Daily Dash guide

Everything you need to go from a fresh install to a morning routine that takes two minutes.

Getting started

1. Sign in to iCloud on your device. Daily Dash stores your library in your private iCloud database, so there's no account to create.
2. Allow Calendars and Reminders when asked. Daily Dash reads your events and Apple Reminders through the system and shows them on Today. You can skip either and use the app's own reminders instead.
3. Allow notifications so reminders can alert you. Reminder alerts are Time Sensitive, so they get through Focus modes you allow.
4. Add a couple of news feeds (see News) so the Today news card has something to show.

On iPhone you'll see five tabs: Today, Notes, Links, Reminders and News. Tags, the Graph and Settings open from the buttons at the top of Today. On iPad and Mac, Tags and Graph are tabs in the sidebar and Settings lives in the app's Settings window.

Today & your brief

Today is the screen to open first thing. The header shows the date and a one-line count of what's left, like “3 events left · 2 reminders open · 1 overdue”. Below it, from top to bottom:

• Your Brief: a few lines about the day, like your next event, busy stretches, free time, anything overdue, events that overlap and tomorrow's first event. It's written on device by Apple Intelligence. When that isn't available (older devices, or the model is still downloading), you get a rule-based summary and a small note saying so.
• Schedule: every event today from all your calendars (iCloud, Google, Exchange), with locations and all-day events. What's on now is marked Now and the next one Next; overlapping events are flagged. A Tomorrow preview shows the first few events of the next day.
• Reminders: what's due today and overdue, from both Apple Reminders and Daily Dash's own reminders. Tick one off right here; Apple Reminders you complete are marked done in the Reminders app too.
• News: the top headlines. Once you've read for a while, the app picks headlines you're likely to open. Filter the card by a tag to see, say, only #work feeds.

Long-press an event or reminder (right-click on Mac) and choose Tags & Connections… to tag it or connect it to a note, link or reminder.

Pull down to refresh. The cloud icon at the top shows iCloud sync status in every tab.

Read more: About the daily brief · How to get a daily briefing on iPhone · How to plan your day

Reminders

Type into the quick-add field at the bottom of the Reminders tab. A live preview shows what was understood before you save.

Priority is ! low, !! medium, !!! high. Anything recognised is removed from the title, so “Call mom tomorrow at 5pm #family !!” is saved as “Call mom”.

Anything you type without a date or place is due today.

• Organise: reminders are grouped into Overdue, Today and later. Use Filter by Tag to narrow the list and Show Completed to see what's done. Swipe a reminder to edit or delete it.
• Every device alerts: each device schedules alerts from your synced reminders, so one you add on the Mac alerts on your iPhone.

If Settings would stop or delay your alerts (notifications, alarms or location off, Time Sensitive disabled, banners or sound turned off), the Reminders tab tells you what to change and has a button to open Settings.

Read more: About reminders · How to stop forgetting things

Location reminders

A reminder can alert when you arrive at or leave a place instead of at a time.

1. Open a reminder and choose At a Place.
2. Pick a saved place, use your current location, or search and drop a pin on the map. Drag the radius to set how big “there” is.
3. Choose Arriving or Leaving.

Save places you use often, like Home, Work or the gym: tick Save to My Places when you pick one. Edit or delete them under My Places in the place picker. Saved places sync through iCloud, and quick add recognises them by name: “when I get home”, “when I leave work”, “at the gym”.

A location reminder alerts every time you arrive or leave until you mark it done.

Read more: Location-based reminders on iPhone

Notes & pages

Notes are pages, and pages can live inside other pages, like a notebook with chapters.

• New page: tap the compose button. Give it an emoji icon if you like.
• Commands: type / at the start of a line for headings, bulleted, numbered and check lists, quotes, code, a divider, a new page inside this one, or a link to another page. The same blocks are buttons on the Aa format panel.
• Formatting: title, heading and subheading styles, bold, italic, strikethrough, highlight, inline code, links, and indenting. Everything you can apply is something Markdown can store, so there's no underline or text colour in notes. Apple Notes keyboard shortcuts work on iPad and Mac (see Keyboard shortcuts).
• Markdown view: notes are stored as Markdown. Use the document button in the toolbar to switch to the source, styled as you type.
• Organise: drag pages to reorder or nest them, or use Move To. Long-press a page for Add Page Inside, Duplicate and Add to Favorites; favorites are pinned at the top of the list. Breadcrumbs at the top take you back up the tree.
• Trash: deleting a page moves it and its sub-pages to the Trash for 30 days. Open the Trash to Restore a page, Delete Forever, or Empty Trash.
• Export: share a note as Markdown (with tags and dates as front matter) or as a paginated PDF.

Pages you embed show as tappable blocks whose titles stay current. Each page also lists the pages that link to it.

Read more: About notes and pages · Building a second brain on iPhone · A weekly review template

Locking notes

1. Open Settings (the gear on Today, or the Settings window on Mac) and set a notes PIN. You can also turn on Face ID or Touch ID.
2. Long-press a note in the list and choose Lock Page, or use the lock menu in the note's toolbar.
3. To read it, unlock with Face ID / Touch ID or your PIN. Locked notes lock again when the app goes to the background, or right away with Lock Now.

A locked page keeps its title visible in the list; only the text is encrypted. Your PIN syncs through iCloud, so the same PIN unlocks your notes on every device. After too many wrong tries, the app makes you wait before trying again.

Read more: How to lock notes on iPhone

Links

• Save a link: tap + in Links and paste a URL, or save a story from the News reader. The title and icon are fetched for you.
• Read offline: each link's text and a few images are saved on the device. Tap Read for the clean reader view, or Open Link for the full page.
• Summaries: recent links get a short on-device summary under the title in the list.
• Add context: write a note on the link (with underline and text colours too), add tags, and connect it to related notes or reminders.
• Manage: long-press a link to open, share or delete it.

Read more: About the read-later list · How to read articles offline on iPhone

News

Add feeds

1. In News, open Manage Feeds from the toolbar.
2. Paste a website address (Daily Dash finds its RSS, Atom or JSON feed) or a feed URL. Only https feeds are supported.
3. Or add a Google News topic, such as “Formula 1” or “interest rates”, in your language and region. Use quotes for an exact phrase and OR to match either term.
4. Not sure where to start? Pick from the suggested feeds, such as BBC, NPR, The Guardian, The Verge, Ars Technica and Hacker News.
5. Tag feeds so you can filter by them, turn off Include in Brief for feeds that shouldn't reach Today, or switch a feed to Paused for a while. Each feed shows its story count, when it last updated, and any error fetching it.

Read

• The News tab pages through stories one day at a time. Use the arrows to move between days, or tap the date to jump to any day, with a story count for each.
• Search headlines, or filter the list by feed or by tag. The same story from several feeds shows once.
• Stories open in a reader that works offline. New stories are saved in the background, and offline copies are dropped after 7 days while the headlines stay.
• Read stories dim. Long-press a story and choose Mark as Unread to undo. The same menu has Open in Browser, Share and Tags & Connections….
• Save to Links from the reader to keep a story for good.
• Clear Old News… removes everything published before a date you choose. Cleared stories don't come back.

New-story notifications

On iPhone and iPad, background refresh can send one notification when new stories arrive, replaced by the next rather than piling up. Once For You has learned enough, it only mentions stories picked for you. Turn it off with Notify About New Stories in Settings or Manage Feeds.

For You

Daily Dash notices which stories you open, read through and keep, and trains a small model on your device. Once it has enough history it picks Today's headlines, filters new-story notifications, and powers the For You sort, with a reason shown for each story.

Read more: About the news reader · Using an RSS reader on iPhone · How to stop doomscrolling

Tags & connections

Tags are shared by everything: notes, links, reminders, news feeds, saved stories, calendar events and Apple Reminders. Add one from any item's tag row; existing tags are suggested as you type. For calendar events and Apple Reminders, long-press them on Today and choose Tags & Connections….

The Tags view lists every tag with how many items carry it. Tap a tag to see those items; its More menu renames or deletes the tag. If you create the same tag on two devices while offline, they're merged into one when they sync.

Connections go further: link any item to any other, such as a trip note to its flight reminder, the hotel link and the calendar event. Use Connect on any item and search the whole library for what to link, and Disconnect to undo. Connections appear as chips in the editor and as a count in list rows.

The Graph puts one item in the middle with everything it touches around it, and dashed lines between neighbours that are connected to each other. Tap a neighbour to walk to it, or use Go to to jump to any item. Switch to List for the same connections as a list. On iPhone the Graph opens from the button at the top of Today.

A story you save from News gets its own page in the library, with Read Article, Open in Browser, Save to Links and Remove from Library.

Read more: About tags and the graph · Second brain app for iPhone

Search & filters

• Notes: search the text and tags of your pages from the top of the list.
• Links: search titles, addresses, your notes on links, and tags.
• News: search headlines, and filter by feed or tag.
• Tags: search the tag list.
• Filter by Tag in Notes, Links and Reminders narrows each list to one tag.

Sync & devices

• Notes, links, reminders, tags, feeds, saved places and connections sync through your iCloud account.
• Calendars and Apple Reminders sync the way they always do, through the system.
• Offline copies of articles are fetched separately on each device, so every device can read offline.
• On iPhone and iPad, background refresh keeps calendar, reminders, the brief and feeds current, and sends them to your watch.

Tap the cloud icon at the top of any tab to see the sync status, when your library last synced, and any problem, such as being signed out of iCloud or iCloud storage being full. Check Again retries. If iCloud can't be opened at all, Daily Dash keeps working with a library on this device only and tells you so.

Apple Watch

The watch app shows the brief from your iPhone, today's schedule with what's on now, your reminders, and the top headlines. Open Daily Dash on your iPhone once after installing so it can send the first update.

The watch is for glancing: reminders are read-only there, so tick them off on your iPhone, iPad or Mac.

Read more: About the Apple Watch app · Apple Watch productivity tips

Keyboard shortcuts

On iPad with a keyboard and on Mac:

In the Markdown view, ⇧⌘X strikes through, ⇧⌘E highlights and ⌘K adds a link.

FAQ

Why does my brief say “Basic summary”?

Apple Intelligence wasn't available when the brief was written, for example on a device that doesn't support it or while the model downloads. The brief is rewritten with Apple Intelligence next time you open the app, if it's available.

Does Daily Dash have an account or a server?

No. Your data stays on your devices and in your own iCloud. See the privacy policy.

Why didn't my location reminder fire on my Mac?

macOS can't trigger alerts by location. Set it on any device and it will alert on your iPhone or iPad.

My notes aren't showing up on another device.

Tap the cloud icon at the top of any tab. Check that both devices are signed in to the same iCloud account and that your iCloud storage isn't full, then tap Check Again. Big changes can take a few minutes to arrive, and opening the app helps them along.

I can't check off a reminder on my watch.

The watch app is read-only for now. Tick reminders off on your iPhone, iPad or Mac.

My reminder rang like an alarm on one device but not another.

Ring as Alarm works on iPhone and iPad. On a Mac, the same reminder arrives as a normal notification.

A feed won't add.

Daily Dash only supports https feeds. Try pasting the site's home page instead of the feed so it can discover the right address.