DayMap is Back
Fifteen years ago I went looking for a way to plan my life and couldn't find one that fit how my head actually works.
I tried the popular productivity apps, and they all shared the same flaw (at least for my way of thinking): they showed me only one thing at a time. Like email, where you open a single message while everything else disappears into the background, most planners let you focus on one project, one list, or one day while everything else stays hidden.
But that’s not how life works.
My week wasn’t made up of isolated pieces. It was all of it at once—work, family, home responsibilities, the trip I was planning—each with its own moving parts, all competing for the same seven days.
I wanted to see everything. So I sketched what I wanted to see.
I called the first iteration Bird's Eye — a view that let you look down on your whole life at once. Projects laid out side by side across the top, each an outline of its tasks. A week laid out below, so you could take a task and simply place it on the day you'd actually do it. Nothing hidden. Everything in view.
Because of Chad’s incredible talent and tireless work as the original developer, that simple sketch eventually became DayMap, which was released on the Mac App Store in November 2011.
The years in leather and paper
If you used DayMap in those early years, you remember the look. This was the age of skeuomorphism — when software dressed itself up as the physical world — and DayMap leaned all the way in. Brown leather. A torn-paper Inbox. Stitched edges and a handsome serif on the calendar. It felt like a planner you'd buy in a stationery shop, and people loved it for that.
See the Skeuomorphic Era — "January 2013"
Underneath the leather, the idea held up. Two halves working together: a Project Outliner across the top where your projects live as columns of tasks, and a Weekly Scheduler below where those tasks land on real days. Sales stayed steady, year after year, from people who — like me — just wanted to see their whole life on one screen. The feedback told me the same thing again and again: this was filling a real need.
Then the world moved on from leather and stitching to flat, bright, and simple. DayMap followed for a while. And then, honestly, life got really busy for myself and Chad, and DayMap sat still while the platforms it ran on kept improving.
Rebuilt from the ground up
DayMap has been quiet for a while. It's not quiet anymore.
The new DayMap — version 1.2 — is a complete rebuild: a native app for Mac, iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch, written from scratch on Apple's latest foundations. The leather is gone; what's left is the idea it was always protecting. Your projects, side by side. Your week, right below. See everything, place what matters on a day, and get on with it.
Here's what it does now.
See your whole life at once. Projects are colorful columns you can scroll across, each holding its tasks — and tasks can nest into subtasks as deep as you need. Below the board sits your week (or month), so your plan and your schedule live on one screen instead of two apps.
Schedule by dragging. Grab a task, drop it on a day, and it's scheduled. Change your mind? Drag it somewhere else. On iPhone there's a new
Upcoming view — your next few weeks laid out day by day — with the same drag-to-reschedule.
Deadlines that keep you honest. A task's deadline is now separate from the day you plan to work on it — shown as a small flag that shifts from grey to amber to red as the date nears. Because "when it's due" and "when I'll do it" were never the same question.
Your calendar, both directions. DayMap can add your scheduled tasks to your calendar, and — new in 1.2— show your actual appointments right inside DayMap, next to your tasks, so you can plan around what's already fixed. Works with iCloud, Google, and Exchange calendars.
Reminders, repeats, and contexts. Give a task a time and it'll notify you. Set it to repeat daily, weekly, or on the exact days you choose. Group related projects into contexts like Work, Family, or Home.
On your wrist, and by voice. The Apple Watch app shows today's tasks, lets you check them off, and takes a note by voice straight into your Inbox. Capture a thought from anywhere — a global hotkey on the Mac, Siri, or the mic on your phone.
Synced, and safe. Everything stays in step across your devices through your own private iCloud account. And DayMap now keeps automatic backups of your data on your device, so if something ever gets deleted, you can bring it back.
DayMap is free to start, with DayMap Pro unlocking sync, calendar integration, recurring tasks, contexts, and unlimited projects.
What's next
The Apple apps are home again — but we’re not stopping there. DayMap has always run only in the Apple world, and the most common request I hear is to change that. DayMap for Android and a web version are on the horizon but our first priority has always been the Apple eco-system. Our desire is to broaden those who will benefit from using DayMap but never at the expense to our original Apple users.
DayMap started as a sketch of a simpler idea: that you should be able to see it all. That's still the whole point and it always will be.