Launching today
Only Five
A menu bar to-do app that caps you at 5 tasks
10 followers
A menu bar to-do app that caps you at 5 tasks
10 followers
Only Five is a macOS menu bar to-do app with one rule: only 5 active tasks, ever. When your list is full, you swap a task out instead of piling more on — so you're always forced to prioritize instead of hoarding a 40-item backlog. Park stray ideas in a scratch note, focus on one task at a time, and build momentum with streaks and board-clear stats. Completed tasks auto-clear after 24 hours, so you start each day light. No dashboards, no clutter — just five things, done.
the hard cap is the right kind of constraint, most productivity apps let you cheat past the limit and the limit becomes decorative. genuine question about the parking lot though - isn't that just the 60-item graveyard with a different name? if it's a single scratch note with no structure, that's fine, but if it grows into its own list-within-a-list, people will just shove everything there the moment the 5 slots feel restrictive and you're back to square one, just one screen away. is there anything that keeps the parking lot itself from becoming the backlog, like a size limit or an expiry, or is that intentionally left as an unmanaged dumping ground on purpose?
How does it handle ongoing tasks that take longer than 24 hours, like a multi-day project — do those still get auto-cleared or is there some way to keep them past the cutoff?
The focus-on-one-task-at-a-time idea is great, but I'd love a simple way to pin one of the five as the "must do today" so the swap mechanic feels less like a lateral move and more like real prioritization. Maybe a star next to slots that affects the stats weighting too.