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28th Mar, 2024
Best daily planner apps help us get organized with tasks, calendar & even meetings. Here's the best planner apps for daily planning in 2024 and ones to explore for managing tasks and calendar in one this year.
Combine tasks, calendar, meeting booking links & task consolidation into one.
Bring tasks from ClickUp, Notion, Gmail, Todoist & more in Akiflow for organizing in one.
Do you ever need to balance calendar and tasks in one place?
Well, this is a real thing. For some people, to-do applications aren't enough and don't provide that way to time-block on a calendar, but for others calendar apps don't allow them task management they need to get organized for the week ahead.
A new breed called daily planner apps have appeared in the last few years and we've brought them all together to give you the ultimate list of the best daily planner apps for work and life.
A daily planner app has 50% tasks and 50% calendar abilities.
Daily planner apps are basically a combination of a to-do list app and a calendar app allowing you to see your tasks alongside your schedule of the day ahead.
This is becoming much more popular as people like to see their daily schedule in front of them with a set of to-dos on that list. So what's the best app for daily scheduling? Well there are a few daily planner applications that we've tried and tested and wanted to go over with you in this feature and how to choose the best daily planner app for you.
Here's all the daily planners with reviews and explorations to why we picked them:
Motion is a well-known AI assistant and been growing in popularity in the last few years. Those who have higher budgets and a more "assistant" based approach to task management will look into Motion for helping them re-focus their tasks and calendar.
Motion has a unique experience for planning your schedule by allowing you to add task details including deadlines, priorities, start dates, working time and duration to help assist the AI in making an effective decision to re-schedule, if needed, any of your tasks.
Motion offers a good balance between being a task management app and a project management software, with ClickUp/monday.com type features that allow you to plan your tasks in Kanban, table and assign them to other people using Motion for teams.
There's many features in Motion and the best is the AI abilities. Auto-scheduling is perfect for someone who wants to plan their tasks and get the AI to do the work of allocating them into the system - then setting up rules in settings to defend the important things.
Motion does have team abilities which allow you to expand into project management, but compared to tools like ClickUp and monday.com, this is like baby project management software, so light compared to it. So we recommend this more for smaller teams. Check out our extensive list of the best project management software for more on that.
A combination of tasks, calendar, meeting scheduling & team collaboration in one
Availability: Windows, macOS, web, iOS & Android
Akiflow appears on this list as it oozes daily planning and bleeds this all the way through their product. You can add tasks to your inbox, plan them ahead with upcoming, organize them in kanban view and tag them with labels (like lists). With calendar, it is there, front and centre and perfect for dragging those tasks in your system into your calendar.
Time-blocking is better than Motion in our opinion with Akiflow as the task-calendar match-up works so well here, but Akiflow does lack the AI nature than Motion brings.
Task consolidation explained simply is the ability to consolidate your tasks in one place. Think all your tasks under one roof. Akiflow wants to do that for you, a dashboard for your work meaning you can bring in tasks from places like Slack (messages that pop up), Gmail (starred emails that matter) or maybe even your team's ClickUp tasks in projects that are urgent for you. This is a game-changer if you hate using your project management app at work.
Task consolidation. We just spoke about it, but let's go back to it again. Let's explore some of the tools you can connect up with it and how you could be using them. Akiflow stole this concept from Sunsama or probably someone else, but the premise is fantastic for making it a base for all your tasks and bringing them into one location.
You can connect to Gmail, Slack, Notion, Asana, ClickUp, Zoom, Google Calendar, Trello, Todoist, Jira, GitHub, and probably more in the future. Making it a dashboard for tasks and items that come into your system. This is something David Allen from Getting Things Done screams to people all the time (not literally) - "you need one inbox for capture".
Rituals offer a more mindful layer to your workload. It helps you to shut down after a busy day and much like Sunsama wants you to better allocate workload to your list and make sure you aren't drowning in tasks each day. Everything in Akiflow oozes ease of use too. Once you learn command bar and other such features you'll find that it works really well for day to day planning of tasks around meetings and calendar events.
Routine is a beautiful looking app but presents a good way to plan your tasks, calendar and a lighter notes - all in one base. Routine has a feature called "console" which we recommend looking at for quick macOS capturing.
Routine brings a friendly tool for bringing all your tasks, calendar and note lists in one location. It won't replace a fully fledged note-taking application, but it will be handy for sorting and capturing small notes for lists - like movies to watch, articles to read etc.
Meeting notes are perfect for light meeting notes and using them for an agenda. The view reminds us of Notion as a peek into the calendar and event you have that you can expand out into meeting notes. Perfect for capturing team meeting ideas you have, or even solo meetings with yourself.
Weekly planning is stunning in Routine. You can add tasks not not only week, but day, but also month too. Confusing at first, but helpful for plot them into your actual calendar as the week evolves itself and the view is a very stunning way to seek what's ahead. This is one of people's favourite features inside of Routine for planning more visually and alongside the "today" tab that allows you to see a window into the day ahead like a timeline - many people rave about these two features in Routine.
Console is another feature that is desktop only, but helps you see next meetings, capture tasks, events and notes with ease all super fast and smoothly. One of the best capture experiences we've seen that overlays inside the app you're working on.
Sunsama is an outstanding planner app that focuses more on your wellbeing and guided planning. With features that hand-hold you, Sunsama is a better way to help you plan the week ahead and build better habits into your routine. Sunsama wants you to stop working when work is done and not overload yourself throughout a day.
Weekly objectives is a great way to high-level plan on your tasks. Instead of always getting wrapped up in your tasks, you can essentially create a set of weekly objectives that feed down to your task level. This is perfect for those who want to envision the week ahead and the real tasks they want to do and make sure that all the tasks created in the week associate to these goals - a great OKR-like feature focused on goal-planning.
Consolidation works like Akiflow where you can bring in tools like Gmail, Slack and more like ClickUp to better help bring all your tasks into one location. Sunsama has been doing this prior to Akiflow, so it would be a lie to say that they are copying this from Akiflow. One of the best features for those who want to base their tasks in one hub. If you want a face-to-face between Akiflow vs Sunsama, we'd recommend checking our in-depth comparison.
Mindful systems helps better align your work. Alongside "hand-holding" you can use tools like indicators on each day to see if you've overloaded your task duration will show up orange or red giving you a clear need to reduce your expectations. Another feature is focus mode. Focus mode for better timer based workload so you can see what and how long you spend per tasks too. This mode is great for zoning into a task at hand.
Sunsama lacks a fully fledged mobile application which is always a point of contention. Some people love this because you can use Sunsama as a read-only type app, whereas others who use the tools on the go, don't like this and opt for tools like Motion and Akiflow that offer better and more functional mobile applications for daily planning with.
Francesco from the team used this for over 2-3 years and this was his experience.
Ellie Planner is truly an application that gets that balance between daily planner and to-do list application but in a much more approachable way.
Unlike Sunsama and Akiflow it doesn't scream hideous amounts of features, but what it does is create a week view into what's ahead, uses systems like time-boxing and brain dumping to make a productive way to plan ahead for your week and better align tasks going forward. We really like Ellie Planner for this, but it is also independently developed which makes it even more friendly.
Ellie Planner has recently added ways to integrate with apps like Todoist, Slack & Notion.
Ellie Planner brings a good amount of features but nowhere near the amount that tools like Sunsama and Akiflow bring together. What you will get is nice features that provide function.
Starting with time-boxing, which is essentially time-blocking allows you to plot your calendar up with tasks and get a sidebar view of your tasks that constantly updates. This is locked under premium but offers a practical way to time block into your calendar and see all of your tasks on a timeline view going into the day ahead.
Brain dumps is another concept developed by Ellie Planner to help you capture tasks and bring them into like a "backlog" so that you can inbox them and allocate them at a later date which many people refer to as the same process in GTD called Open Loops. What's nice about brain dumps is the tasks live outside of the system making it not too overwhelming when looking at what they need to do, tucked away from workday tasks.
Ellie Planner is one of our listed Sunsama alternatives. Here's our video above.
Structured is a mobile-focused experience on macOS, iOS and soon Android that brings a timeline like view to your day ahead. Very similar to another app called Sorted 3.
Trying to be the base of lightweight daily planning, Structured helps to give your day and week clarity with a more timeline based approach to your daily task management. Despite being a cracking daily planner app for iOS - it also offers a decent MacOS app too.
Sunsama is a more mindful approach to tasks, with features like "shutdown" allowing you to debrief on your day and then turn off Sunsama. Hand-holding task assistance too, so you can plan your day with more help and even tasks connected to "week objectives" too.
Visual timeline inside of Structured helps you to better plan ahead with the ability to create tasks and once they start see how you are progressing through them. Many people like Structured because it does this so well on mobile devices making it portable and friendly. Probably one of the more approachable productivity apps for planning your day and week.
Calendar import allows you to see your events alongside your tasks and make sure you align them all. A lot of people say that Structured, in the reviews, is brilliant for managing house-errands, routine tasks (premium) and also events that already existing in their Apple calendar. This has attracted over 200,000 users of Structured. You can also import Google Calendar inside of the premium experience.
Structured is coming to Android according to their website.
Timestripe is a goal planning application that offers a unique approach to task management and daily planning by offering you a window into the next day, and the next year and even your life time goals. Planning with this in mind changes your approach to goals and daily planning as it helps to align your long-term goals with your short-term.
There is a calendar experience in this tucked away that allows you to plot your "goals" or tasks into the week ahead and makes planning ahead much more appealing when you can see goals for the month or year aligned alongside you.
Goals is what makes Timestripe work. Goals are basically tasks, but when it comes the long-term use of them in months, years, and decades. They are goals, if that makes sense. Goals help to plan ahead with tasks and even get pinned per view which helps to better align them. If you're curious how Timestripe works, we launched a Timestripe course.
Boards are essentially ways to see projects or lists you're working on and this makes Timestripe great for planning ideas or fleshing out a project before weaving it into your daily plan ahead. You can then take elements from boards and bring them into your week plan and system by just assigning them to a specific time and date. This is one of the nicest features for burying away workload and then assigning them to your main task list.
Climbs is a made-up concept by Timestripe that focuses on templating of goals. Think of a goal that you want to secure - like writing for 30-days, well, the climbs concept wants to make that happen by creating a habit-like approach to populate your task list and get you implementing the routines to achieve those goals. You don't have to rely on the Climbs available in the Timestripe app, you can build your own and replicate in the future too.
Todoist is the best-in-class to do application in our opinion. It provides a brilliant way to handle tasks, manage project lists and even use a kanban board to plot out ideas.
With over 10 years of experience, Todoist brings a high quality application that makes task management much easier. The reason it lives on this list is that Todoist are getting calendar mode soon and this is one of the best tools for tasks, it will do the same for calendar and daily planning too with the view.
Boards allow you to plan your tasks in a traditional kanban view. People love this feature and it gets improved when you use the "custom view" option that helps you use filters and sorting to better structure the kanban board. Turning a simple task list into a powerful way to plan and plot them ahead.
Reliability is something you forget about in Todoist just because the mobile and desktop apps work like a dream, syncing works brilliantly and their team and support are just marvellous. You don't get this level of outright quality in many apps, and Todoist does this well - a combination people will love for going long-term with a productivity tool.
Capture on the go with Todoist is great for making sure you follow the first step of Getting Things Done and capture into your inbox all those ideas, tasks and links for later. According to Todoist, the next year ahead with reveal much more including a calendar feature which is one of the reasons why we added it here for the use in 2024.
TickTick is one of the best friendly, approachable budget to-do apps that actually, unlike Todoist, has a calendar experience within this at the time of our posting. TickTick brings the ability to plot tasks in the calendar view with week, month and day modes to better align tasks into the right time. The issue is that this comes only in the paid plan.
Calendar mode is one of the big features in TickTick that allow us to feature it as a daily planner application. For many people some light calendar mode might be enough for them to consider TickTick as their planner application as it has due dates, progress bars and also fantastic ways to capture on multiple devices too.
Habit tracking is great for making sure you create healthy routines. This is a bonus feature of TickTick but allows it to be another layer into the daily planning system. Habits can help build healthy routines and use the application longer too.
Morgen is a calendar application at heart but it has been trying to bring both calendar and task into one hub. Whilst it isn't a pure breed daily planner application, we think it still is an option as you enter your decision making when looking for a daily planner application.
That combination between calendar events first and tasks, with task lists with the ability to time-block them into your calendar actually makes it a not bad solution. For one calendar it is free to use which makes it perfect for getting started and using the concept of tasks and calendar together without investing in some of the options above that do limit you.
Eager to learn Morgen, we've got a course to help your learn Morgen calendar.
Morgen is a great tool for calendar management but it does allow you to bring in tasks. The best feature for this is that fact you can time-block those tasks into your calendar really easily but also that you can organize them into project lists using task lists.
Meeting scheduling for planning meetings means you don't need tools like Calendly as the tool can be used to setup routine meetings and even meetings on the go too. Worth exploring as an option for meeting planning, calendar management and task management if you plan light weight tasks and like to time block in your calendar app.
People are flocking to daily planner applications for more structure in their task management. this is becoming a trend in the market as people want more help with managing a typical work day. Here's a few of the benefits of using a daily planner app:
They normally give you better structure, help & view of your day ahead.
Picking from this list might be overwhelming, combine that with the task management apps out there that you have to sift through. I'd recommend going down this list:
Akiflow is another on this list that helps you to plan, but focuses a lot on the combination of calendar and tasks in one hub pulling tasks from other sites too. Matching to things you struggle with will help.
Need something more mindful, Sunsama could be practical for setting daily limits on your workload and helping hold your hand during planning the next day.
Want something iOS based? Structured presents a smart daily planner that will be better for those on the go.
We'd recommend looking at what your needs are. If you are time-poor and need something to re-organize your day ahead, Motion is a good tool for that with a AI/machine learning ability to help do that.
In essence, with a daily planner app, you want a reliable way to see your calendar and tasks. Anything on the top of this is a bonus to be honest - so when you're looking at these recommendations from our list, remember the following notes:
Useful notes before you explore the range of daily planners listed below.
We've not ranked these tools above, but this will give you a good list of daily planner apps to make sure you have the right one for work and life planning. You can use these in any walk of life, so don't limit your thinking to work only. We covered this on our YouTube too.
Combine tasks, calendar, meeting booking links & task consolidation into one.
Bring tasks from ClickUp, Notion, Gmail, Todoist & more in Akiflow for organizing in one.
From trending reads, trending tools and beyond
monday.com offers all-round project management popular with all-rounder use in teams.
Motion is an AI-focused to-do list app with calendar, meetings & auto-scheduling.
Reclaim AI is perfect for smart calendar app for teams to optimise schedules.
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