1Todo or event?
Ask one question: does it happen at a time, or does it just need doing? A dentist's appointment at 3pm is an event. "Book the dentist" is a todo.
| Todo | Event | |
|---|---|---|
| When | A day, or no day at all | A start and an end time, or all day |
| Done state | Checked off | None; it simply happens |
| Extras | Category, tags, its own colour and icon | The same, plus location and notes |
| Apple apps | Apple Reminders show alongside; your todos can sync with a Dawnlet list there Plus | Apple Calendar shows alongside; Dawnlet events can be added to it Plus |
| Free plan | Up to 500 todos | No limit |
If you'd feel late at 3:05, make it an event. If you'd be happy doing it any time that day, make it a todo. Todos you can tick are far more satisfying than events you can't.
2Give it a day, or don't
A todo's due date is optional. Turn Has a due date off and it lands in Someday, a section at the bottom of the Todos screen for things without a deadline. Todos are days, not times, so there's no clock to fuss over. Add one from Agenda and it starts on whichever day you have selected there.
An event has a start and an end, or switch on All Day and pick the first and last day. The end can be any later time or day, so a conference can run Monday to Wednesday; on Agenda an event is listed under the day it starts.
The Todos screen lays out a month, day by day, with Today, Yesterday and Tomorrow named and a search field at the bottom. The Events screen shows Today, Tomorrow and the next 7 days.
Keep Someday as a holding pen. Once a week, pull a few of its todos onto real days, by editing them or with Plan my week Plus (see the Agenda playbook). A dated todo gets done; a someday one waits.
3Make it repeat Plus
Set Repeats to Recurring on a new todo or event and add one or more schedules. Each schedule is one of three kinds:
| Schedule | You choose | For example |
|---|---|---|
| Weekly | Which weekdays, and every 1 to 12 weeks | Every other Tuesday and Thursday |
| Monthly | Any days of the month | The 1st and the 15th |
| Nth weekday | 1st to 5th, or last, of a weekday | The last Friday of the month |
Every schedule has a start date and, if you want, an end date. Stack several on one item: a todo can repeat every Wednesday and every other Saturday. A repeating event gets a start and end time (or all day) instead of a date, since the schedule supplies the dates.
A monthly schedule on the 31st only lands in months that have one, and the same goes for the 29th and 30th. For something at the end of every month, use Last on the weekday it falls on, or pick a day every month has.
- The series lives on its own list. The repeat button at the top of the Todos or Events screen opens every series, separate from the days they land on. A repeating event can be paused there: it stops making new occurrences without being deleted.
- Choose at the start. An event saved as a one-off can't be turned into a series later, or the other way round. Make a new one instead.
- If Plus ends, nothing disappears. Everything that already repeats keeps showing up and stays editable. What locks is starting a new repeating item and changing a schedule. A bin day that silently stopped appearing would be no way to sell anything.
4Change one, not all
Life moves single occurrences around. Dawnlet lets you deal with one without touching the series:
| You want to… | Repeating todo | Repeating event |
|---|---|---|
| Let this one go | Swipe and choose Skip | Open it and choose Skip this occurrence |
| Bring a skip back | Restore, for today or later | — |
| Move it to another day | Drag it onto a day in Agenda's grid | Drag it onto a day, or edit its date |
| Change its details | Edits the whole series | Edit just this one, or open the series from it |
| Delete | Asks: this occurrence, or the entire series | |
Deleting "this occurrence" is a skip underneath, so it never comes back on its own. Deleting a repeating todo's series removes the todo and every occurrence of it. Deleting an event's series stops it repeating, but any occurrences you'd already edited stay, because you changed those on purpose.
Prefer Skip to Delete for a week that's different. Skip says "not this time" and leaves the habit of the thing intact. It's the same idea as skipping a habit day, explained in the Habits playbook.
A skipped occurrence leaves your day and your notifications. A one-off todo or event has nothing to skip, so its swipe offers Delete, with an Undo button for a few seconds afterwards.
5Finish it, even late
Tap the circle to check off a todo. A todo whose day has passed without being done is overdue: it gets a coral Overdue pill, and Agenda keeps it in today's Todos rather than leaving it stranded on the day it was due. The same goes for repeating todos, counting back up to 90 days, so an old series can never bury you in a year of misses.
Check off something due on another day and Dawnlet asks which date counts:
Once a week, clear the Overdue pile in one sitting: tick what you did, skip what no longer applies, and drag the rest onto a real day. An overdue list you trust is a list you'll keep using.
6Pick your notifications
Five notifications cover todos and events. All are free, and each can be turned on or off and retimed in Settings → Notifications:
| Notification | When it arrives | Starts |
|---|---|---|
| Before an event starts | 30 minutes before a timed event, or a lead time you choose | On |
| All-day events | A morning list of the day's all-day events, at 8am | On |
| Daily todo summary | One count of what's due and overdue, at 9am | Off |
| Each todo due today | A separate notification for each dated todo, at 9am | Off |
| Overdue todos | An evening nudge at 6pm when something has slipped | Off |
Pick one todo style, not both. The daily summary suits a long list; a notification per todo suits a short, important one. Add Overdue todos if things tend to slip quietly.
7Watch the work add up
Todos have two badges, both free:
| Badge | How to earn it | Bronze · Silver · Gold |
|---|---|---|
| Ticked Off | Complete your first todo | — |
| Getting It Done | Todos completed in total | 25 · 100 · 500 |
One-off todos and occurrences of repeating ones both count. Skipped occurrences don't, and neither do the sample todos a new account starts with. A badge, once earned, is yours for good.
Turn on Insights Plus on the Todos screen and the month gains a chart of todos completed each day, and four numbers: completed this month, done today, still open, and overdue. Todos also feed Reports for any date range and Look Back, a short written review of your week or month, both Plus too.
8Capture it in seconds
A todo you don't write down is a todo you'll forget, so Dawnlet takes them from wherever you are:
- Siri: "Add a todo in Dawnlet". It's due today unless you give it another day, and in Shortcuts you can set a category and tags too. It runs without opening the app.
- Quick Add: "Quick add in Dawnlet", the Control Center control or ⌘N on an iPad keyboard opens the add menu, with Event and Todo first.
- Drag and drop: on iPad, drop text from another app onto the Todos screen and it becomes a todo.
- "What's my day in Dawnlet": Siri reads out today's events, todos due or overdue and the habits still open.
9Keep them in Apple Reminders Plus
Everything in this section arrives with Dawnlet 1.5.
If Apple Reminders is where you look all day - on your Mac, on your Watch, or when Siri reminds you - turn on Settings → Apple Integrations → Also sync with Apple Reminders. Your open todos appear in a list called "Dawnlet" in Apple Reminders, on every device signed in to your iCloud, and the two stay in step from then on.
- Either side works. Rename a todo, change its date or tick it off in Reminders and Dawnlet follows; do it in Dawnlet and Reminders follows. A time you add in Reminders stays there - Dawnlet keeps its day.
- Add from Reminders. A reminder you add to the Dawnlet list - on your iPhone, your Mac or your Watch - becomes a Dawnlet todo.
- Repeating todos, a week ahead. Each day a repeating todo is due gets its own reminder, up to a week out; tick one off in Reminders and that day is done in Dawnlet.
- Deleting a reminder is safe. It only stops that todo being mirrored - the todo stays in Dawnlet. Delete the todo in Dawnlet and its reminder goes too.
- All your devices at once. Turn it on everywhere; your iPhone and iPad won't double anything up.
What syncs is the title, the date and whether it's done - categories, tags and colours stay in Dawnlet. Turned off, nothing is written any more and the list stays as it was; while it's off you can remove the list from Reminders in the same place.
§Under the hood
Anything that repeats is stored as two halves: the definition (the todo or event and its schedules) and its occurrences (one instance on one date). Keeping them apart is what stops "delete today's" from deleting the series, and "edit the series" from silently skipping today.
- Occurrences are worked out, not stored. A series has endless future dates, so Dawnlet computes them for whatever range is on screen. One is only written down once you complete, skip, move or edit it, and the written one wins wherever both exist.
- Each occurrence remembers where it came from. A moved occurrence keeps the date its schedule made it for, so the series never regenerates a phantom copy on the old day.
- A skip is recorded, not deleted. If skipping deleted the occurrence, the next pass over the schedule would helpfully put it back.
- One schedule model, three modules. Repeating todos, repeating events and recurring bills in Money share the same schedule editor, and the same single Plus gate.
- Saved whole or not at all. Changing an item's tags, or a schedule, is one write, so a dropped connection can't leave it half-saved. A tick that fails to save is taken back with a short message.
- Apple Calendar stays on your device. Calendar events and Reminders are read on the phone and never sent to Dawnlet's server. With "Also add to Apple Calendar" on Plus, a Dawnlet event is written out as a real Calendar event and only the link between the two is stored, so editing it in Dawnlet updates the same Calendar event and Agenda doesn't show it twice.
- Each reminder carries its todo's address. With Apple Reminders sync on Plus, every reminder in the Dawnlet list holds a link back to its todo, so any of your devices can tell which todo it is. Before a device creates a reminder it claims that todo on the server, so two devices can never both create one; every change is saved only if nothing else changed it first, and a reminder only counts as deleted once a device that has seen it can't find it any more. Only the Dawnlet list is read for syncing; your other lists are never sent anywhere.
One-off todos (up to 500) and events (no limit) are free. Plus adds repeating todos and events, writing events to Apple Calendar, syncing todos with Apple Reminders, Insights, Reports and Look Back.