Support

Questions, bugs, or ideas — email saifsiddiqui2409@gmail.com and I'll reply.

Getting started

• Add a task from the window, or press ⌥⌘K from anywhere.
• Dates can be typed: “pay rent friday 5pm”, “tomorrow”, “every weekday”. Use #work to file it in a list.
• Hover a task for its due-date and ⋯ menus. Double-click a title to rename it.

Look and placement

Settings → Layout, where the preview at the top updates as you change things.

• Template — seven typographic treatments. Editorial is free; Ledger, Poster, Terminal, Timeline, Receipt and Card come with the unlock. Timeline is the one to try if you use the calendar: tasks and meetings share a single rail, in the order the day happens.
• Position — click any cell of the 3×3 grid to put the list there. The shaded bands in the preview mark where the menu bar, Dock and desktop icons usually sit.
• Column width — how wide the text column is. Long titles are truncated rather than wrapped, so a narrow column means shorter lines, not more of them. Receipt stays narrow by design and Poster runs wide, whatever you set.
• Palette, typeface and pattern live one tab across, in Settings → Style: twenty palettes plus your own colours, thirteen typefaces — the named ones are real faces that ship with macOS — and eleven paper textures from plain grain to isometric, seigaiha waves and topographic contours.
• Type size and Edge margin — for large displays, and for nudging the block off the screen edge. Each slider shows its value, and the ↺ next to it puts it back.

My wallpaper didn't change

• Other desktops (Spaces) update the first time you switch to them. That's a macOS limitation, not a bug.
• Choose Refresh Wallpaper from the menu-bar ⋯ menu to force it.
• Full-screen apps cover the desktop, so you won't see it until you leave them.

Getting your old wallpaper back

Slate saves whatever you had before it first ran. Menu-bar icon → ⋯ → Restore Previous Wallpaper. That works whether or not Slate is still installed.

Restoring also stops Slate setting your wallpaper — otherwise it would overwrite your picture again within seconds. Your tasks are untouched, and the same menu then offers Show Slate on Wallpaper whenever you want it back.

Apple Reminders sync

• Turn it on in Settings → Reminders. macOS will ask permission first.
• Ticking a reminder off in Slate completes it in Reminders, so it syncs to your other devices. Creating, renaming and deleting stay in the Reminders app.
• Subtasks and complex repeats (“every 2nd Tuesday”) aren't available through Apple's Reminders API, so they don't come through. Everything else does.
• If permission was declined, grant it in System Settings → Privacy & Security → Reminders.

Today's calendar

• Turn it on in Settings → Calendar. macOS will ask permission first.
• Slate shows the calendars your Mac already has. To include Google Calendar, add your Google account in System Settings → Internet Accounts and make sure Calendars is ticked — its calendars then appear in Slate automatically.
• Slate never connects to Google itself and never changes your calendar. Access is read-only.
• Tick the calendars you want on the wallpaper in Settings → Calendar. Each account has an All / None shortcut.
• Event size: “Quiet” keeps events smaller than your tasks; “Same as tasks” draws them in the template's full type. Settings → Calendar.
• Your calendars also appear in Slate's sidebar, and today's events under the tasks on Today.
• Icons: Slate guesses what an event is and draws a glyph — a cake for a birthday, a camera for a video call, a fork for lunch, a plane for a flight. It leaves the icon off rather than guess wrongly, and only recognises English words. Turn it off in Settings → Calendar.
• Video calls: events with a Meet, Zoom, Teams or Webex link get a Join button. Other links open too — right-click a row to open or copy it. Hover the button to see where it goes before you click.
• Finished events stay listed but dimmed, so your day reads as a timeline. Turn on “Hide events once they've finished” if you'd rather they drop off.
• Quick toggle without opening Settings: the app's View menu → Show/Hide Calendar on Wallpaper.
• A new Google event taking a while to appear? macOS syncs Google calendars on a schedule — 15 minutes by default. Slate asks macOS to sync when you open it or press Refresh, but you can make it quicker in Calendar → Settings → Accounts → Refresh Calendars.

The focus timer

• Click the menu-bar icon and open the timer: drag the scale to pick any length from one minute to four hours, or tap a preset. Presets are yours to set in Settings.
• Start one from the menu-bar icon, the Focus menu, or right-click a task and choose Start Focus on This to bind the session to it.
• Floating window: a small countdown that sits above other apps and joins every Space, for when the menu bar isn't glanceable enough. Drag it anywhere; hover for pause and stop.
• The menu bar can show the countdown or stay a plain icon — your call in Settings.
• Alarm volume is adjustable, and it can silence itself after five seconds for timers that end while you're away.
• The menu bar and the floating window count down live. The wallpaper shows which session is running and what it's for, but no countdown — keeping a number current there means redrawing your whole desktop, which isn't worth it.
• Lengths, presets, alarm volume and where the timer shows all live in Settings → Focus. Default is 25 / 5, with a long break after four.
• It survives quitting and restarting — Slate stores when the phase ends, not how much is left.
• Don't want it on the desktop? Turn off Show the timer on the wallpaper.

Using your own photo

• Settings → Style → Background → Choose… and pick any picture. Your list is drawn on top of it.
• Slate keeps a copy in its own folder, so moving or deleting the original won't break your wallpaper.
• Darken behind text controls how much the picture is dimmed where your list sits. Photographs are rarely quiet enough on their own — turn it up if anything is hard to read.
• The picture is scaled to fill each display, so nothing is stretched.

Purchases

• The unlock is a one-time purchase — there's no subscription.
• New Mac, or reinstalled? Settings → Unlock → Restore Purchase.
• If the price doesn't appear, Slate can't reach the App Store. It'll work once it can.
• Refunds are handled by Apple at reportaproblem.apple.com.

Where your data lives

Your tasks are a single file inside Slate's own folder on your Mac. Nothing is uploaded. See the privacy policy.