Launching today
Only Five
A menu bar to-do app that caps you at 5 tasks
13 followers
A menu bar to-do app that caps you at 5 tasks
13 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?
@galdayan it's one I thought about a lot during design.
The parking lot is intentionally a single unstructured text field, not a second list. No checkboxes, no items, no count. Just free-form text you can jot into. Think of it more like a sticky note on your desk than a backlog queue.
There's no expiry or size limit currently - that's a deliberate choice. The moment I add structure (item counts, due dates, auto-promote features), it becomes the shadow backlog you're describing. The lack of structure is the friction. It's annoying enough to dig through a wall of text that people naturally keep it minimal or clean it out.
That said - your question is making me consider whether a gentle nudge might help. Something like a faint "last edited 2 weeks ago" timestamp that quietly signals when the parking lot is becoming stale. No enforcement, just awareness.
Appreciate you pushing on this - it's exactly the kind of design tension that's easy to get wrong.
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?
@melihasaatqnq2 only completed tasks auto-clear after 24 hours - your active/incomplete tasks stay put indefinitely until you check them off.
The 24-hour expiry is just housekeeping for the "done" items so your list doesn't fill up with yesterday's wins. The goal is keeping the interface clean without you having to manually delete things.
For multi-day projects: I'd suggest breaking them into the next concrete action (which I personally do) rather than keeping "Q3 Marketing Plan" sitting in a slot for weeks.
That said - if something legitimately needs to sit there as a reminder (like "Follow up with client Thursday"), it'll stay until you complete it. No time pressure on incomplete items.
How does it handle the 24-hour auto-clear if someone wants to keep a record of stuff they finished for reference later?
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.
The five-task limit sounds restrictive but it actually cleared my head after a day of testing. Love that completed items vanish on their own.