PaperDay for Mac, iPhone and iPadOne sheet a day.
A paper sheet with room for exactly one big task, three medium ones and five small. What does not fit waits in Backlog. Mac, iPhone and iPad, kept in step over iCloud.
Download the beta How it works
macOS 15.6+ · iOS 18+ · 14-day trial
Why a sheet, not a list
A list grows without end; a sheet does not. The limit is the feature: nine lines force a choice about the day.
1 · 3 · 5
One big task, three medium, five small. Full block — the item waits in Backlog until a line frees up.
A new day, clean
Unfinished items move to Backlog, finished ones are dropped. The sheet starts empty every morning.
Everywhere at once
iCloud sync keeps Mac, iPhone and iPad in step — no accounts, no server of ours, nothing to sign up for. Start the sheet on the Mac, finish it on the iPhone.
How a day goes
The 1-3-5 rule is old and simple: a day holds one big thing, three medium ones and five small. PaperDay turns it into the sheet itself, so the rule is the app.
Morning
The sheet is empty. You pick the one task the day is really about, then fill the medium and small lines from Backlog or from your head. Two minutes, no setup.
During the day
Swipe a line right and it is done; swipe left and it is gone. Drag a line between blocks when a small job turns out to be the big one. On Mac the sheet lives in the menu bar and opens on ⌘⇧D.
Evening
Whatever is left moves to Backlog on its own. Nothing is lost, nothing carries guilt into tomorrow, and the next sheet starts clean.
What happens to everything else
A to-do list is honest about volume and dishonest about time: it will hold two hundred items and tell you nothing about today. PaperDay keeps the volume in Backlog and lets the day hold nine lines. When a line frees up, the next item steps in — you decide which one, the app never reshuffles your day for you.
There are no projects, tags, labels, priorities, recurring rules or notifications. A daily planner that needs configuring becomes another task. This one wants two minutes in the morning and nothing else.
On every screen
The same sheet: swipe right to mark done, left to delete; drag a line to move it between blocks.
Questions
Why only nine lines?
Because a day holds about that much. The limit is what makes the sheet useful: if everything fits, nothing is a priority. Extra items wait in Backlog, they are not lost.
What happens to unfinished tasks?
They move to Backlog when the day ends, and the new sheet starts empty. Finished ones are dropped — PaperDay is a planner for today, not an archive.
Does it sync between Mac, iPhone and iPad?
Yes, over iCloud, with your own Apple account. There is no account with us, no server of ours and nothing to sign up for. Start the sheet on one device and finish it on another.
Is PaperDay a to-do list app?
It is a daily planner rather than a list. A to-do list holds everything you might do; the sheet holds what today can actually take — one big task, three medium, five small.
Are there projects, tags or reminders?
No, and that is on purpose. Every setting is a small tax you pay before the work starts. The sheet opens, takes nine lines and closes.
What does it cost?
The Mac app comes with a 14-day trial — every feature, no account. After that it needs a licence, and we will put the price on this page.
What do I need to run it?
macOS 15.6 or later on the Mac, iOS 18 or later on iPhone and iPad. The Mac build is signed and notarised, and you can download it here; on iPhone and iPad the beta arrives through TestFlight.
Take the beta
The Mac build is ready — signed, notarised and yours to use today, with a 14-day trial. On iPhone and iPad PaperDay arrives through TestFlight; write to us for an invite.