team. Planning a weekend project shouldn’t feel like another shift, so the tool is usually abandoned after the first week.
Personal projects run on motivation, and motivation runs on seeing progress. Without milestones, a six-month project feels like it’s stuck at zero until the day it’s done, which is usually why that day never comes. Finishing one stage is often what gets you to start the next.
Features
What the app does for projects you run on your own time, and which parts need Pro.
Everything you want to finish gets its own project with an icon and a color: the renovation, the app, the half marathon, the photo book. The sidebar shows all of them at once, each with a progress bar, so you can see what’s moving and what has stalled.
Split a project into stages you can actually finish: for a renovation, demolition, wiring, tiling and painting; for a book, outline, first draft and edit. Each milestone has its own tasks, dates and progress, and the active one shows under the project’s name in the sidebar.
Tasks with a date land in Today and Upcoming, whichever project they belong to. Open the app in the evening and the one or two things worth doing are already there, instead of six projects to scan. The Inbox holds ideas until you know where they belong.
Not everything is a project. A packing list, a reading list or a shopping list can be a simple list without milestones, right next to your projects in the sidebar, with the same quick entry and the same sync across your devices.
“Order tiles saturday #kitchen !2” sets the date, the tag and the priority as you type. Ask Siri to add a task while you’re out, or check one off on your Apple Watch, whose app is free. Shortcuts can use Milestones in automations of your own.
If you also plan work in Milestones, workspaces keep personal projects in a space of their own, and Today, Upcoming and search follow whichever one is open. Creating workspaces is part of Pro, along with repeating tasks, Kanban boards and widgets.
When a project is done, archive it. It keeps its milestones and tasks, can come back any time, and no longer counts toward the free plan’s two projects, which suits personal projects that come and go with the seasons and sometimes return years later.
Your projects sync through your own iCloud between iPhone, iPad and Mac, with no Milestones account and no third-party server. It works offline, and nobody else sees your plans unless you print a task list or export it as a PDF yourself.
Other options
Milestones is for projects big enough to have stages. For other ways of planning, one of these may fit better.
Not for everyone
For makers
From garage idea to finished build.
Milestones turns the chaos of half-finished projects into a clean list of what’s next. Plan the build on Mac, check the BOM on iPad in the workshop, mark tasks done from the bench.
For writers
Manuscripts have milestones too.
Milestones is the planner for novelists, journalists, and long-form writers. A project per manuscript or beat, milestones for drafts and deadlines, tasks for chapters and revisions. Quiet, focused, native.
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.
FAQ
It’s project management for one person and the things they want to finish outside of work: a renovation, a side project, a course, a move. In practice it means writing each one down as a project, splitting it into a few milestones with a clear finish, and always knowing the next task. A short weekly look at all of them keeps them from stalling.
It depends on how you plan. For simple lists shared with family, Apple Reminders is free. For a daily to-do list, Things 3 or Todoist. If your projects are big enough to have stages, like a renovation or a book, and you want to see how far each one has come, Milestones is built around exactly that.
Yes, for two projects at a time with no time limit, and archived projects don’t count. Pro removes the limit and adds repeating tasks, workspaces, Kanban boards and widgets for $5.99 a month, $29.99 a year or $79.99 once, and one purchase covers iPhone, iPad and Mac.
Fewer than you think. Two or three active projects tend to get finished; ten tend to get started. Keep the rest as ideas in the Inbox or as archived projects, and pick the next one when something is done. Milestones’ free plan, two projects at a time, happens to fit that well.
No. Milestones has no shared projects, comments or assignees, and it syncs only between your own devices through your iCloud. For plans you run together, like a family move, Apple Reminders’ shared lists or a shared Trello board are the better choice.
Yes. The Apple Watch app shows what’s due and lets you check tasks off, and it’s free. Siri can add and complete tasks hands-free, and the Shortcuts app can use Milestones in automations you build yourself, for example to add a task from a home screen shortcut.
Free for two projects on iPhone, iPad and Mac. Add it, split it into milestones and do the first task tonight.
