Markdone

A local macOS menu bar app for planning your week in Markdown.
Write tasks as plain Markdown — and any [ ] becomes a box you click to mark done.

Every region — the Big Three priorities, the undated This Week list, and each weekday — is a Markdown field that live-renders: syntax is hidden on the line your cursor is not on, headings are colored, and checkboxes render as boxes you can click. It opens as a compact dark-glass popover from the menu bar (or pops out into a resizable window), saves to a local JSON file, and shows no Dock icon.

Why

It replaces a long, hand-managed Markdown file of tasks-by-day with the same fluid plain-text editing, plus structure:

• Write tasks as Markdown. No forms, no buttons — just type.
• One day at a time. Each weekday is its own block, so there's never a long file to scroll. Today is selected when you open the app.
• Recurring templates. A weekly template seeds every new week, so your standard Monday (or weekly) tasks appear automatically.

How to use it

Open it

Click the [✓] icon in the menu bar. Markdone opens to today, showing this week's plan. It floats and stays open until you dismiss it (Esc, ⌘W, or clicking the icon again).

Write tasks

Click into any field and type. It's just Markdown:

• Make a checkbox — type [] buy milk or - [ ] buy milk. It renders as a clickable box.
• Mark it done — click the box. The text dims and strikes through, and the box turns green. Click again to un-check. The pointer turns into a hand over a box so you know it's clickable.
• Add notes — write anything under a task (indent it to nest it). It's all Markdown, so ## headings are colored, **bold**, *italic*, ~~strikethrough~~, `code`, - bullets, and [links](url) all render.

The line your cursor is on always shows its raw Markdown; every other line (and every unfocused field) renders. So editing feels like a plain text file, but reading feels like a clean checklist.

Plan the week

• Big Three (top left) — your three priorities for the week.
• This Week (left) — anything not tied to a specific day.
• The day panel (right) — one weekday at a time. Switch days with the tabs; each tab shows how many tasks you've completed that day.
• New Week (bottom bar, or ⌘N) — creates the next week, pre-filled from your template. The week pill shows the current week and your done / total count; click it to browse or delete past weeks.

Recurring templates

Open the Template editor from the bottom bar. Put recurring tasks into the Big Three, This Week, or any weekday block — as Markdown. Every new week starts pre-filled with those blocks. Template edits apply to new weeks only.

Room to write

Need more space for longer notes? Click the window button in the bottom bar to pop Markdone out into a normal resizable window. The window and the popover share the same data, so they always stay in sync.

Export

Settings → Export all weeks to Markdown… writes a single, readable .md snapshot of everything — useful for backups or sharing.

Quit

The power button in the bottom bar (with a confirmation), or ⌘Q.

Keyboard shortcuts

Most keys belong to the focused Markdown field — it's normal text editing. The app-level shortcuts are:

Key	Action
⌘1 … ⌘7	Jump to Monday … Sunday
⌘⌥← / ⌘⌥→	Previous / next day
⌘N	New week
⌘W	Close the popover or window
Esc	Close an open panel (template, settings, help)

Build and run

Requires macOS 14 or later. From the repository root:

./build.sh
open build/Markdone.app

The build script compiles the Swift sources directly with swiftc and assembles a proper .app bundle with LSUIElement=true, so it runs as a menu bar accessory. (It does not use Swift Package Manager, because SwiftPM's manifest step does not link on a machine with only the Xcode Command Line Tools.)

To build, install to /Applications, and relaunch in one step:

./build.sh --install

Data storage

Markdone stores everything locally:

~/Library/Application Support/Markdone/data.json

Each region is saved as a Markdown string. There is no server, account, analytics, or cloud synchronization — your tasks never leave your Mac.

How it's built

Native SwiftUI + AppKit. Each region is an NSTextView with a custom NSLayoutManager that draws SF Symbol checkboxes and hides Markdown syntax on inactive lines; a small shared engine recognizes, counts, and toggles checkboxes so the renderer, the completion counts, and click-to-toggle always agree.

The screenshots above are captures of the running app, populated with example content.