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.
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.
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.
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.
- 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.
- 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.
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
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.
Open settings via the ⚙ icon (or press ,).
| 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 |
| Setting | Options | Default |
|---|---|---|
| Theme | System / Light / Dark | System |
| Accent colour | Indigo, Blue, Cyan, Emerald, Rose, Orange, Pink, Slate | Indigo |
Overview of all single-key shortcuts (see table below).
Manually check for a new version and install it in-app without going to the browser.
All settings persist across sessions.
| 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 input |
Shortcuts fire only when no text input is focused.
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.
If you see "Cortex is damaged and can't be opened" after downloading, run this in Terminal:
xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Cortex.app
This is expected for apps not signed with an Apple Developer certificate.
| 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 only |
| 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 locales |
src/
├── components/
│ ├── brain-dump/ # BrainDump, TaskItem, TaskInput, TaskDetailPanel
│ ├── common/ # LabelPicker, PriorityPicker
│ ├── eisenhower/ # EisenhowerMatrix, Quadrant
│ ├── layout/ # AppShell, Header, SettingsButton
│ ├── settings/ # SettingsPanel (modal)
│ ├── timebox/ # Timebox, TimeboxBlock, TimeSlot
│ ├── today/ # TodayFocus, TodayTaskList
│ ├── updater/ # UpdateBanner
│ └── weekly/ # WeeklyTimeline, WeekNav, DayColumn
├── hooks/
│ ├── useDateLocale.ts # Returns date-fns locale based on language setting
│ ├── useDragDrop.ts # Centralised drag-end handler
│ ├── useIsDark.ts # Reactive dark-mode detector
│ ├── useT.ts # Translation hook
│ └── useUpdater.ts # Auto-update check + install logic
├── i18n/
│ └── index.ts # EN / TR translation dictionaries
├── store/
│ ├── generalStore.ts # Language, week start, default view, time/date format
│ ├── labelStore.ts # User-defined labels
│ ├── taskStore.ts # Tasks, view state, navigation, today refresh
│ └── themeStore.ts # Theme, accent colour, CSS variable application
├── types/
│ └── index.ts
└── lib/
└── db.ts # Tauri SQLite helpers
# Install dependencies
pnpm install
# Run in development (hot-reload)
pnpm tauri dev
# Build for production
pnpm tauri buildThe Vite dev server runs on http://localhost:1420.
MIT