Twos

Lists

Sublists

iPhoneiPadAndroidWebMacWindowsLinuxWatchUpdated 2026-09-18

A sublist is a list that lives inside another list, so one thing can hold a list of its own.

Sublists are free for everyone.

Why you'd care

Some things refuse to stay one line. "Book the trip" is one to-do until you realise it is flights, a hotel, a dog sitter and a passport check. You then have two bad options in most apps: let those four items clutter the list they landed on, or make a whole separate list and lose the connection to why it exists.

A sublist is the third option. The parent thing stays where it is and reads as one line, and the detail lives inside it.

The 60-second version

  1. 1

    Find the one that outgrew itself

    Any thing can become a sublist. It keeps its own text as the sublist's name, so you are not asked to name it.

  2. 2

    Promote it

    Press ⌘⇧K, or use the selection bar. It becomes a list, in place.

  3. 3

    Open it

    Press ⌘. or tap it, then write inside as you would in any list.

Pressing ⌘⇧K again on a sublist undoes the promotion and turns it back into an ordinary thing.

Step by step

What ends up inside, and what it gets called

Three cases, and which one you get depends only on what you had selected.

One thing, on its own. It becomes the sublist and its text becomes the name. Nothing is asked and nothing moves, because there is nothing to move.

One thing with things indented under it. Same as above, and everything indented beneath it comes along automatically as the sublist's contents. The parent keeps its text as the name, and the children lose one level of indentation, since they no longer need it to show they belong to the parent. A grandchild stays nested under its own parent inside the new sublist.

Several things selected. You are asked to name the sublist, because there is no obvious candidate among them, and all of them go inside it. Nothing is promoted to be the name. See select many things at once.

The middle case is the one worth knowing. If you have been writing sub-items indented under a to-do, promoting that to-do collects all of them in one move without you selecting anything.

Reading them without opening them

A sublist can show its contents inline underneath its name, so you can see what is inside without navigating. This is a per-list display choice, and it is what stops sublists from feeling like folders you have to dig through.

Nesting

A sublist can hold a sublist. This is genuinely useful two levels deep and almost never useful at four. If you are at four, what you want is probably a real list.

Getting back out

Web, Mac, Windows, and Linux

⌘⌥. goes up one level. ⌘⌥T expands or collapses every sublist on the page at once, which is the fastest way to see the shape of a big list.

iPhone, iPad, and Android

The back gesture returns you to the parent. Pull down to get back to Today from any depth.

Going further

A sublist is a real list. It can have its own emoji, colour, cover photo, sort order and layout. It can be shared on its own. It shows up in search as a list. The only difference from a top-level list is where it lives.

Sublists versus indenting. Indenting keeps things on the same page and is right for a couple of sub-items. A sublist is right when the detail deserves its own page and you want the parent to stay a single line. Rule of thumb: if the sub-items have sub-items, you want a sublist.

Sublists versus tags. A sublist is a place. A tag is a label that finds things across many places. If you are about to make the same sublist in five lists, you want a tag.

Settings that change this

Tips

  • Promote rather than plan. It is faster to write four lines on Today and promote them than to decide in advance that something needs a list.
  • The parent thing's text becomes the sublist name, so write it as a name you would want to see later.
  • Turn on inline display for lists you scan a lot, and leave it off for lists that are long.

If it's not working

The sublist option is missing. Check that Sublists is switched on in Settings Your Features Sublists. If you are on an older version of the mobile app, update it: sublists became free in a newer release.

Promoting swallowed the things under it. That is the multi-thing promotion working as designed: the first becomes the name and the rest go inside. Press ⌘⇧K again to undo it.

I cannot find a sublist I made. Search finds sublists by name like any other list. If you know the parent, open it and expand all sublists with ⌘⌥T.