Most people end up running three separate apps to feel on top of their day: a task manager to capture what needs doing, a timer to actually get it done, and a habit tracker to keep the small daily things from slipping. Three apps means three places to check, three streaks to maintain, and three systems that know nothing about each other.
A single daily loop covers most of that ground on its own: capture what needs doing and sort it, focus on it without distraction, and keep the daily habits that carry over from one day to the next. Gratodo was built around that loop, combining a GTD-style task list, a Pomodoro focus timer, and a habit tracker in one native app for iPhone and iPad.
Why These Three Belong Together
Each piece solves a different failure mode on its own:
- Task capture (GTD) solves forgetting. Nothing falls through the cracks because everything lives in a list you sort, not your memory.
- Focus timing (Pomodoro) solves distraction. You work in protected sessions instead of half-attention all day.
- Habits solve inconsistency. The small things you do daily show up as a streak you can see, not a good intention you meant to keep.
Used separately, they’re three good habits. Used together, they form a loop: you capture what matters, you focus on the highest-priority item, and you keep the daily habits that make tomorrow’s capture easier than today’s. That loop is the whole idea behind Gratodo’s product page.
Walking Through the Daily Loop
1. Capture: the To Do tab
Everything starts as a task. Whatever crosses your mind, an idea, an errand, a work item, gets captured in Quick Note first and sorted after, not while you’re still deciding where it belongs.
- Quick Note takes free text and turns each line into a task you sort afterward, not in the moment.
- Six real categories, Next action, Calendar, Project, Waiting for, Someday, Reference, cover the actual shapes GTD tasks take, plus high, medium, and low priority.
- A two-minute hint sits right inside Quick Note: if something takes under two minutes, do it now instead of filing it.
This is the same discipline behind the GTD method: get it out of your head first, organize it second.
2. Focus: the Pomodoro tab
Once you know what you’re working on, Gratodo’s Focus tab takes over:
- Two presets, Work (45 minutes on, 5 off, a long break every 4 rounds) and Study (25 on, 5 off), so the timer matches the kind of task in front of you.
- Break reminders that get you to actually step away, instead of grinding through.
- Daily targets of 10 sessions for Work and 4 for Study give you a number, not just a vague sense of having worked today.
- A Live Activity keeps the countdown on your Lock Screen and in the Dynamic Island, so you don’t have to reopen the app to check the time left.
This is the same idea covered in our Pomodoro Technique guide, built into the same app that holds your task list, so starting a session on a task takes one tap.
3. Habits: what carries over
Instead of a journal, the loop closes with the Habits tab: a set of small commitments that repeat day after day.
- Four habit types, daily, fixed weekdays, a number of times per week, or a quantity with a unit like 8 glasses of water, cover most recurring commitments.
- A tap to check in, with each habit shown as a bubble that grows as the streak grows, so a good week is something you notice at a glance.
- A detail view on long press shows the current streak, the best streak, and a month grid for that one habit.
The Loop, at a Glance
| Stage | What you do | What it solves |
|---|---|---|
| Capture | Add tasks in Quick Note, sort into categories | Nothing gets forgotten |
| Focus | Pick a Work or Study session, work distraction-free | Nothing gets half-attention |
| Habits | Check in on today’s habits | Small things stop slipping |
| Review | Check the Grateful home cards | You see the pattern, not just the day |
Widgets and the Grateful Home: Closing the Loop Without Opening the App
Two features tie the daily loop together without adding friction:
Interactive Home Screen widgets let you check off today’s tasks straight from your Home Screen, no need to open the app just to mark something done. A Lock Screen widget shows a daily quote so the app has a presence beyond its icon.
The Grateful home tab turns the week into a pattern instead of a stack of separate days. It opens with a daily quote you can pick a category for (from options like Philosophy, Wealth, or General), then a deck of statistic cards you flick through: habit streaks, a habit heatmap, GTD categories and throughput, and your Pomodoro rhythm for the week.
A Day in the Loop
To make the loop concrete, here’s roughly how it plays out in practice:
- Morning: Open Gratodo, check the daily quote on the Grateful home, and glance at To Do for anything captured overnight.
- Start of work: Sort Quick Note, two-minute tasks get done immediately, everything else lands in a category.
- Mid-morning: Pick the highest-priority task, start a Work session, and let the timer handle the rest, no clock-watching required.
- Afternoon: Switch to Study sessions for lighter tasks, checking items off directly from the Home Screen widget between meetings.
- Evening: Check in on today’s habits, then look at the statistic cards to see how today added to the week.
None of these steps require leaving the app or remembering to log anything separately. The loop is the app’s structure, not an extra layer of discipline on top of it.
Built to Stay Out of Your Way
None of this works if the app itself becomes another source of friction, so Gratodo is built around a few constraints:
- No account, no cloud sync: your tasks, habits, and focus sessions live on your device.
- One-time $4.99: no subscription, no ads, no feature paywalled behind a recurring fee.
- Native on iPhone and iPad, with hand-tuned light and dark palettes.
Getting Started
- Capture everything on your mind into Quick Note, don’t sort yet, just get it down.
- Sort the quick two-minute items on the spot, and everything else into a category.
- Pick one task and start a Work or Study session that matches the effort it needs.
- Check in on a habit or two, and glance at the Grateful home to see the week taking shape.
The goal was never to build three separate habits you have to maintain in parallel. It’s one calm loop that reinforces itself: capture reduces overwhelm, focus produces real progress, and a checked-in habit is one less thing you have to remember tomorrow. If that loop sounds like something your day is missing, Gratodo is a one-time $4.99, with everything included from the start.