Start

That is the whole loop, and very nearly the whole app. This page walks you from install to your first planned day, in one sitting.

Install

DayGaps runs on the Mac (macOS 14 and later) and on iPhone (iOS 17 and later). The Get the app page has the current way in.

Sign into the same iCloud account on every device. That is the whole setup: your data lives in your private iCloud zone, and any device signed into that account sees the same areas, projects, and days. There is no account to create and no folder to pick.

You can start on either device. The walkthrough below assumes the Mac, because first-time structure-building is most comfortable at a desk. Everything you create appears on the phone on its own.

Make a home for your work

Create your first area. An area is a long-running domain of your life: Research, Teaching, Service, Personal. Give it a name and pick its color. The color follows the area everywhere, so a glance at any task tells you which part of your life it belongs to.

Two or three areas is plenty to start. You can add, rename, and recolor them any time.

Give it a project

Inside an area, create a project: something with a finish line. Submit the methods paper. Teach the spring course. Plan the kitchen renovation. When the finish line is crossed, you archive the whole project and it keeps its history.

Add a few tasks to the project. Plain titles are enough: Draft section 3. Email the co-author. Pull last year’s syllabus. If a task has hard parts worth tracking, give it subtasks; they live under the task and travel with it.

Some to-dos never deserve a project. Every area accepts general tasks directly, so renew parking permit can live in Personal without a project wrapped around it.

Capture, then keep moving

When something crosses your mind mid-anything, send it to the inbox. One line, no decisions. Inbox items carry no date, no project, no obligations. Later, when you are planning anyway, you triage each item into the project where it belongs, or delete it without ceremony.

Capture works the same on the phone, which is usually where thoughts strike.

Shape today

Open Today. This is where the gap comes in.

A gap is a window of time you intend to use: the open stretch before your first meeting, the hour between classes, the quiet after dinner. Add a gap, give it a start time and a name. Morning writing. Before lab. Evening review.

A gap needs no end time. DayGaps reads where the next fixed thing begins, the next gap or the next calendar event, and shows you the most a gap can hold. If you allow calendar access, your events appear alongside the gaps, so the shape of the day is visible while you plan it.

Two or three gaps is a fine first day. Unplanned time stays unplanned, and that is allowed.

Put work into the gaps

Now connect the two halves. Schedule a few project tasks into today’s gaps: pick the date and the gap, and the task appears in Today under that gap’s header.

Three or four tasks per gap, rarely more. The point of the exercise is that when a gap arrives, the deciding is already done.

Do the work

When a gap’s time comes, open Today. Its tasks sit under its header. Check them off as you go; completed tasks stay visible with a strikethrough, so the day ends as a record of what happened rather than an empty list.

Click a gap to focus it and the rest of the day quiets down. On the phone, tap the gap’s header for the same effect.

The next morning

The rhythm from here is small and daily. In the morning, or the evening before: glance at the calendar, add gaps to the day, give each one its tasks, triage anything sitting in the inbox. Then live the day with the deciding behind you.

Two fields deepen the loop when you need them:

• Scheduled is when you plan to do a task: a day, and optionally a gap on that day.
• Due is when the task must be done. Deadlines show in red as they arrive, and Today counts them in a chip you cannot miss.

A task can have both, either, or neither. The Concepts page explains the full model.

Where to go next