Cortex: macOS Daily Planner App Development
Umut Satır
Cortex
A focused daily planner built as a native macOS desktop app. Cortex helps you capture tasks, schedule your week, visualise priorities with an Eisenhower matrix, and time-block your day — all in one place.
Features
Brain Dump
Capture everything on your mind without worrying about where it belongs. The Brain Dump sidebar is a frictionless inbox: type a task, hit Enter, and it lands in your backlog. From there you can drag it anywhere — a day column, an Eisenhower quadrant, or a timebox slot.
Weekly Timeline
A horizontal 7-day view with a column per day. Drag tasks from the Brain Dump onto any day. Click Focus on today's header to switch to the Today view. Navigate weeks with the prev/next arrows, or jump back to the current week with the Today button.
Today / Focus View
Three panels side by side:
Task list (left) — all of today's tasks. Type to add, drag to organise.
Eisenhower Matrix (centre) — four quadrants (Do First, Schedule, Delegate, Eliminate) that help you triage by urgency and importance. Drag any task from the list into a quadrant.
Timebox (right) — a time-grid from 06:00 to 24:00 with 15-minute resolution. Drag tasks onto slots to schedule them. Resize blocks by dragging their bottom edge.
Eisenhower Matrix
Do First — Urgent & Important
Schedule — Important, Not Urgent
Delegate — Urgent, Not Important
Eliminate — Neither
Dropping a task into a quadrant creates a copy inside the matrix. The ✕ button on a matrix card removes it from the quadrant only.
Timebox
Drag any task from Brain Dump or Today list onto a time slot — snaps to 15-minute intervals.
Blocks show the task title and time range.
Resize a block by dragging its bottom handle (also snaps to 15 min).
The current-time indicator (red line) auto-scrolls into view on open.
✕ on a block removes it from the timebox only.
Supports a separate date per-day; navigate with prev/next arrows or jump to Today.
Task Detail Panel
Click any task title to open a slide-in detail panel:
Edit title inline
Set a due date displayed in your preferred date format with an overdue/upcoming badge
Log estimated time (
1h 30m, 45m, 2h)Assign priority (Low / Medium / High)
Tag with a colour label (create labels on the fly)
Write free-form notes
See which timebox slot the task occupies
Labels
Type a label name in the label picker, pick a colour from the preset swatches, and hit Create. Labels appear as coloured dots on task cards and influence the colour of timebox blocks.
Settings
Open settings via the ⚙ icon (or press
,).General
Setting Options Default Language English / Türkçe English Start of week Monday / Sunday Monday Default view Week / Today Week Time format 24h / 12h 24h Date format DD/MM/YYYY / MM/DD/YYYY / YYYY-MM-DD DD/MM/YYYY
Appearance
Setting Options Default Theme System / Light / Dark System Accent colour Indigo, Blue, Cyan, Emerald, Rose, Orange, Pink, Slate Indigo
Shortcuts
Overview of all single-key shortcuts (see table below).
Update
Manually check for a new version and install it in-app without going to the browser.
All settings persist across sessions.
Keyboard Shortcuts
Key Action
C New task (focuses the Brain Dump input) V Toggle between Week and Today view B Toggle Brain Dump sidebar T Toggle Timebox panel , Open settings Esc Close detail panel / settings / blur inputShortcuts fire only when no text input is focused.
Auto-Update
Cortex checks for updates on launch and every time the app is focused after being in the background. When an update is available, a banner appears in the bottom-right corner. You can also check manually via Settings → Update.
macOS Gatekeeper Warning
If you see "Cortex is damaged and can't be opened" after downloading, run this in Terminal:
This is expected for apps not signed with an Apple Developer certificate.
Drag & Drop Rules
Source Valid Drop Targets Brain Dump task Day column, Eisenhower quadrant, Timebox slot, Brain Dump (unschedule) Today list task Eisenhower quadrant, Timebox slot Eisenhower card (
eis::) Other Eisenhower quadrants only Timebox block (tb::) Other Timebox slots onlyTech Stack
Layer Technology Desktop shell Tauri 2 (Rust) UI framework React 19 + TypeScript Build tool Vite 7 Styling Tailwind CSS v4 State management Zustand with
persist middleware Drag & drop @dnd-kit/core Animations Framer Motion Date utilities date-fns Database SQLite via tauri-plugin-sql Auto-update tauri-plugin-updater + tauri-plugin-process i18n Custom lightweight translation system + date-fns localesProject Structure
Development
Prerequisites
Node.js ≥ 20
Rust +
cargoThe Vite dev server runs on
http://localhost:1420.License
MIT
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Posted Jun 26, 2026
Developed Cortex, a macOS app for daily task management with planning features.
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