A planner you don't have to open
Most to-do list apps wait for you to come to them. You switch windows, find the list, read it, then switch back to what you were doing. A menu bar planner on your Mac skips that trip. Tidy Day lives in a small black island at the top center of the screen, so your plan is in view while you work.
Closed, the island shows one thing. Usually that's today's progress, such as 3/5, with a small ring that fills as you finish tasks. If you'd rather see what's coming, choose When closed, show: Next task in Settings and the island shows your next task instead. While a focus session is running, it shows the task and the time, like ● Record demo · 24:18.
Why a menu bar planner gets looked at
A plan only helps if you see it. The usual pattern goes like this: you write a careful list in the morning, open your editor or your inbox, and the list disappears behind a stack of windows. By the afternoon you're working from memory.
The top of the screen is a place your eyes pass through all day. It's where you check the time. Putting the plan there means you see it again and again without deciding to look.
Each glance is small, but it answers the two questions you'd otherwise have to stop and look up: how far along am I, and what's next? When the answer is always in view, the plan you made in the morning is still the plan you're following at four o'clock.
What you can do from the top of the screen
Move the pointer onto the island and it opens into a panel: the date and a short heading, a thin progress bar, a week strip, and the selected day's tasks. From there you can:
- Add a task. Type a title and press Return. The field stays ready for the next one, so you can get a whole list down in one go. A time and a priority are optional.
- Check things off. Select a task with ↑ ↓ and press Space. The ring in the island fills as you go.
- Move work around the week. Drag a task onto any day in the week strip, or use the context menu to send it to tomorrow, next week or any date.
- Mark priorities. Up to three a day. They're listed first, with a heavier ring.
- Start a focus session. Press F on a task. When you close the panel, the timer stays in the island.
- Get a reminder. Give a task a time and you get a notification then, or 5 or 15 minutes before, even when Tidy Day is closed.
You can do all of it from the keyboard. ⌃⌥D opens Tidy Day from any app, and every part of the planner has a key. There's more on planning the week and on the focus timer if you want the detail.
How it stays out of the way
Something that sits on your screen all day has to be polite about it. These details are there to make sure it is:
- It folds back. Move the pointer away and the panel folds back into the island.
- Hover never steals focus. Passing over the island doesn't take keyboard focus from the app you're in, so you can check the list mid-sentence and keep typing. When you want to type in Tidy Day, click into the panel. Closing it hands focus back to the app you were using.
- Click instead of hover, if you like. If you'd rather it only opens when you mean it, switch hover to click in Settings. The ⌃⌥D shortcut can be changed there too.
- No CPU while idle. Collapsed and idle, it does no polling and uses no CPU. It measured 0% on an Intel MacBook Pro.
- It fades over full-screen apps. Watch a video full screen or present slides and the island fades away, unless a focus session is running.
- It fits your Mac. On Macs without a notch it sits in the menu bar. On MacBooks with a notch it wraps around the camera housing, a bit like a Dynamic Island for your day. It works across Spaces and on external displays.
It can launch at login, and the Dock icon is optional. Once it's set up, there isn't much else to think about.
Who it's not for
Tidy Day is for people who work alone on a Mac and want to know what to do next without maintaining a system. It leaves a lot out on purpose, so it's worth being clear about who will miss those things:
- You plan in hours, not days. A task can have a time, but there's no hour-by-hour grid. For time blocking, a calendar is the better tool. Here's how day-based planning compares with time blocking.
- You share lists with a team. There are no team or shared lists.
- You organize by project. There are no projects, colored tags or Kanban boards.
- You need your list on your phone. There's no iPhone app and no iCloud sync yet.
- You want an assistant to plan for you. Tidy Day isn't an AI assistant. You decide what goes on the list.
If any of those is essential, a full task manager or calendar will serve you better. If what you mostly want is today's list somewhere you'll actually see it, that's the job Tidy Day does.
