Diurnal

Hey everyone 👋 I built Diurnal because I kept giving up on to-do apps. It always went the same way. I'd plan 6 tasks for the day and finish 3, because life happens. The next morning those 3 leftovers were waiting for me: overdue, red, asking to be rescheduled. After a few weeks I was spending more time keeping the app tidy than doing the work, so I went back to a notepad. That was easy to write in, but it had no reminders, no plan and no calendar. The first version of Diurnal just made adding a task faster, with a hotkey from anywhere on my Mac. Then I noticed that capturing was never my real problem. Upkeep was. So Diurnal works the other way round: You just write. Every paragraph becomes a task, and nothing needs a date. If a task sits untouched, Diurnal asks whether you're still on it. If you don't answer, it moves the task to next week for you. The planning is still there when you want it: a week board, your Google Calendar, reminders, voice capture and a Pomodoro timer. My guiding idea: when you stop maintaining Diurnal, Diurnal maintains itself. It's a native Mac app and I'm building it solo, so all feedback helps, blunt feedback most of all. I'd love to know: what made you quit your last to-do app? Thanks for checking it out 🙏

Hmm interesting approach!

Making the app do the upkeep is the right problem to solve. The overdue pile is what kills most to-do setups. Since Diurnal is Mac only, how do you handle capturing tasks away from the desk? Even an email-in address or an iOS share sheet that drops text into the pad would cover most phone captures.

Dropping the overdue pile is a smart idea. When an untouched task moves to next week, can you tune how long it waits? Also, does the natural-date parsing handle recurring phrases like 'every Monday'?

I like that overdue tasks never pile up in red. When Diurnal moves an untouched task to next week, does it keep a history so you can see how many times something has been postponed?

I love the idea that untouched tasks ask about themselves and then roll to next week instead of piling up as overdue. That's the part that kills most to-do apps for me. Does voice capture transcribe on-device or in the cloud? And is an iOS version planned so capture works away from the Mac?

I like that old tasks ask about themselves instead of piling up as overdue. When one rolls to next week, does it keep its tag and reminder time, or do those reset?

I like that it treats writing as the starting point and lets old tasks quietly fall away instead of piling up as guilt. Does having no overdue pile change how you feel about the days you did not get to things?

No overdue pile is a nice idea, the red list is what makes me give up on most to-do apps. Does it sync between Macs?

"Upkeep, not capturing, is the problem" is exactly why I quit my last to-do app. The overdue list became a guilt pile, so auto-rolling untouched tasks to next week without an overdue pile is a nice fix. Does the natural date parsing handle relative phrases like "in 2 weeks" or "end of month"?

“No overdue pile” is the feature that sold me. The red backlog is exactly why I abandon most to-do apps after a week. When a task gets auto-moved to next week, can I still see where it came from, or a count of how many times it’s been pushed? That would be a gentle hint that I should either do it or delete it.