PopTask for Apple

Turn to-dos into scheduled tasks

Productivity

Task Management

Artificial Intelligence

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Thanks for this, Haider, and for being so open about the tradeoffs in the comments. Keeping PopTask as capture plus reminders instead of a full auto-rescheduling engine seems like the right call, since one wrong auto-cascade could quietly rearrange an entire day for someone.

A concrete case where this would help: someone juggling recurring errands and appointments who currently dumps half of them into Apple Notes with a mental note to sort later, then forgets they exist until the day of. Typing something like dentist next thurs 2pm and having it land as an actual scheduled reminder removes the one step where those thoughts usually die.

You mentioned building a custom fast-path on top of CloudKit for near-instant sync. What happens if a task gets created through Siri in the car and edited on the Mac menu bar within that same sync window? Does the fast-path just resolve it as last write wins, or is there something smarter going on there?

Congrats on taking PopTask universal, going from a personal fix to a full-time project in a few months is a big jump.

the on-device part is what sells it for me, a to-do app parsing my half-formed thoughts is exactly the kind of thing I don't want going to someone's server. "gym mon wed fri 6am" parsing correctly on the first try is a much higher bar than it sounds like, most natural language date parsers fall apart the second you mix a repeat pattern with a specific time like that. does it handle relative stuff too, like "remind me in 20 min" or only fixed schedule style input

The "gym mon wed fri 6am" natural-language parse into a scheduled recurring task is exactly the friction that makes me bail on most to-do apps. Day-one thing I'd want to know: when it mis-reads a messy thought (sets 6pm instead of 6am, or the wrong repeat), can I fix the parsed task inline, or do I have to delete and retype from scratch? And since it syncs through my own iCloud, if I add a task on mac while my phone is offline, does it reconcile cleanly when the phone is back or can I end up with a duplicate?

The "3 seconds between remembering and it being saved" framing is exactly right. Running a few businesses at once, that gap is where I lose the most - by the time a task app makes me pick a date and project, the thought's already gone. Congrats on going universal with this launch.

The gap between a to-do list and actually blocking time for the thing is where most of my week leaks out. When PopTask schedules a task and I blow past the block, does it reshuffle everything after it or wait for me to re-triage? That overrun problem is usually where these apps break for me.

I like how PopTask simplifies task creation, but I'd love to see some level of customization for the menu bar icon on Mac - maybe different colors or a compact mode to save space.

How well does the natural language parsing handle recurring tasks with exceptions, like "gym mon wed fri 6am except holidays" or tasks that need to skip specific dates?

The Siri-while-driving path is the one I'd stress-test hardest. Typed "gym mon wed fri 6am" is messy but the characters are at least what I meant; dictation stacks a transcription layer under the parse, so "meeting with boss two hours tomorrow at three" can go wrong twice before you ever see the preview, and driving is exactly when you can't glance down to catch a wrong 3pm/3am. Do you read the interpreted task back by voice on that path, or is the preview still visual-only? I build in a category where the user's hands and attention are both gone in the moment, and "confirm without looking" turned out to be a genuinely different problem than "confirm fast."

On-device is being read as a privacy checkbox, but for a to-do app it's bigger than that. A task list is a running log of everything you haven't done yet — half-formed, "mtng wth boss about the thing" — which is about as intimate as personal data gets. Keeping it on the device isn't a feature, it's the only respectful default. Good that you led with it. Congrats on the launch

the on-device angle is what caught my attention reading through this thread, running decent NLU across 6+ languages locally is a real engineering constraint, not just a privacy checkbox. curious how big the parsing model ends up being and whether older iphones (like an SE or an iphone 12) handle it fine, or if you had to trim capability for lower-end hardware. also "holiday-aware recurrence" is a genuinely clever detail most to-do apps never bother with

The messy-input parser is the whole product here. I like that the capture path stays fast, but the trust layer is showing the interpreted date/repeat/reminder before it commits anything. Tiny Apple utilities live or die on whether they preserve flow without making the user wonder what just got scheduled.

The natural language parsing for dates and recurrence feels really tight, "gym mon wed fri 6am" just working without any friction is a small thing but it makes the whole experience feel considered. Nice execution.

@lilhadi dude - the app looks great, the site is beautiful, but... why, oh WHY... do you seemingly have NO product shots on the homepage?!?

I totally get wanting to focus on the philosophy/ethos, here, but my good man - you built sexy tech, show it off, let folks know what they're getting into! :D

Congrats on the launch!!

Really like the focus on natural language instead of making people fill out forms and date pickers.

Curious.....what's the most surprising prompt PopTask has successfully turned into a task?

Wishing you a fantastic launch today! 🚀

The natural language parsing actually works as advertised, typed "dentist thursday 2pm" and it just landed correctly without me double-checking. Living in the menu bar makes it frictionless to dump tasks throughout the day.