The DayMap Guide

Your first five minutes

DayMap holds your projects and your schedule in one window, so you can drag a task from a project straight onto the day you'll do it. Here's the whole loop.

1. Choose a starting point

   The first time you open DayMap it asks whether to begin with sample projects or a blank slate. Explore with sample data is the easier way in — you can clear it later from Settings with Remove Sample Data. Pick Start fresh if you'd rather build your own.

2. Make a project

   Press ⇧⌘N, or click the New Project button in the toolbar, or click the + at the far right end of the Project Planner. Give it a name, pick a color, and click Create.

   Each project becomes a colored column in the Project Planner. Color isn't decoration — it's how you'll recognize a task later in the Scheduler.

3. Add some tasks

   Click the + at the bottom of the column, type a name, press Add. Repeat. Don't worry about order or dates yet — just get things out of your head.

   To break a task down, hover it and click the + that appears on its right edge to add a subtask. You can nest as deep as you like.

4. Drag a task onto a day

   This is the part that makes DayMap DayMap. Drag a task from its column down onto a day in the Task Scheduler below. That's it — it's scheduled. The task keeps its project color, so you can see at a glance whose day is whose.

   Prefer the keyboard? Right-click a task and use Schedule ▸ Today / Tomorrow / Next Week.

   

5. Give one a time

   Double-click a task to open its details. Under Scheduled, turn on Set a specific time — it starts at 9:00 AM, adjust from there. Timed tasks gather in a pinned strip in their Scheduler day, in clock order, at the top by default — Settings ▸ Appearance ▸ Timed tasks in a day moves them to the bottom.

6. Work the day

   Press ⇧⌘F to open Focus — one day, one list, nothing else. Tick things off there, or click any checkbox anywhere in the app.

7. Capture things as they come up

   Press ⌃⌥⌘I from any app while DayMap is running. A small panel appears, you type a line, press Return, and it lands in your Inbox. Sort it into a real project later.

How DayMap is laid out

There's no sidebar. The window is two stacked areas, plus a search pane that slides in when you need it.

• The Project Planner (top) — your projects, side by side as colored columns, scrolling horizontally. The Inbox is always pinned to the far left.
• The Task Scheduler (bottom) — a week or month view of everything you've scheduled, plus your real calendar events if you've turned those on.
• The divider between them is draggable. Pull it up or down to give whichever half more room.

On Mac you can also click the maximize button in the Scheduler header (Maximize the Scheduler) to hide the Planner entirely and let the Scheduler fill the window. Click it again to bring the Planner back.

On iPad it's the same layout with a grip-handle divider you drag. If you drag the Planner almost closed, a small round Restore the Planner button appears in the Scheduler's top corner to bring it back.

The toolbar

Left side: Voice Capture, New Task, New Project, the area filter, and Focus. Right side: the Completed menu (how far back to show finished work) and the search field. On iPad there's also a gear for Settings; on Mac, Settings lives in the usual place at ⌘,.

Projects & columns

A project is a column. Create one with ⇧⌘N, the toolbar button, or the + at the end of the Project Planner.

Renaming, coloring, reordering

• Rename: double-click the column header and type. Return saves, Escape cancels.
• Recolor: open the column's ••• menu → Color…. There are twelve preset swatches, or use Custom color for anything else. The header text flips between black and white automatically so it stays readable.
• Reorder: drag a column by its header. A colored line shows where it will land — drop on the left half of another column to go before it, the right half to go after.
• Resize: drag the column's right edge. Anywhere from 190 to 680 points wide. The width sticks.
• Collapse: click the ☰ icon in the header and the column shrinks to a narrow strip with the name running vertically. Click it again to expand. ⌥⌘← and ⌥⌘→ collapse and expand every project at once.

Project notes

Open ••• → Get Info for the project's details sheet: name, notes, color, and area. Any URL you type into the notes is detected automatically and listed underneath as a clickable link.

Deleting a project

••• → Delete Project. DayMap tells you exactly how many tasks go with it before you confirm, and the deletion can be undone with ⌘Z.

Tasks & subtasks

Add a task with the + at the bottom of a column, or ⌘N for a new task with its details already open.

Reading a task row

Left to right: a disclosure triangle if it has subtasks, a checkbox, a small red clock badge if it's scheduled, the title, an optional preview of its notes, and a deadline flag if it has one. Hover a row and a + appears on the right to add a subtask under it.

Nesting

Subtasks nest as deep as you want. With a task selected in the Planner, Tab indents it under the row above and ⇧Tab pulls it back out. You can also drag: drop onto the middle of another task to nest inside it, or onto the top or bottom edge to place it before or after as a sibling. Dragging a task carries all of its subtasks with it, even into a different project.

Completing a parent completes everything underneath it.

Keyboard in the Planner

Click a task once to select it, then:

The details sheet

Double-click any task (or ⌘I) to open it. Here you'll find its name, which project it belongs to, its scheduled date and optional time, its deadline, its repeat rule, notes, and any links found in those notes. Moving a task to another project from here brings its subtasks along.

Scheduling

Four ways to put a task on a day, all equivalent:

• Drag it from its column onto a day in the Scheduler.
• Right-click → Schedule → Today, Tomorrow, Next Week, or Custom….
• Open its details and use the Scheduled row.
• In Focus, use the Reschedule button.

Dragging an already-scheduled task to a different day keeps its time of day — only the date moves.

All-day vs timed

A scheduled task is all-day until you turn on Set a specific time, which starts at 9:00 AM. All-day tasks sit in the main body of the day; timed ones collect in a pinned strip at the bottom of the day, sorted by clock. In week view that strip shows three at a time with a +N more button to expand it.

Week and month views

⌘1 and ⌘2 switch between them. ⌘[ and ⌘] step backward and forward, ⌘T jumps to today, and the calendar icon in the header opens a date picker to jump anywhere. Both views accept drops, so you can schedule a month ahead just as easily.

Weeks start on Sunday.

Clearing up overdue work

Task ▸ Bring Overdue to Today sweeps every unfinished task from before today onto today, keeping any specific times intact. Repeating tasks are deliberately left alone so a series doesn't collapse onto one day.

3 Daily Bearings

Any day can carry three tasks marked as the ones that matter most, numbered 1, 2 and 3. They're called your Daily Bearings — the direction you're steering that day, as distinct from everything else that happens to be scheduled on it.

Designate one from a task's right-click menu in the Scheduler, or from its row. The numeral appears beside it. A day holds three; designating a fourth asks which one drops.

The numbering follows how the day reads rather than the order you picked them, so a day is always numbered 1, 2, 3 with no gaps. Move a bearing to another day and the designation travels with it; unschedule it and the designation goes, because a bearing with no day has nothing to belong to.

Switch the feature off in Settings if you don't want it. Nothing is deleted — the marks come back if you switch it on again.

Deadlines

A deadline is when a task is due — separate from the day you've planned to do it. Set one in the task's details under Deadline. Deadlines are day-only; there's no time component.

Once set, a small flag appears on the task wherever it's shown, and it changes as the date approaches:

The flag disappears once the task is complete.

Repeating tasks Pro

Open a task's details and set Repeat. The task must already be scheduled — the picker stays greyed out until it is.

Options: Daily, Every Weekday, Custom Days…, Weekly, Every 2 Weeks, Monthly, Yearly.

And every few of them. Beside Daily, Weekly, Monthly and Yearly there's an interval, so a task can repeat every 3 weeks, every 6 months, every 2 years — whatever it actually is.

Custom Days… reveals seven day circles — S M T W T F S — so you can build things like Monday/Wednesday/Friday.

When it ends

The End row offers Never, On Date, or After a set number of times.

How repeats appear

A repeating task appears once in its project column — that's the task itself, holding the rule — while the days it falls on appear in the Scheduler. DayMap works those days out from the rule as it draws them, so a series stretches as far ahead as you care to look without filling your project up with copies.

Completing one day completes only that day; the series carries on. Changing the rule changes today and everything after it, and leaves past days alone as history. Turning repeat off removes the upcoming ones.

Each day of a series can be nudged on its own — dragged to a different day, or taken off the Scheduler for that day only — without disturbing the rest. Right-click a day of a repeating task in the Scheduler and you'll get Skip This Day rather than an option that would take the whole series with it.

The Inbox & capture

The Inbox is where anything you haven't filed yet lands. It's a permanent project pinned to the left of the Planner. The point is to get a thought down in a second and sort it out later.

The global hotkey (Mac)

Press ⌃⌥⌘I from any app while DayMap is running and a small panel appears in the middle of the screen. Type, press Return, it's in your Inbox. Escape or clicking away cancels.

Change the shortcut in Settings ▸ General ▸ Quick Add Shortcut. It needs at least one modifier key. DayMap doesn't need Accessibility permission for this.

Voice capture

⇧⌘D, or the microphone in the toolbar. Talk; the words appear as you go; press Add to Inbox. Transcription happens on your device. You'll be asked for microphone and speech-recognition permission the first time.

Siri and Shortcuts

DayMap gives Siri seven things it can do, and every one of them works without the app opening. Say the phrase, answer Siri's question if it asks one, and you're done.

You can't say the item in the same breath as the phrase — Siri always asks first. That's a rule of Apple's, not a DayMap setting, so "add this" doesn't capture what's on screen or what you just said; Siri still asks what you mean.

All seven appear in the Shortcuts app too, as Add to Inbox, Today's Tasks, This Week, Put On Today, Make It a Bearing, Complete Task and Remember This — so you can build any of them into a larger shortcut. They show up in Spotlight as well, with no setup.

Typing a day into a task

End a task with a day and DayMap schedules it there. Type Email Tom back on Tuesday and you get a task called Email Tom back, on Tuesday. Times work too — Standup Thursday at 3.

It works anywhere you type a whole task: Quick Add, the task editor when you create one with + or ⌘N, a column's New Task, and the add rows on iPhone. Quick Add shows you what it understood underneath the field before you press Return.

A day only counts when it's the last thing you typed. That's what keeps Meet with Tuesday Weld a meeting with a person, and leaves Order the March issue, Pay invoice 5 and Review Q1 exactly as written. Renaming a task you already have is left alone as well — only a task being named for the first time reads a date out of its name.

Filing what you've captured

Drag from the Inbox column into any project, or open a task's details and change its Project.

Focus

⇧⌘F, or the Focus button in the toolbar. One day at a time, with everything else out of the way. Mac and iPad only.

The left side lists that day's tasks, split into Timed and All day. The right side is a working pane for whichever one you've selected, where you can:

• Rename it, or edit its notes
• Toggle a specific time on or off
• See its repeat rule and when the next occurrence falls
• Tick off subtasks, with a progress bar and an N of M done count
• Reschedule it to another day

A status pill in the corner tells you where the task stands — Today, in 2h, Overdue 3d, Completed, and so on.

Step between days with the arrows either side of the date, or click the date to pick one. If a day is empty, DayMap offers a shortcut straight to your next scheduled day.

Waypoint Pro

Waypoint is an optional end-of-day journal: a few questions, a couple of minutes, no scoring. Every good navigator stops at the end of a day's walk and marks where he actually is — not to grade himself, but to orient.

Switch it on in Settings ▸ Show Waypoint. On a Mac it opens from the toolbar or with ⇧⌘M; on iPhone there's a pin on the Projects screen and another on Schedule.

Answers save as you go — leaving a field, changing the day, or closing the pane all write what you typed. Return starts a new line, so an answer can be a paragraph rather than one long sentence.

Nothing is created until you write something. A day you open and don't fill in leaves no record at all — nothing stored, nothing synced, and nothing for a later review to count as a day you missed. Looking Back lists only the days you wrote on, newest first.

If you write on two devices on the same day before they've synced, both pieces are kept and joined rather than one replacing the other.

Search & completed tasks

Search

Type in the toolbar's search field. A results pane slides in from the right, and at the same time the Planner itself filters down to matching tasks — so you get both the list and the area.

Search covers task titles and notes. Each result shows a breadcrumb of where it lives, like Work › Launch plan › Draft copy. Click one to open it.

Showing and hiding completed work

The Completed menu in the toolbar controls how much finished work stays visible:

• Hide completed
• Completed today
• Last 7 days — the default
• Last 30 days
• All completed

⇧⌘C toggles quickly between hidden and the last 7 days.

Clearing out old items

In Settings you can turn on Delete completed items after a number of days (90 by default). This is off unless you turn it on, and it permanently deletes — it's a cleanup, not an archive.

Areas Pro

Areas group your projects into the domains your life actually splits into — Work, Family, Home. A project belongs to one area, or to none, and it can also be set to appear in as many others as you like — open its ••• menu and choose Areas….

An area filter shows the projects filed under the areas you picked, plus any project set to appear in one of them. Projects you haven't filed at all live under No Area. To make a project span everything, tick every area under Also appears in. The Inbox is the one exception and stays in view whichever area you pick.

These used to be called Contexts. The word changed in 1.12 and nothing moved: your projects are filed exactly where they were. In GTD a area is where you can do something (@phone, @errands); what DayMap groups is a domain of responsibility, which is an area — and now it says so.

Create one from the filter menu in the toolbar (New Area…), from the New Project sheet, or in Settings ▸ Areas. Assign a project in its Get Info panel, near the top.

Showing one, or several

Clicking an area switches to it. Click Work and you see Work. Click Family and you see Family — not both.

To see more than one at once, either hold ⌘ and click, or use Show Several… in the same menu, which gives you a checklist. Show Several… is also how it works on iPhone and iPad, where there's no key to hold.

All Areas shows everything, including projects you haven't filed. No Area shows only the unfiled ones.

When exactly one area is showing, a new project you create is put in it automatically. With several showing there's no right answer, so it stays unfiled rather than DayMap guessing.

Rename, recolor or delete areas in Settings ▸ Areas. The projects in an area are never deleted with it — but you choose where they go. Deleting an area that still holds projects asks first, and offers to archive them or to Keep Them on the Board, where they land under No Area. An area holding nothing is deleted without asking.