TodayOnly: a to-do app that only manages today
The to-do app I actually use every day. No backlog, no carry-over, no notifications, just Must Do vs Bonus for today, and a 'do it now' nudge for anything under five minutes. Native SwiftUI on macOS, Tauri on Windows.
TL;DR
- A deliberately tiny daily planner: two lists, Must Do and Bonus, and nothing else.
- Tasks don't carry over: each new day you review what's left and decide, so the list never becomes a guilt backlog.
- The product is the constraints. I dogfood it every day; it's native SwiftUI on macOS and Tauri on Windows.
Problem
Every to-do app eventually becomes a backlog you avoid.
I'd tried them all. They all drift the same way: tasks pile up, "someday" items rot at the bottom, and opening the app starts to feel like a small failure. I didn't want a better backlog. I wanted something that refused to have one. So I built the tool I wished existed and used it until the design was honest.
Design decisions
Only today, by design
Chose to scope the entire app to a single day. Trade-off: you can't plan a week, but that's the point. Anything you can't act on today isn't on the screen, so the list stays a plan, not an archive.
No automatic carry-over
Chose to make unfinished tasks expire at midnight; the next morning you explicitly review and decide what to keep. Trade-off: a little daily friction, but it forces a real decision instead of letting yesterday's guilt accumulate silently.
"Do it now" under five minutes
Chose to intercept task creation: if it takes less than five minutes, the app says "Do it now" rather than letting you file it. Trade-off: slightly opinionated UX, but it kills the busywork of tracking things that are faster to just do.
Must Do vs Bonus, nothing else
Chose exactly two buckets: no priorities, no tags, no projects. Trade-off: less power, but zero overhead. The taxonomy fits in your head, which is the only place a daily list needs to live.
The hardest part wasn't the code. It was deleting features. Every "useful" addition (reminders, sync, a backlog view) quietly reintroduces the exact problem the app exists to solve. Restraint was the feature.
what building it taught me
Why it's here
It's the most honest kind of portfolio piece: a product I use every single day, where the value is entirely in the product judgement, not the line count. Native on two platforms (SwiftUI + SwiftData on macOS, a lightweight Tauri build on Windows), shipped and lived-in.
Results
- Daily: I use it every day; the truest test a tool can pass.
- Two lists: the entire information architecture, on purpose.
- Zero: backlog, reminders, notifications, sync.