Quick Entry Pane

The Quick Entry Pane lets you quickly capture tasks without switching to the desktop app. You can assign a global hotkey in the preferences which, when triggered, will display the quick entry pane over whatever app or screen you’re currently working on.

The fastest way to create a new task is to simply type it and press Command + Enter CommandEnter Control + Enter ControlEnter to save. This will create a new task with status inbox, which you can process later.

If you want to add a task with specific fields, you can do so by clicking the various controls, or using the same keyboard shortcuts you would in the main app.

Tip

The Quick Entry Pane is often used to add new tasks to the end of today’s list. You can do this with Command + T CommandT Control + T ControlT , which will set the scheduled date to today.

Adding a body

While the majority of tasks created this way probably won’t have a body, pressing Command + Shift + Enter CommandShiftEnter Control + Shift + Enter ControlShiftEnter will open an area where you can add notes which will form the body of the task document. Pressing it again will close that area.

Auto-ready status

When you set a project or area and a scheduled or defer-until date, the status automatically changes from inbox to ready. A task with both a project/area and a date has been processed enough that it doesn’t need to sit in the inbox.

AI processing (macOS)

On Macs with Apple Intelligence enabled, a sparkle button appears next to the title when you’ve typed something. Clicking it (or pressing Command + Shift + A CommandShiftA Command + Shift + A CommandShiftA ) uses on-device AI to clean up your text into a concise task title and fill in the appropriate project, area, dates and other fields based on what you typed or dictated.

This works entirely on-device — no data is sent to any server. The AI pre-fills the form fields for you to review and adjust before saving.

Note

AI processing requires an Apple Silicon Mac running macOS Tahoe (26.0) or later with Apple Intelligence enabled in System Settings. The feature is not visible on other platforms.