✅ Tasks

Tasks are not Reminders

InstaCal has two separate checklists and it is worth knowing which is which. Reminders are Apple's reminders, read from and written back to the Reminders app and whatever syncs it. Tasks are InstaCal's own, kept in a task library the app owns — with lists, sections, tags, checklists, priorities and a deadline that is deliberately separate from the time you plan to work on something.

Nothing you already had moves. Adding a task never touches Reminders, and ticking a reminder never touches Tasks.

Open Tasks

On the Mac, click the Tasks button in the panel's footer. Right-click that same button and choose Open Tasks Window for a resizable window that stays open when you click away, which the panel does not. Tasks also has its own pane in Settings.

On iPhone and iPad, the Tasks button starts on the upper-left of the tab bar in Expanded layout, and inside the switcher's menu in Compact. It is a command like any other in Settings → Display → Button Layout, so you can move it, hide it, or drag it somewhere easier to reach. Turning on the optional More button while you are still on the standard arrangement folds Tasks into that menu to make room.

Add a task

Type into the capture field at the top of the list. Plain language is understood as you write, and what InstaCal reads out of it is shown before you save, so nothing is guessed silently:

• A date or a time — tomorrow, Friday 9am, next Tuesday. The rest of the sentence stays as the title.
• A length — for 45 minutes sets the task's duration, which is what free-time scheduling looks for a gap for.
• #tag — any number of them, removed from the title and kept as tags.
• p1, p2, p3 — High, Medium and Low priority. A bare p1 only counts as a whole word, so a filename or a URL containing it is left alone.

None of this leaves the device. The parser is InstaCal's own and runs locally; no task text is sent to a service or a language model.

Open a task's Details for everything else: notes, a URL, the list and section it belongs to, a flag, priority, tags, and a checklist of subtasks you can reorder.

Planned date and deadline are two different things

This is the idea the rest of the feature is built on. Plan a Date is when you intend to work on something. Deadline — the Finish By date — is when it has to be done. Moving the planned time around does not move the deadline, and a task planned after its own deadline says so, in the editor and in the list.

Turn on Time to give the planned date an hour, and Alert to be notified at a time you choose. Repeat offers Daily, Weekdays, Weekly, Monthly and Yearly with an interval, repeating either from the Scheduled Date or from the Completion Date, ending never, on a date, or after a count. Completing a repeating task creates the next occurrence with a fresh checklist.

Find room for a task

Give a task a Duration and InstaCal can find a gap for it. Schedule in Free Time on a single task looks for an opening between your busy events; Auto-Schedule Undated Tasks does it for everything in the list that has no date yet.

Both stay inside the hours you set in Tasks settings: Workday Starts, Workday Ends, and a Default Duration used for tasks that do not carry their own. If nothing fits inside those hours on the day you asked for, InstaCal says so rather than booking you at midnight.

Lists, sections, and the smart lists above them

Your own lists live under My Lists, each with a name, a colour, an icon and optional sections. Drag to reorder them. A list can be archived rather than deleted when you want it out of the way but not gone.

Above them sit lists InstaCal keeps for you: Inbox (anything not filed in a list), Today, Upcoming, Flagged, All Tasks, Completed and Recently Deleted.

Deleted tasks stay for 30 days and can be restored until then. Delete Permanently removes a task, its subtasks and its attachments for good.

Sort, group and filter

Sort By offers Manual, Date, Priority, Title and Created. Group By offers None, List, Section and Date. Alongside them: a tag picker, a priority picker, a Time filter (Any Schedule, Scheduled, Not Scheduled), Flagged, and a search field. Clear resets the lot.

Tasks on the calendar

In Tasks settings, Show Tasks on Calendar puts dated tasks into the agenda, month cells, widgets and the Apple Watch app. Tasks with a time also draw as blocks in Day and Week, and you can drag a task onto the time grid to schedule it.

Include All-Day Tasks is the second switch. Turn it off to show only tasks that have a due time, keeping tasks that are due on a day but at no particular hour out of the all-day band.

Google Tasks, Microsoft To Do and Todoist

A connected Google, Microsoft or Todoist account brings its own task lists in beside your personal library, in their own group in the sidebar, under the service's name and the account's. They stay the service's tasks — they are synced with it, not copied into your library — so a change made in either place reaches the other.

Connect them the same way as any other account, in Settings → Accounts.

Where your tasks are kept

Your personal task library is stored on the device. The Tasks settings pane shows it as Task Library: On This Device. iCloud task sync is built but is not switched on in the shipping build, so a task you add on the Mac does not appear on your iPhone. Tasks from a connected Google, Microsoft or Todoist account are a different matter — those live with the service and are on every device you connect it to.

Siri, Shortcuts and Spotlight

Add a Task, Complete a Task, Open Task and Open Task List are Shortcuts actions, so they work on the app's normal macOS and iOS requirements and can be put on a Home Screen, a Shortcuts automation or the Action button.

Tasks, task lists and reminders are also indexed for Spotlight, so searching your Mac or phone finds them by title and opens them in InstaCal. Talking to Siri about tasks in conversation is newer and needs macOS 27 or iOS 27; see Common questions.

Private calendars and App Lock both hold here: while the app is locked, nothing is donated to Spotlight at all.