Guide

Getting started with DayBoard.

Set up your sources, find your way around Home, and make beta 18 work the way you do.

Start at Home

DayBoard opens on Home: mail and follow-ups under Needs you, your tasks and your meetings. Switch between Today and This week. With AI triage enabled, Suggested surfaces tasks from your mail for you to add or dismiss.

See everything in Agenda

Agenda has its own sidebar row. It combines calendar events, Google Tasks and Apple Reminders in time order, with unread Gmail underneath. Switch between Today and Next 7 days, search across the list, and use the source checkboxes to focus the view.

Overdue items collect in their own row so they don't crowd your day. Items without a date wait under No date.

Connect your sources

Open Settings (⌘ ,) and choose Sources.

  • Google Calendar, Google Tasks and Gmail: click Sign in with Google and approve access in your browser.
  • Apple Reminders: turn it on and allow access when macOS asks.
  • Turn any source off at any time, and pick the color each one uses.

Google sign-in may be limited to invited accounts during the beta. See the beta install guide for the current access limits.

Changes you make in DayBoard sync back to Google and Apple. If the same to-do lives in both Google Tasks and Apple Reminders, open its details and Link the pair. It then shows up once, and checking it off completes both.

Calendar and item details

The Calendar has Month, Week and Schedule layouts, with tasks and reminders on their due dates. The calendar peek (⌥⌘K) opens beside the page you're on. Under Settings → General, choose whether item details open in a pop-up, inline, or in a side panel.

Read, send and follow up on mail

Inbox shows your recent Gmail. Write a new email, reply to a message, or save a reply to Gmail drafts. Sending gives you an Undo window of five seconds by default; change it in Settings → General → Mail.

  • Snooze: remove an email from the inbox until the time you choose. It returns unread.
  • Remind me if no reply: bring a thread back to Home when the wait you chose is over and nobody has replied. Manage snoozes and follow-ups under Later in Inbox.
  • Subscriptions: review newsletters by sender, see how many you opened, and unsubscribe. One-click unsubscribe is available where the sender supports it; other senders may open a browser or use an email request.
  • Optional AI triage: Needs reply, FYI and Ignorable chips, with a one-line summary on the open email. Enable automatic triage in Settings → General → Mail after choosing an AI provider.

Mail notifications start off. In Settings → General → Mail, choose notifications for snoozes and follow-ups or all new mail, and set the Dock badge to waiting items, unread mail or nothing.

Turn on AI (optional)

AI is off until you choose a provider in Settings → AI. You can use the Claude or ChatGPT account you already have through Claude Code or Codex, or add an API key, including an xAI key for Grok. Then pick the model and turn individual features on or off. ChatGPT currently connects through Codex; direct ChatGPT sign-in is not in this beta.

  • Ask Assistant: press ⌥⌘J to dock it beside any view, or open the full Assistant page. The open email, event or to-do appears as a removable context chip. Use @ to attach another item and / for commands.
  • Brief me, Suggest focus and Weekly Review: summaries of what matters.
  • Reply drafts: generate a starting point, edit it, then send it or save it to Gmail drafts.

The composer's model menu lets you choose a provider, model and supported effort level. Its permission menu starts in Ask first, where you confirm each proposed item. Read only gives answers without proposing changes; Auto adds proposed tasks, reminders and events for you.

Under Settings → AI → Memory, add or forget preferences and turn memory off. A preference suggested from a reply edit is saved only if you choose Remember. The Usage section shows requests and tokens recorded by DayBoard, not your provider's remaining plan allowance.

Keep Notes and arrange your workspace

Notes supports Markdown with a live preview and saves as you write. Search notes by title with ⌘K, or save an Assistant conversation as a note. Open a new tab with ⌘T; each keeps its own view and your tabs return next time.

Under Settings → General → Sidebar, reorder your views, hide any except Home and show or hide counts. Hidden views stay available in the command menu.

Capture from anywhere and glance at your day

Quick Capture turns a sentence into a task, reminder or event using your chosen AI provider. Its default global shortcut is ⌃⌥⇧Space; view or change it under Settings → General → Menu Bar & Shortcuts.

The menu-bar panel shows today's items, your next meeting, recent captures and the first three emails waiting on you. The Up Next meeting card offers a quick way into the next meeting. Meeting alerts are optional.

Keyboard shortcuts

Press ? outside a text field, or ⌘/, to see the app's shortcut sheet. ⌘ is Command, ⌥ is Option, ⌃ is Control and ⇧ is Shift.

Move around DayBoard

  • ⌘K — search, jump to a view or item, or run an action.
  • Tab in the command menu — ask the Assistant what you've typed, when the Assistant is enabled.
  • ⌥⌘J — show or hide Ask Assistant beside the page.
  • ⌥⌘K — show or hide the calendar peek.
  • ⌘N — new item. ⌘, — Settings.
  • ⌃1–9 — open a visible sidebar view in its current order.

Tabs

  • ⌘T — new tab. ⌘W — close the tab.
  • ⌃Tab — next tab. ⌃⇧Tab — previous tab.
  • ⌘1–8 — choose a tab. ⌘9 — last tab.

Inbox

These single-key shortcuts work when you're not typing in a text field.

  • J / K — next / previous email.
  • Return — open the focused email.
  • With an email open: E — archive, R — reply, S — snooze.
  • C — new email.

Connect your own AI tools (optional)

DayBoard can run a local MCP server while it's open, so tools like Claude Code and Codex can read your day. It's off by default. Turn it on in Settings → MCP Servers. Clients need the access key shown there, and the server stays read-only unless you also allow changes.

MCP clients can also read Notes and, with Allow changes on, write them. The Activity section lists DayBoard tool calls by the Assistant or an outside agent over the last 30 days, with tool names and outcomes rather than the contents they read or wrote.

Where your data goes

  • On your Mac: settings, linked items, Notes, memories, Assistant history, usage records and the tool activity log. Sign-in tokens are encrypted with macOS's built-in protection.
  • Google: DayBoard talks directly to Google's APIs for Calendar, Tasks and Gmail. Google stores that data under its own terms.
  • Apple Reminders: read and changed on your Mac through macOS.
  • Your AI provider: when you use an AI feature, only the context that request needs is sent to the provider you chose.
  • DayBoard's services: none of your calendar, tasks, reminders or mail. The waitlist stores your email address, the time you joined and internal review labels, plus a keyed hash of your IP address (not the address itself) to limit repeated attempts.

The privacy policy has the full details.

Getting new beta builds

Beta 11 and earlier don't update themselves. Install the latest beta over them once from the download page: quit DayBoard, then replace the app in Applications. Your DayBoard data stays in place.

Starting with beta 12, DayBoard updates itself. It checks GitHub for a newer beta shortly after it opens and every few hours, downloads it in the background and shows Restart to update in the toolbar when it's ready. If you don't restart, the update installs the next time you quit. To check right away, choose DayBoard › Check for Updates….