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Changelog for 4.0

Build 706, Jul 20 2026

We now have a way to caption a run of highlighted days in Planner (something I wanted for a long time) and a lots of fixes and tweaks, including an improved layout when pressing PLUS button on Daily tab.

Highlight Captions

  • New Highlight Captions: right click/long press on a Highlighted day in Yearly Planner and add a caption for that run. Each run can have its own caption.
  • With a highlight selected on Yearly, its uncaptioned runs show a blank bar to quickly add a caption.
  • Captions surface on Daily too: outlined caption cards in Daybook, a second line of type on Broadsheet chips.
  • Clearer today marker in the yearly grid.

Timeline

  • Penciled-in times can become real: when a day has them, an Accept button floats top right. Tap to write the times into your tasks and reminders so they sync everywhere, or use its menu to Reject and erase the day's pencil marks instead. Both undoable. Markdown tasks and habits keep their penciled times as-is.
  • Penciled tasks now sort chronologically in the Planner, and the Mac menu bar shows their times in accent and keeps them in the timed section.

Add Item Sheet

  • Reworked Add Item sheet, layout changed.
  • You can now add Journal entries from the Daily's PLUS button.
  • More options added, like selecting a list for Simple Tasks right as you add the task.

Tags

  • Tagged rows have a new default look: the color ribbon under the title (multiple tags weave into one striped ribbon) is a new alternative to the full-row brushstroke. Miss the brushstroke? Turn on "Highlight tagged tasks" in Settings.
  • Broadsheet tasks now carry tag styling too.

Notes

  • Deleting a note now moves it to a Deleted folder at the bottom of the Notes home instead of gone forever. Open, restore, or permanently delete from there, one at a time or all at once.

Elsewhere

  • As I prepare for 4.0 release, the app has a whole new onboarding flow.
  • With "Dim expired tasks" on, journal entries on today's timeline now dim too.
  • Fixed a Daily rendering glitch when mixing designs.
  • Fixed a few Share Day rendering glitches.
  • Smoother drag and drop in Daily: you can now drop after the last task, and a drag no longer fights the page scroll.
  • Fixed Shortcuts occasionally losing a task when run right after a cold launch.
  • Layout polish for the wide Daybook forecast and the compact Broadsheet agenda.

Build 704, Jul 15 2026

We're less than 4 weeks from 4.0 release, so focus shifted to cleaning up loose ends. This build fixes up Tags in a big way, making it a real tagging system that can run across your whole day. You can tag tasks, notes, journal entries, reminders, calendar events, and habits. See day's tags on Daily, tap to hide everything else or show its own swimlane across your days. Plus a lot of tweaks and fixes, including a nifty Focused Time caption for day sections (morning, etc).

Tags

  • Tag almost anything: tasks, markdown tasks, notes, journal entries, reminders, calendar events, and habits all carry tags now.
  • Create a tag in place from any context menu or editor with "New Tag...". The Tags editor gives you one shared color palette, saved reordering, and no stray empty tags.
  • New Tags section in Daily Layout: it only shows when one or more items on that day are tagged. Tap a tag in that section to hide everything but items with that tag, calendar events and reminders included. Tap again to clear.
  • Long-press/right-click a tag for its own swimlane. The group-by-tag now groups real tags and inks each lane in the tag's color.
  • Tagged rows in Daybook are using a marker pattern, you can turn that off in Settings if it bugs you.
  • Mac: right-click anything to open its tag menu.

Timeline

  • Tap an EMPTY stretch of time to expand it into hours, tap again to collapse.
  • Fixed drag auto-scroll: scrolling down never kicked in, and scrolling up ran straight to the top.
  • Drag a markdown task between Scheduled and Tasks and it picks up or drops its penciled-in time to match. Penciled-in times now show in the Daybook time rail in accent color.

Daily

  • Enabled sections now hold their place when empty and still accept drops, so your layout stays put (Broadsheet doesn't do drag and drop yet).
  • Each part of the day (Morning, Afternoon, Evening) can carry its own focus caption, on Daybook and Broadsheet.
  • Built-in presets are now Default and Ivy Lee. Minimal, Planner, Journalist, and Everything are retired.
  • The Journal section can be shown independently of the Journal tab.

Yearly Planner

  • With a highlight selected, swipe across a week to paint a run of days at once. Start on a day that already has it to erase the run instead. The whole painting interaction was rebuilt to feel instant.
  • Select a highlight to focus just its days.

Capture

  • The share sheet now routes shared content straight into Capture, with image thumbnails.

Elsewhere

  • Calendar Bookmark sidebar What's Next popover changed to span six months of events, scrollable.
  • Layout Presets get better thumbnails that show some of their behavior settings, not just layout.
  • A bunch of fixes for Planner Highlights bar.
  • Fix to background Location updates.
  • Journal: empty activity rings are now hidden, and the photo and location controls got some polish.
  • Mac Menu bar: new tasks append to the bottom of the untimed order when a mix of tasks is present.
  • Mac: layout section reorder works in the narrow editor, and easier adding of Layout sections into multicolumn row.
  • Fixed Share Day shared image size issue and tweaked the layout.

Build 703, Jul 10 2026

First round of Watch app feedback lands (thank you, keep it coming!), plus long-requested Notes touches: tap checkboxes right in the reading view, and note text now follows your text size settings. Also a bit of a refresh for Daybook's left margin rail.

Notes

  • Tap a checkbox in a note to check it off right in the reading view, no edit mode needed. Works in notes and markdown files.
  • Note text now follows Dynamic Type and Finalist's own text size setting.
  • Rename a connected markdown folder or file: long-press it on the Notes home, or via the folder screen's menu, which now also shows the full on-disk path.
  • Fixed Obsidian folder notes sometimes losing your last-typed words when you switched screens quickly.
  • Fixed note text occasionally rendering jumbled over the title until you tapped to edit.
  • "Pinned Notes" on Daily is now "Notes", since it also shows notes dated to the day. Dated notes get "Remove from This Day", and the editor's date picker is now "Show on day".
  • Fixed a phantom To Do row when adding a note from Daily's plus button.

Apple Watch

  • All-day events now show at the top of Events with an "All day" label.
  • Bigger, bolder section headings and row times.
  • Two new complications: Next Event and Next Task, each with its own watch face slot.
  • The Now card's Next moment gains a second line: your next task under your next event, and vice versa.
  • A single pinned list stays inline; two or more collapse into one Pinned row that opens a hub page.
  • Pinned lists honour "Hide Completed in Pinned lists"; an emptied list shows "All done".

Calendar & Events

  • New per-calendar option: Show as All-Day. Timed events from a flagged calendar display as all-day: visible ahead of time, but out of the day's schedule. Great for busy subscribed feeds. Display-only, real times untouched, and the watch respects it too.
  • Calendars sheet cleanup: clearer option pills (tap and hold one for what it does), and a new section when Calendars or Reminders permissions are missing.
  • Outstanding Tasks section now lets you add tasks from only one or more days.
  • Fixed "Discard Changes?" alerts when you hadn't changed anything, mostly on all-day and recurring events and timed list tasks.

Daily

  • In Daybook, timed items now show their start time in the left margin, with a small duration caption after the title, grouped if more than one. Classic look still available: turn off "Show task times in Daily margin" in Settings.
  • The selected day in the week strip is now a solid accent pill.
  • Daybook's masthead weather now tucks inline next to the month.
  • New setting to hide the weather and "+" on Morning/Afternoon/Evening headers, in Settings -> Calendar & Events.
  • Reminders and Habits sections gain an Include Scheduled option; journal entries can appear on the scheduled timeline.
  • The inline "Notes" field on tasks, events, and habits is renamed Details. Now that we have a Notes tab, this didn't make sense.

Broadsheet

  • The Letters section now invites you to "Write in journal" even on a blank day, tap to start that day's entry.
  • Respects your weather preferences; the masthead's sunset time format is fixed.
  • Relative dates (the "+1" style) now work in the masthead too.

Timeline

  • Fixed deleting a calendar event from the editor leaving a stale block, and a brief freeze on network-backed calendars.
  • The resize handle hugs a block's bottom edge, so long-press-to-move works on short blocks.
  • Penciled-in times drop their "~" prefix.
  • Polished the unschedule drop target.

Journal

  • Fixed a blank sheet when tapping a journal entry right after launch.
  • Tap a journal entry on the scheduled timeline to open it in the editor.
  • Journal input focuses faster; fixed the today add menu's hit area.

Other

  • Custom event icon words gain an A-Z / Z-A sort button, which also sets match priority.
  • Lists: the Show/Hide completed toggle no longer leaves stale rows.

Build 702, Jul 6 2026

I'm giving up pretense this is a 0.x update and moving to 4.0! And it's a big update: Finalist finally comes to Apple Watch, the Timeline tab is rebuilt from the ground up with drag-and-drop scheduling, and Apple's Private Cloud Compute comes to the app with Plan My Day (beta, iOS 27): it drafts a schedule for your day right on the Timeline grid.

Apple Watch (new!)

  • Finalist now has a watch app. The Now card answers the day's current question: your first moves, the running time block with a countdown, what's next, or an evening wrap-up with progress and streaks to protect.
  • Below it, one scrollable today view: upcoming events, remaining tasks, reminders, and habits. Long-press a task for Done, Tomorrow, or In 10 Minutes; habits can be skipped for the day.
  • Pinned lists and notes are checkable from the wrist (Reminder lists too, i.e. grocery list on the watch).
  • Add tasks with the keyboard, scribble, or the mic button that goes straight to dictation.
  • Complications and a Smart Stack widget: Now/Next with a live countdown, a progress ring with tasks left, and the big complication wears today's Highlight colors.
  • The sync between watch and iPhone should be quick. I was hoping watchOS development would have gotten a lot easier by now, have to report that was wishful thinking!
  • Requires watchOS 26. (feedback appreciated, this one's brand new!)

Timeline

  • The Timeline tab is rebuilt. Free time compresses into "2h free" gaps to make room for busier blocks.
  • Tap the time rail to add a task for that time.
  • Tap a block to select it, then drag the bottom handle to resize or long-press to move it (on Mac, just press and pull, like Calendar). Everything comes with undo.
  • A rail along the right edge holds the day's untimed tasks. Drag a task from it to the timeline to pencil it in at a time, or drag a scheduled block back to the rail to unschedule it.
  • The old Timeline is retired, let me know how you find this one.

Plan My Day (beta, iOS 27)

  • Ask Finalist to plan your day: it gathers tasks, events, reminders, and habits, checks the day's actual free time, and proposes a schedule using Apple's on-device model and Apple's Private Cloud Compute when available.
  • The plan knows your day theme (Highlights), your day start and end hours from Settings, and the weather.
  • The proposal lands right on the Timeline grid as ghost blocks; Apply Plan pencils the times in, Clear puts the day back exactly as it was. Your tasks' own dates and times are never modified.
  • Planned times show up everywhere: Daily rows, Broadsheet, and the Timeline. You can also drag rows between time slots in Daily to adjust a plan.
  • Find it in the Smart Assistant (wand) menu on Daily or the Timeline header. iOS 27 only for now.

Calendar Event Icons

  • Custom event icons: map your own words, in any language, to the symbols Finalist puts on calendar events. Find it in Settings -> Calendar & Events. Your defined words will override the built-ins, will sync across your devices, and you can export/import them as JSON. The icon picker gains around 60 new symbols.
  • Phrase trigger words like "road trip" now match properly and a few other matching fixes.

Duplicate Events

  • Duplicate an event into any calendar from its context menu. Works on read-only source events too, and copies just that occurrence.
  • When identical events from different calendars collapse into one row, the row now shows a ×2.

Capture

  • The Paste button now accepts images from the clipboard, read the same way as picked photos.
  • Fixed the review sheet's task fields being unreadable on dark themes.

Build 628, Jul 3 2026

New features today include a smarter Capture that reads text from images and pulls out dates, and opt-in Reminders and Habits sections on Daily tab. Plus some cool flip-clock day animations in Broadsheet.

Capture

  • Capture now blends the system's on-device OCR (old-school machine learning algo) with the new Foundation Models vision model (in iOS 27 Beta) to pull out entities, so a date or time in the text becomes a due date, and other details land in the right fields. It will also be more accurate when pulling out numbers or specific data off an image.
  • Review what it found in the transcription sheet before you save, it will try to recognize emails, websites, phone numbers, etc.

Broadsheet

  • Long-press/right-click context menu added to all Task/Event rows.
  • Task rows now show any subtasks and have a expand/collapse toggle.
  • New flip-clock day animation for the masthead title when the day changes.

Daily

  • New opt-in Reminders and Habits sections. Turn them on to group your reminders and/or habits together and pull them out of the main list. (feedback appreciated!)
  • Manage Highlights right from Daily now, no need to jump to Planner. Long-press a highlight tag or chip to edit, organize, or delete it, and tap the "New" chip to create one and apply it to the day.

Notes (Mac)

  • Fixed long notes snapping to the top and refusing to scroll when you clicked in to edit. The caret now lands right where you click.
  • New right-click Format menu in the Mac editor: Bold, Italic, and Strikethrough, plus Heading (H1 to H3) and List (Bullet, Numbered) submenus.
  • ==highlight== markup now renders in Mac notes.
  • Sharper live styling as you type.

Fixes

  • More breathing room between subtasks in the task editor.
  • Share Day filename field now picks up your theme color.
  • Fixed wide Daily layouts arriving pre-scrolled with the first section clipped.

Build 627, Jun 30 2026

A grab bag of fixes and improvements: Share Day grows editing tools (pick a theme, crop the image), Notes learns Obsidian-style links and gets a frontmatter editor, plus a bunch of layout and macOS fixes. Built with Xcode 27 Beta 2.

Share Day

  • Pick a color theme for the exported image right in the share view, separate from your Daily theme.
  • Crop the image before you save or share it.
  • Fixed event details not rendering correctly in the shared image.
  • Dropped the stray weekday comma from the export footer.

Notes

  • Obsidian-style internal links now resolve in-app: wiki [[Note]] links and [text](note.md) links open the target note, across the iOS and Mac editors.
  • Frontmatter tags are now hidden in the markdown editor.
  • New frontmatter editor: tap the </> button in the markdown file editor to edit a file's YAML frontmatter (tags, date) in its own sheet.
  • Fixed file links not navigating correctly in the compact (iPhone) layout.

Planner

  • New "Go To Journal" action on a day's context menu jumps straight to that date's journal entry.

Tasks & Daily

  • Fixed list tasks with times assigned on creation not behaving properly
  • Completed tasks now get strikethrough for Daybook too.
  • URL and address preview pills on a task row truncate to a single line instead of stretching the row.

Shortcuts

  • The "Add to Today" and "Add to Date" shortcuts now take an optional Notes field.

Broadsheet

  • The masthead now shows sunset on Today if sunrise has already passed, and sunset on past days, with sunrise on future days.
  • Daybook now shows all of the day's journal entries, matching Broadsheet.
  • Some layout and alignment fixes.

Other

  • The Mac app no longer shows the system window tab bar.
  • Fixed masthead spacing in fullscreen on Mac.
  • Fixed sheets not switching appearance with light/dark.
  • Tightened the bottom spacing on Daily.

Build 626, Jun 22 2026

Fixing macOS layout issue and a few other tweaks.

Calendar & Events

  • New "Match Apple Calendar alerts" notify mode for a calendar. Instead of firing a notification for every event at a fixed offset, it only notifies you for events that have an alarm set in Apple Calendar, at each alarm's own time. Pick it in a calendar's notify settings under Calendar sheet. Your existing fixed-offset calendars keep working unchanged.
  • The "Ignore events with this title" setting can now be a list, so you can hide several event titles at once. Also found in Calendar sheet. Matching is still exact and case-insensitive, and leaving the list empty still hides untitled events.

Share Day

  • You can now edit the filename on the image Share Day exports.

Fixes & Polish

  • Multi-day events now land in the correct section of the day on Daily.
  • Polished the macOS Daily titlebar layout.

Build 625, Jun 21 2026

Thanks for all the feedback on the new Broadsheet theme, which won't have all the bells and whistles of Daybook theme, but will look pretty on bigger screens :) Here's a bunch of polish from your feedback, lots of small refinements to the new Broadsheet design, a couple of tweaks to Share Day, and some timeline fixes.

Broadsheet

  • Past and future days look right now: cleaner masthead, tweaked styling, and a forecast dateline on days ahead.
  • Broadsheet now respects your settings the way Daybook does: hides completed tasks when you've turned them off, honors quiet titles, and matches Daybook's Outstanding section.
  • Bigger tap targets on rows, all-day events kept in the contents board, all journal entries shown in Letters section, and the forecast weather icons line up neatly.

Share Day

  • Exports now carry the day's context (date and progress), and the "Shared on" footer line reads better.

Daily & Timeline

  • The timeline respects a 24-hour clock in its hour notches, and event pill visibility on the Timestrip can be toggled off separately in Layout.
  • Paging days is now locked when you're editing layout
  • Fixed new locations added in Calendar events not being tappable.

Build 624, Jun 20 2026

The many updates to Daily layout have finally allowed me to include a completely different layout theme for your day: Broadsheet. It looks great on bigger screens. A bunch of other requested features, like Share Day as an image, drag tasks onto the timeline to reschedule, set your own Morning/Afternoon/Evening hours, and pick highlights for the day right from Daily.

Daily Designs (Daybook + Broadsheet)

  • Daily now has two looks you can switch between: Daybook (the classic stacked layout) and Broadsheet, which is newsprint inspired. Pick a design from the Customize shelf or the theme picker.
  • Tap the World Clock board in Broadsheet to retune the whole page to another city's day. A day-ahead city like Sydney rolls the weekday, date, and forecast forward. Each city shows its own weather and a moon when it's night there. (Long-press any clock for the Edit menu.)
  • This is a big new layout I can't fully test on every device, so feedback is very appreciated.

Share Day

  • New Share Day in the Smart Assistant menu renders the day you're viewing as a clean, chrome-free image you can share, with a themed footer showing the date and your task progress.

Daily Timeline and Segments

  • The subtle timeline on the right side of your screen now gets new powers: you can tap on it to add tasks/events to that time, or drag and drop tasks onto it to reschedule
  • It only works when you collapse the calendar bookmark bar (swipe up on it), or disable bookmark bar completely
  • Set your own Morning, Afternoon, and Evening start times, replacing the fixed 6 / 12 / 18 cutoffs. Find the pickers in Daily settings and in Settings -> Calendar & Events.

Highlights

  • The Planner Highlights section now lists every highlight you've defined, not just the day's, so you can check one on or off for the viewed day right from Daily. Selected ones sort to the front. Works in both designs.

Tasks & Events

  • Meeting links (Zoom, Teams, Meet, Webex, GoToMeeting, BlueJeans, Whereby, Chime, Skype, FaceTime) now show a compact "Join" pill instead of a full-width link row. New "Meeting invite links" setting lets you choose Join button, Full link, or Hidden, in Settings -> Calendar & Events.
  • The Location field on calendar events is now a searchable picker for addresses and places, like iOS Calendar, so the event gets a proper map pin. Free-typed text still saves a plain title.

Fixes & Polish

  • Daybook hides the weather bug in the top header when the Weather Forecast section is already in your layout.
  • Fixed Calendar Bookmark bar sitting too high

Build 622, Jun 15 2026

A quick cleanup build with a few small features:

  • Restored Outstanding section to previous days (not just yesterday), which punts tasks to Today, and Pending to Tomorrow to proactively bring today's tasks to tomorrow
  • The alternate App Icon picker is back, in a new Settings -> App Icon section (iOS)
  • New "Show date instead of icon" toggle in Settings > General, right under "Show Menu Bar icon." When on, the menu bar shows today's date instead of icon
  • A fix for Reminders sometimes reverting to UTC time after being created
  • A tweak to Weather fetching to try and re-fetch if not available
  • Note editor gets some UI tweaks

Build 621, Jun 14 2026

WWDC is now behind us (had a great conference, my fourth visit to Apple Park and first to Steve Jobs theater). This build has the first iOS 27 AI features in the new Capture menu, plus the new Customize Layouts feature that's been long in-making: lets you design your own Daily tab, especially for big screens. Rearrange and show or hide sections, and on iPad and Mac lay them out side by side in multi-column "spreads," then save your own layouts as presets. Also, I was finally able to break up Agenda section into separate Outstanding, Scheduled, and To Dos sections you can place independently, and all segments are now collapsible.

New Daily Layout Editor

  • Tap the Layout button on the bottom of Daily tab list to enter this new editor
  • On iPad and Mac, arrange sections into multi-column spreads: we have a full-width header band, side-by-side columns in the middle, and a full-width footer band. Drag to rearrange sections and show or hide the ones you don't use.
  • iPhone and iPad layouts are now independent. Customizing one form factor no longer bleeds into the other. And both are synced to your iCloud.
  • This is a big, entirely drag-and-drop rework that I can't fully test myself, so feedback is very appreciated. Your existing layout resets once on update, sorry!

Layout Presets

  • New Customize section: tap to load presets, or save your own
  • Built-in presets rebuilt for the new sections, like Minimal, Planner and Journalist
  • Save your current arrangement as your own preset: tap the dashed "+" Save slot in the preset shelf and give it a name. Delete your own preset from its context menu

Agenda

  • The Agenda now splits into separate sections you can place independently: Outstanding (carried-over tasks), Scheduled (timed morning/afternoon/evening), and To Dos (untimed). All-day calendar events move into their own All Day tile
  • Drag a task between Scheduled and To Dos to set or clear its time, or across sections and columns to reschedule it into that bucket
  • Now all sections are collapsible: Tap All Day, Morning, Afternoon or Evening to collapse it and see number of items in it.

Capture (with iOS 27 AI)

  • "Tasks from Clipboard" is now Capture: type or paste text, then send it into the review sheet for AI extraction or one-task-per-line. Find it in the Smart Assistant menu.
  • Add a photo from Camera or Photos and Finalist reads the text off it, and lets you edit it before extracting tasks. If you're on iOS 27 Beta and your device supports it, it will use the new on-device AI instead of the old-school iOS Vision frameworks
  • Capture Review sheet now strips dates and times out of task titles, keeps clock times during AI extraction
  • Review also now recognizes when you're adding a bunch of stuff to your calendar with a + Calendar button to create calendar events (all items have to be at least dated)

World Clock

  • World clock weather is now shown inline instead of a second row, since we have a permanent Weather strip for that

Build 619, Jun 5 2026

Some overdue improvements to macOS menu bar dropdown: inline rename, drag-to-reorder, animations. And a bunch of fixes and improvements across the board.

Menu Bar (Mac)

  • Edit task text by tapping on it, only the checkbox toggles completion. Habits and read-only reminders still open the app instead of entering edit mode
  • Drag untimed tasks to reorder them, preserving the order from Daily tab
  • Tasks fade in and out as you add or check them off
  • Tasks also show markdown formatting when not being edited

World Clock

  • Two cities sharing the same timezone (e.g. two New York cities, or San Diego alongside Los Angeles) can now properly work independently, with their own forecast
  • Selecting a city that shares the local timezone now shows that city's weather, instead of falling back to local

World Time

  • Tapping the timezone globe no longer silently anchors new tasks to a World Clock city's timezone. A single tap opens the menu when the override is off; tapping the lit globe still turns it off
  • Opening the task editor no longer auto-activates the timezone override from an event's intrinsic timezone, which was re-anchoring task times on every save

Yearly Planner

  • Tapping a date with no highlight selected now opens the day popover
  • Day popover now lists each highlight as a toggleable pill, so you can flip one off without clearing the whole day, or use Clear All
  • Week-number column no longer renders as a tinted pill when Button Shapes is on in Accessibility, which was messing up alignment of columns

Fixes

  • Another attempt at fixing a crash on open on some iPad installs. If you've been hit by this, let me know if it's gone
  • Selected row text color in Notes and Files stays legible when the list loses focus
  • Moving a reminder to another list no longer silently fails on shared lists. Finalist now recreates the reminder in the target list (copying alarms, recurrence, per-day sort order) and removes the original

Build 618, Jun 2 2026

Finally, some cool UI features: an awesome new AppKit-native markdown editor for markdown files (macOS); long-press/right-click Calendar bookmarks on the right side for calendar preview; new “swimlanes” for lists or markdown files/folders with dated tasks inside. For details read on...

Timeline

  • New swimlane Timeline view on places with dated lists of tasks (think tag pages, Smart Lists, lists, saved filters, and individual markdown files). Tasks group by list, tag, or source with adaptive day, week, or month columns so multi-year spans stay legible
  • New compact Timeline minimap shows busy days at a glance. Tap to open the full timeline.
  • In the expanded timeline, tap a task to edit it, tap a date header to jump to Daily on that day, tap a gutter row to open that list, tag, or source in the Lists tab
  • On iPhone (iOS 26), the minimap appears in the bottom bar above the tabs; tap to open the full timeline

Notes

  • Open a markdown folder and the detail pane now shows a summary: a Task Timeline minimap plus file, subfolder, task, and tag counts. Tap a source or tag row in the expanded timeline to open it
  • Files list shows the filename as the primary row text and the markdown H1 as an uppercased subtitle, so daily notes sort correctly by filename
  • Subfolder tree rows now align consistently in the sidebar and outline
  • Copy from a markdown note on macOS and paste into Ghost, Google Docs, or Notion now drops in as clean markdown source instead of styled markup

Notes on Mac (new, early)

  • Live markdown editing arrives on macOS. The note editor and markdown-file editor now render styles inline as you type, using the recently open-sourced engine from Node app
  • The editing toolbar has been revised, with the new Cmd+K button to add link to text
  • Two known regressions to flag on macOS: standard [text](file.md) link taps currently open in the browser instead of in-app (wiki [[links]] still work in-app), and the Edit / Done body button is gone. The editor is always editable and autosaves on change

Smart Lists

  • New Next 4 Weeks preset: incomplete tasks due today through 28 days out, grouped by day, with the handy Timeline view

Calendar

  • Long-press (iOS) or right-click (Mac) a calendar bookmark tag to open a "What's Next" popover: upcoming events grouped by day, with Make Default / Show Only / Show All chips and quick Add and Settings buttons. Tap an event to jump to that day

Fixes

  • Set Up Tags sheet on macOS no longer collapses to an unusable sliver when there are no tags yet; also adds a Done button in the title bar. Fixes the "Setup Tags" copy to "Set Up Tags" across the editor, tags menu, and search field
  • Pinned section in the sidebar stays visible when you've only pinned tags (no notebooks, notes, or files)
  • Another fix for macOS App Store icon
  • Fix for tapping “info” icon when editing tasks
  • Fix for overlapping reminder on Timeline tab

Build 617, May 27 2026

A quick fix to address a crash on iPads, if you were affected by this let me know if this helps!

Build 616, May 27 2026

A new tag cloud and pinnable tags in Lists. Reminders now render as draggable pills in the Timeline gutter. Plus a wave of widget fixes, a cold-launch performance pass, a long-requested setting for when all-day notifications fire, and Notes and Daily refinements.

Lists

  • New tag cloud in Lists tab shows every native and markdown tag across your sources and when tapped shows you tasks with those tags. Pin any tag to the sidebar on iPad and Mac to keep frequently used ones one tap away
  • Lists tab now uses a proper navigation on Mac and iPad, so back/forward behaves consistently and some glitches are gone

Timeline

  • Reminders now render as draggable pills in the Timeline gutter, matching how events already work, so you can drag them around inline
  • New Hide completed toggle in Settings -> Calendar & Events keeps finished items out of the Timeline

Widget

  • Tap a task or reminder checkbox in the widget to complete it in place, should no longer launch app
  • Lock screen widget should now fit 3 task rows reliably
  • Fixed widgets sometimes rendering a different theme than the one you picked
  • Deleting a theme/swatch that the widget was using now reloads widgets immediately
  • Widget timelines reload immediately when you change theme or appearance, instead of waiting for iOS to refresh on its own

Notifications

  • New All-day notification time setting (Settings -> Notifications). Choose any hour between 6 AM and 12 PM for when all-day calendar events and date-only reminders fire. Was hardcoded to 9 AM

Daily

  • New untimed tasks and reminders now append to the bottom of the Tasks list, instead of sorting into their own group

Notes

  • Right-click any subfolder in a connected markdown source and choose Unload to skip it on scan. The folder stays visible with a Load button so you can bring it back. Useful for large vaults with folders you don't want indexed.
  • Fenced code blocks with ``` now render properly in markdown notes, including multi-line code spans
  • Local markdown links (e.g., [[Note name]], [text](other-note.md)) are now tappable in the editor and navigate to the target note
  • New Edit button in the note editor toolbar when the editor isn't focused, so you can drop into edit mode without tapping into the text first

Other

  • Fixed a crash on macOS when switching tabs
  • A few fixes to address crashes on start on some iPads, with better logging if the crash continues (just run the app again, hopefully it uploads crash telemetry before the next crash)
  • Cold launch should now be faster, if you were running into this problem let me know how you find it
  • On Daily or in lists, tap anywhere in a task/event row to start editing, not just the title
  • Fixed System / Light / Dark appearance choice in Theme now persists across launches
  • "Weekly" habit recurrence relabeled to "Weekly, specific days" to better distinguish it from "Weekly, any day"

Build 615, May 21 2026

A quick fix for Journal text editor and some more new features: Hear Summary rewrite is ready: a proper scrubbable player, a read-along transcript, lock screen and AirPods controls, and a new (early) Mac support. The text toolbars are getting some new features too.

Notes

  • Markdown toolbar gains Date and Time buttons, inserting today's date or the current time formatted for your locale
  • Markdown toolbar buttons now show a hover tooltip with their name and keyboard shortcut on Mac and iPad. The full set of toolbar shortcuts:
    • Task ⇧⌘T, Heading ⇧⌘H, Bullet ⇧⌘8
    • Outdent ⌘[, Indent ⌘]
    • Bold ⌘B, Italic ⌘I, Code ⌘E
    • Date ⇧⌘D, Time ⌥⇧⌘D

Journal

  • Fixed typing in the Journal editor on macOS
  • Cleaner editor

Hear Summary

  • Rebuilt player with a scrubbable progress bar showing elapsed and remaining time, and clear states for summarizing, generating audio, playing, and paused
  • Lock screen and Control Center controls (play, pause, skip 10 seconds forward or back, scrub), so it works properly with AirPods
  • New transcript sheet: read along while the briefing plays, with a Share button
  • Now on Mac: "Hear Summary" lives in the View menu

Build 614, May 20 2026

Widget gets markdown tasks, Daily's sorting, and bold/italic in titles. Planner sorting now matches Daily, including cross-type drag-reorders. Smart Lists move home to the Lists tab. Hear Summary gets a meaningful accuracy and pacing pass. New and improved context menus!

Widget

  • Now shows your markdown tasks
  • Honors per-day drag-reorders from Daily
  • Bold and italic in task titles render with formatting
  • Reminder checkboxes now render as a list-colored circle, matching TaskRow
  • Consistent item order, except that All-day calendar events sink to the bottom so they stop taking the top slots

Planner

  • Sorting now matches Daily exactly, including cross-type drag-reorders that mix items, reminders, and markdown tasks
  • Task titles render markdown formatting (bold, italic) like Daily already does

Smart Lists

  • Moved from the Notes tab back into the Lists tab where they fit better
  • In Progress is now the default Smart List
  • In Progress broadened to also include time-based items, so anything happening today shows up

Context menus

  • Context menus (long press/right click) on all task types (Items, Reminders, Calendar Events, Habits, Markdown tasks) unified around the same layout, so right-clicks feel consistent everywhere. You can disable them in Settings -> General
  • New Convert submenu turns any task into any other type with all-pairs Item ↔ Reminder ↔ Event conversion, carrying over completion status; skips read-only events, headings, and placeholder reminders
  • New Reschedule submenu adds relative snooze (15m, 30m, 1h, 2h, 4h) alongside Today, Tomorrow, and the rest of the week; hidden where it doesn't apply (markdown tasks, habits, all-day events)
  • Retired the older per-menu "Today / Tomorrow / Future" and "Change into…" buttons in favor of these submenus

Notes

  • Tapping a pinned note on Daily on iPhone now opens the note correctly
  • Tapping the source pill or #tag chip on a markdown task now navigates on iPhone too
  • Back chevron in the Inbox returns you to the list first, then to Notes home, instead of jumping all the way out
  • Active tag filter chips at the top of Notes display again

Journal

  • Journal entry title and notes now use the same markdown editor and toolbar as the Notes

Hear Summary

  • Tightened prompts and audio rendering
  • Now includes dated markdown tasks regardless of the day-view toggle

Fixes

  • Outstanding section visibility toggle in Layout is working again
  • Fixed iPad crash on resume on iPadOS 26.4
  • Setup Tags sheet from TaskEditor now opens over the editor as expected
  • Clearer World Clocks forecast labels in Layout ("8-hour forecast", "3-day forecast", etc.)

Build 612, May 16 2026

Lots new: Smart Lists land in the Notes tab, a new way to see your tasks across every source (Items, Reminders, Markdown) through ready-made filters like Overdue, Due Today, and In Progress. Lists tab overhauled to work nicer on bigger screens (still work left to do). New statuses support for markdown (like In Progress). Plus some cool drag-and-drop features in Daily.

Smart Lists for Markdown

  • New built-in filters: Overdue, Due Today, This Week, Undated, and In Progress. Each spans every source (Items, Reminders, Markdown) and respects the new per-status setting in Settings -> Markdown Files
  • Find them in the Notes tab, both on Notes home view and as a Smart Lists row in the Mac/iPad sidebar
  • Date-range presets (Overdue, This Week) group by day

Notes

  • Smart Lists rely on Markdown support for extended Obsidian Tasks statuses: [/] in progress, [-] cancelled, [>] forwarded, [<] scheduled, [!] important, [?] question, alongside the standard [ ] and [x]. Each renders its own icon in the markdown view. You can change these by editing that task or via context menu Set Status. Per-status "treat as completed" and "strikethrough" behavior is configurable in Settings -> Markdown Files
  • Pinned section on larger screens now mixes pinned notebooks, pinned notes, and pinned files in one place

Lists

  • Lists tab on Mac now uses the same two-pane SwiftUI layout as Notes, with a proper navigation stack
  • Pin and Bookmark buttons rearranged to allow standard App menu to show
  • Better layout for Liquid Glass
  • Selection highlights for active list and filtered lists like Outstanding
  • "Add List" button is now always available
  • Still more to do, please let me know if you see problems

Daily

  • Drag reminders between timed and untimed sections to schedule or unschedule them, mirroring how items already work
  • Reorder reminders within the untimed Tasks bucket
  • Untimed reorder now works across types: items, reminders, habits, and markdown tasks can all be reshuffled together (feedback appreciated!)
  • Reordering Markdown tasks in Daily writes a per-day local order instead of editing the source file

Build 611, May 13 2026

Notes gets a big powerup with smoother Obsidian integration via Dataview and a new "notes" channel on Discord to discuss it all. Daily tab restructure also here: Oustanding, Scheduled and Tasks are now a single Agenda section in Layout, and you can drag tasks across day segments to reschedule.

Daily

  • Merged Outstanding + Scheduled + Tasks into a single Agenda section; the UI has changed a little but a lot has changed behind the scenes, so let me know how you find it
  • The new Agenda can reorder its children separately via the Layout menu
  • Drag tasks across day segments: untimed tasks can be scheduled by dropping them into timed section, or unschedule them by dropping into Tasks
  • Nicer display of Pinned Notes
  • Long press on Pinned Notes to switch between List and Cards view
  • Tap a title of a Pinned Note list of tasks on Daily to open the note in Notes

Notes

  • Better Obsidian integration, now parsing Dataview-style inline [key:: value] task fields in markdown
  • Fixed markdown tasks inheriting the note's frontmatter date if it has one
  • Fixed Daily task reorder, added pinned-markdown reorder
  • Fixes to iPad and Mac Notes pane layouts

Journal

  • Quick Journal on Daily now expands to show up to 6 lines of text
  • New per-list exclusions for showing completes tasks in Journal, find it in Settings

Fixes

  • Layout sheet has a bunch of UI improvements
  • Fixed missing 5-day forecast for local timezone on Mac
  • Fixes to Journal spacing on top
  • Reminder list pill on individual tasks now taps through to the list
  • Fixes to widget to not show All Done on app restart
  • Fixed unresponsive Info button tap in inline task editing (remember you can also swipe right on a task to Edit)

Build 610, May 4 2026

  • Fixed Tags and Search navigation bugs
  • Fixed iPad crash on adding markdown folders
  • Moved Folder/File Remove menu to long press/right click on the item itself

Build 608, May 4 2026

Polishing Notes and the new UI after last build's big restructure. Also: Home Screen Quick Actions are now yours to configure in Settings. :)

Notes

  • Hierarchical back-button stack in compact layout, including drill-down into sub-notebooks, fixes to navigation
  • Rename, Change Emoji, Delete actions on top-level notebook rows
  • Tap the source pill in Markdown Note to rename the underlying file
  • Autosave after 10 seconds of inactivity, and on exiting the note
  • Better Notes toolbars under one PLUS menu, with the app menu
  • Tightened markdown editor and viewer typography

Daily

  • Cleaned up Week Browser along the bottom on iPad and macOS
  • More generous day tap targets on Week Browser for macOS

Other

  • Home Screen Quick Actions: you can long press Finalist icon on iOS/iPadOS home screen and go to Planner, or add a task; configurable in Settings
  • Classic themes and Liquid Glass toggle temporarily disabled while the theme cleanup continues

Build 606, May 2 2026

A lot of structural work in this one, especially for macOS. I'm also having to abandon the old themes, as it was holding back improvements to the Mac experience. Please let me know what you think, this is still a beta so you can always go back to the previous build in TestFlight :)

The whole app's navigation now runs on Apple's standard sidebar/TabView, which means Mac and iPad finally feel native (proper title bar, system toolbar, theme color flowing through the window chrome). This helps Notes a lot, so your notebooks, markdown sources, and tags show up directly alongside Daily, Planner, and Lists. There's also a new Notebooks tab, a new flexible habit type, and a long list of Mac polish.

New

  • Brand new native Tab UI for all platforms, there might be bugs :o
  • Notebooks tab between Lists and Notes. Single home for Search, Inbox, your full notebook list with counts, connected markdown sources, and a tag cloud. The "+ New Notebook" and Markdown menu now live here in the toolbar.
  • Habits: "Weekly, any day" recurrence. Shows every day until you complete it once that week, then hides for the rest of the week. Streak counts consecutive completed weeks; not yet completing the current week doesn't break the streak.
  • Today button in the Daily and Planner toolbars on Mac
  • Bottom accessory bar on Mac. The week strip, Journal input, List shortcuts, and Podcast player now float as a small capsule over the detail pane on Mac, the way they do on iOS 26.

Mac polish

  • Theme color flows through the window title bar
  • TaskEditor opens in its own window from Weekly and Monthly Planner
  • Cleaner button and menu chrome across Daily, Lists, Planner, and Journal, for both Sequoia and Tahoe
  • New Folder dialog uses a nicer native layout

iPhone and iPad

  • iPhone tab bar trimmed. Notebook drill-down, markdown sources, and individual tags now live inside the Notebooks tab instead of cluttering the bottom bar. iPad sidebar keeps the full hierarchy.
  • iOS 18 inline accessory capsule renders again on iPhone

Fixes

  • TaskEditor no longer flickers and dismisses when you click a task in Weekly or Monthly Planner on Mac.
  • NoteEditor row no longer flickers as you type on macOS 15.
  • Lots of small layout fixes

Build 603, Apr 29 2026

A few quick fixes:

  • New option to show Notes on Daily as rows instead of cards (in Layout, in Pinned Notes options)
  • Notes Tab now defaults to ON, as many of you had hard time finding it. If you hid it, you'll have to turn it back off :)
  • Cleaned up Dictate to work better with new notes
  • Improved AI task extraction when dictating tasks
  • Dictated text can now be edited before submitting
  • Added Delete Note to Note context menu when shown on Daily tab
  • Dictated Notes now get local LLM titles when added
  • Tab buttons in Layout window on macOS are now better click targets
  • Fixed Notebooks showing up in Lists tab

Build 602, Apr 27 2026

Notes!? Yes, finally, after so many of you asked. This is the biggest swing in 3.x: a proper Notes tab, external markdown file editing, pinning notes to Daily, dictation-to-note. It's been in Finalist's bones since the first data model and is tricky to get right, so consider this a collaborative experiment. Try connecting an iCloud folder, pin a note to Daily, long-press the "+" to dictate one, then tell me where it breaks. Full rundown below:

  • Notes tab with notebooks, sub-notebooks, their own tasks, an Inbox, and a markdown editor that lives inside Finalist. Notes can be dated, which means they'll show up in Daily when you need them. If Notes is not your thing you can turn it off in Layout and not worry about it.
  • Connect external Files or Folders and edit notes in place. If they're in iCloud Files, they sync where they live. External files support tasks, dates and tags, which will show up in Finalist UI! The markdown format follows Obsidian's implementation: "- [ ] Task name 📅 2026-04-27 #Finalist"
  • Long press the big PLUS button on Daily to Dictate, and create a note Instantly
  • You can Pin Notes to Daily, with small note preview cards
  • Pin markdown files to Daily to see tasks natively as checkboxes
  • Global search across both native notes and connected markdown files
  • Tags section in the Notes sidebar with a filtered results pane, tags found in Markdown files are extracted and shown here too
  • Some light integration with Frontmatter on markdown files: edit tags or pin-date in the app and the underlying markdown file updates
  • Create Note and Append to Note shortcuts
  • New preference: Show relative dates on Daily to see large "+1" instead of day of month for tomorrow (and all dates that are not Today)
  • Markdown editor: auto lists, auto bullets, keyboard toolbar on iOS and macOS, macOS keyboard shortcuts
  • Inline tag chips in the markdown editor, plus toggleable #tag chips in TaskEditor for markdown tasks
  • Triage Outstanding header on Daily turned into a menu

There are a bunch of UI hiccups with Notes in this release; I'm hoping to nail down the workflows, then the UI will follow.