Getting started

Your first plan

Your account comes with a plan called Your Cabana. It opens on this week, with four categories ready to go: Work, Personal, Family and Other. There are no tasks in it yet, just seven days waiting for you. A short tour shows you round the first time, and you can skip it.

To rename the plan or start another one, tap its name at the top.

Adding a task

On the website, press Add task at the top (it's in the bar along the bottom on a smaller screen) and it lands on the day you're looking at. You can also press Add a task at the end of any day, or anywhere on an empty one. Type it, press Enter, and a fresh row opens underneath for the next thing. Pressing N starts a new task from anywhere.

In the app, press + Add task in the bottom bar, or + Add a task at the end of a day. While you type, the bar above the keyboard has + Next task and Done. The return key starts a new line, because a task can be longer than one.

Sub-tasks

Big scary things are easier in small pieces. Tuck a task under another in whichever way suits you:

• Open the task's menu (the three dots on it) and choose Add a sub-task.
• On the website, press Tab while you're typing. Shift and Tab brings it back out.
• Drag it sideways: right to tuck it in, left to bring it back out. On a phone, hold the task for a moment before you move it.

Tasks go three levels deep. Ticking a task ticks everything under it, and ticking all the little ones ticks the big one for you. If only some are done, its tickbox shows a dash. Repeating tasks don't tick themselves, and here's why. The small arrow beside a task folds its sub-tasks away and shows how many are hiding.

A task's menu

The three dots on a task open everything else you can do to it: Category, Change the date, Repeats, Add a link, Duplicate, Add a sub-task and Delete. Change the date works in every view, even for a day that isn't on screen.

Year, month, week and day

The Y, M, W and D buttons switch between the four views. The arrows step back and forward, Today brings you home, and on a touch screen you can swipe.

• Year is twelve months, each one holding its tray of things with no day yet.
• Month is the shape of the month. On a wide screen every day is a little card showing its first few tasks. On a phone it's a tidy grid, and tapping a day opens it.
• Week is where most planning happens. A wide screen shows seven columns. A phone shows the seven days as bubbles along the top with one day open underneath, and a swipe moves you a day.
• Day is one day, all of it.

On the website, 1, 2 and 3 switch to month, week and day, T jumps to today and the arrow keys step through. The More actions menu has the full list under Keyboard shortcuts.

The month tray

Not everything needs a time. Some things just need a Tuesday, and some don't even need that yet. The month tray is where those wait: they belong to a month, not a day.

On a wider screen the tray is a panel beside or under the calendar. Press the month's name at the top to open it and add something, and hide it again whenever you like. On a phone, in the app or the browser, there's no panel: the year view is the tray, with a list for each of the twelve months.

When you've decided, drag it onto a day, or open its menu and choose Change the date. In the app's year view, Change the date is the way to move one.

Moving, copying or deleting several at once

On a computer, press Select beside Hide completed, or hold Cmd or Ctrl and click the tasks you want. On a smaller screen, and in the app, press Select several tasks in the bottom bar. A bar appears with ways to move them all a day or a week later, send them to the month tray, move them to a day you pick, Copy them or Delete them. If you change your mind, Undo puts everything back.

On a computer you can also drag any one of the tasks you've picked, and the rest come with it.

After Copy, every day and every tray shows a Paste button. Press the one where you want them. There's no paste shortcut, because a shortcut wouldn't know which day you meant.

Making it yours

• Tap a category along the top to show only that one, and tap others to add them back in. On the website, Hide completed tucks away what's done.
• Categories, in the More actions menu (the three dots at the top), is where the owner of a plan changes its categories.
• Stripes, in the same menu, has seven colourways for behind your plan.

Next, have a look at repeating tasks for the every-week things, or sharing a plan with your people.