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Only Five is a macOS menu bar to-do app with one rule: only 5 active tasks, ever. When your list is full, you swap a task out instead of piling more on — so you're always forced to prioritize instead of hoarding a 40-item backlog. Park stray ideas in a scratch note, focus on one task at a time, and build momentum with streaks and board-clear stats. Completed tasks auto-clear after 24 hours, so you start each day light. No dashboards, no clutter — just five things, done.
👋 Hey Product Hunt!
I built Only Five because every to-do app I tried turned into a graveyard of 60+ tasks I'd never actually do — and just looking at the list made me anxious instead of productive.
So I built the opposite: a menu bar app that only lets you hold 5 active tasks at a time. That's it. No lists within lists, no infinite backlog.
A few things that make it work day to day:
Hard cap of 5 — when you're full, you swap a task out instead of stacking on more.
It forces you to actually decide what matters right now.
Focus mode — spotlight one task so you're not juggling all 5 in your head at once.
Parking lot — a quick scratch note for ideas you don't want to lose but don't want cluttering your 5 either.
Streaks & board clears — lightweight momentum tracking, not another analytics dashboard.
Auto-expiring completed tasks — done tasks clear after 24h, so you start each day with a clean slate.
It lives quietly in your menu bar — no dock icon, no windows to manage.
Only Five is free to try (with a free trial on the paid plan), monthly or yearly after that.
Would love your feedback — especially if you're someone who's tried (and abandoned) a dozen to-do apps like I have. What would make this a permanent fixture in your menu bar? 🙏
How does it handle the 24-hour auto-clear if someone wants to keep a record of stuff they finished for reference later?
The five-task limit sounds restrictive but it actually cleared my head after a day of testing. Love that completed items vanish on their own.
How does it handle ongoing tasks that take longer than 24 hours, like a multi-day project — do those still get auto-cleared or is there some way to keep them past the cutoff?
the hard cap is the right kind of constraint, most productivity apps let you cheat past the limit and the limit becomes decorative. genuine question about the parking lot though - isn't that just the 60-item graveyard with a different name? if it's a single scratch note with no structure, that's fine, but if it grows into its own list-within-a-list, people will just shove everything there the moment the 5 slots feel restrictive and you're back to square one, just one screen away. is there anything that keeps the parking lot itself from becoming the backlog, like a size limit or an expiry, or is that intentionally left as an unmanaged dumping ground on purpose?
The focus-on-one-task-at-a-time idea is great, but I'd love a simple way to pin one of the five as the "must do today" so the swap mechanic feels less like a lateral move and more like real prioritization. Maybe a star next to slots that affects the stats weighting too.
About Only Five on Product Hunt
“A menu bar to-do app that caps you at 5 tasks”
Only Five was submitted on Product Hunt and earned 9 upvotes and 6 comments, placing #29 on the daily leaderboard. Only Five is a macOS menu bar to-do app with one rule: only 5 active tasks, ever. When your list is full, you swap a task out instead of piling more on — so you're always forced to prioritize instead of hoarding a 40-item backlog. Park stray ideas in a scratch note, focus on one task at a time, and build momentum with streaks and board-clear stats. Completed tasks auto-clear after 24 hours, so you start each day light. No dashboards, no clutter — just five things, done.
Only Five was featured in Productivity (655.8k followers), Task Management (84.1k followers) and Menu Bar Apps (12.2k followers) on Product Hunt. Together, these topics include over 157.9k products, making this a competitive space to launch in.
Who hunted Only Five?
Only Five was hunted by Mahmoud Elmahdi. A “hunter” on Product Hunt is the community member who submits a product to the platform — uploading the images, the link, and tagging the makers behind it. Hunters typically write the first comment explaining why a product is worth attention, and their followers are notified the moment they post. Around 79% of featured launches on Product Hunt are self-hunted by their makers, but a well-known hunter still acts as a signal of quality to the rest of the community. See the full all-time top hunters leaderboard to discover who is shaping the Product Hunt ecosystem.
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Mahmoud Elmahdi