Matter
MaciPhone

Support

A few answers first, then the full User Guide. It is the same guide that ships inside the app, under Help.

Reach us

A contact address will be listed here before Matter is on the App Store.

Common questions

Does Matter work offline?
Yes, completely. Tasks, notes, the daily log and the calendar you have already fetched all work with no connection. Two things use the network when it is there: iCloud, to keep your own devices in step, and the calendar feeds you subscribe to.
Where is my data kept?
On your devices. Matter has no account system and no server of ours. Your devices keep in step through your private iCloud database, and nothing is sent to us.
My Mac and iPhone are not in step.
Both need to be signed in to the same iCloud account. Settings ▸ General shows when iCloud last synced, and the reason if it did not. On a metered connection, such as a personal hotspot, uploads can wait a few minutes.
How do I bring my calendar in?
Matter reads calendars as iCal feeds. In Settings ▸ Calendars, paste the feed link your calendar provider gives you: a read-only iCal link, which can start with webcal. It has to be the feed itself, not the address of the calendar’s web page. Matter only reads the feed and never writes back.
Do I need the Mac app to use the iPhone app?
No. The iPhone app keeps its own copy of your tasks, calendar, notes and daily log, and works on its own. The guide below is written for the Mac, so a few steps name controls the phone lays out differently.
What does Matter need?
macOS 26 on the Mac, and iOS 26.5 on the iPhone.

User Guide

Welcome to Matter

Matter is a calm, local-first place for your tasks and time. Everything you create lives on your Mac — there are no accounts to make, and nothing is uploaded to us.

This guide walks through each part of the app. Use the sidebar to jump to a topic, or read straight through.

The main surfaces

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Tasks — your board of things to do, with a live view of how the day's plan fits your time.

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Calendar — your days and events, from calendar feeds you subscribe to.

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Notes — a block-based space for longer thinking, organized into folders.

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Standup — a free-form daily log for reflection, one entry per day.

Getting started

1.

Open Tasks and add a few things you need to do with the + button.

2.

Set your work hours and daily focus limit in Settings ▸ Day so the capacity bar reflects your real day.

3.

Give tasks an estimate so Matter can tell you whether the day actually fits.

4.

Explore the rest — subscribe to a calendar, jot a note, or write today's standup.

Tasks

The Tasks board is Matter's home. It shows your open work in two columns — Today and Upcoming — with completed items kept in view for the day you finish them.

Creating and editing

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Click + in the toolbar (or New task in the header) to create a task.

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A task has a title, an optional day and time, an estimate in minutes, and any number of tags. Only the title is required.

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Click any task row to open the editor. Changes save as you make them.

Scheduling a task

Pick a day for the task, and optionally a time. If you set a time, the task is pinned there. If you leave the time empty, Matter auto-places it within your day's available time.

Completing, reopening, and pushing

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Click the circle on a row to mark it done. Click a done task to reopen it.

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Hover a row and use the + menu to push a task to tomorrow, out a few days, or to next week.

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If you keep pushing the same task, Matter asks you to confirm — a gentle nudge that it may need rethinking.

Archiving and deleting

Deleting a task moves it to the Archive rather than destroying it, so it can be recovered. Open the Archive from the toolbar to restore or permanently remove items.

Tags on the board

A task appears under each tag it carries. The Today column groups rows by tag, with each group showing the tag's color and its total estimated time. Untagged tasks appear under No tag.

Tracking time

Drag a task onto the work bucket at the bottom of the sidebar to start timing it. It stays there on every page. See Capacity & Scheduling for how tracked time feeds your day's budget.

Finding a task

Use Quick find tasks… at the top of the board to filter by title.

Capacity & Scheduling

Matter doesn't just list tasks — it tells you whether they fit. The capacity engine compares the time you've planned against the time you actually have, and warns you before the day is overcommitted.

Your day's shape

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Work hours — the window your day runs in (by default 8am–8pm). Only time inside this window counts.

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Focus limit — a daily budget for focused work (by default 6 hours). It's a soft cap: you can plan past it, but Matter flags it.

Set both in Settings ▸ Day, along with whether a full day refuses new work or only says so.

The capacity bar

The sidebar shows today's plan as a bar — green while you're under budget, orange when over. It reads out how much free time is left, or how far over you've gone.

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When the day is over-planned, a Push … to tomorrow button appears to defer just enough work to fit.

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A compact capacity chip lives in the toolbar. Hover it for a breakdown of worked, planned, and free time — both for the whole day and from now onward.

The today gate

When you give a task an estimate that won't fit today, the editor says so — Doesn't fit today — and offers to move it to the soonest day that has room.

Auto-placement

Tasks without a set time are placed automatically into the earliest open slot that fits their estimate, working around anything you've pinned to a specific time.

Events that count

Calendar feeds can be set to count toward your load. When on, their events consume capacity just like tasks. When off, they're shown as context but don't affect your budget. Toggle this per feed in Settings ▸ Calendars.

Templates & Recurring Work

Templates turn work you do again and again into a single click. Each template carries a cadence, an estimate, and a set of tags, and spawns real tasks when you apply it.

Creating a template

1.

Open the Templates drawer from the toolbar.

2.

Choose a cadence — Daily, Weekly, or Monthly.

3.

Click Add new and fill in the title, estimate, and tags. Weekly templates let you pick which day of the week.

Applying templates

Each cadence section has an Apply button that materializes its tasks for the current period — today for daily, this week for weekly, this month for monthly.

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A red dot marks a template not yet applied this period.

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A green checkmark means it's already applied — applying again won't create duplicates.

What spawned tasks inherit

Tasks created from a template start with the template's estimate and tags, and behave like any other task from then on — you can reschedule, retag, or complete them freely.

Tags

Tags are how you group and color your work. A task can carry several tags, and the board organizes around them.

Managing tags

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Open Settings ▸ Tags to add a tag or edit an existing one.

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Each tag has a label, a color, and an order number that controls where its group sits on the board.

Applying tags

In a task's editor, use the tag picker to toggle any of your tags on or off. On the Today column, tasks are grouped under each tag they carry, with the group showing the tag color and its total estimated time.

Calendar & Subscriptions

Matter can bring your external calendars in alongside your tasks by subscribing to iCal (ICS) feeds. Events are read-only mirrors of the feed — Matter never edits or writes back to your calendar provider.

Subscribing to a feed

1.

Open Settings ▸ Calendars.

2.

Enter a name and the feed's iCal URL (starting with https://), then click Add. The feed is fetched right away.

3.

Pick a color for the feed, and decide whether it should count toward your load.

Managing feeds

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Toggle a feed off to stop syncing it without deleting it.

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Refresh all forces a live re-fetch and shows the last sync time.

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Deleting a feed removes all of its events from the board and the Calendar page.

How syncing works

Matter syncs on a periodic timer, when the app becomes active, and whenever you hit Refresh. It keeps a rolling window of roughly a month back and a month ahead, and expands repeating events (including edited single occurrences) so they land on the right days.

The Calendar page

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Switch between daily and weekly views. Days and hours form a grid, with events and scheduled tasks drawn as blocks.

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Use the ‹ › arrows to move between days or weeks; past days fade so the week reads as a record.

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Click an event to see its details — title, time, location, and description — in a read-only sheet.

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You can tag an event or start a work session on it, just like a task.

Notes

Notes is a space for longer thinking — a list of notes on the left, a rich block editor on the right. Notes can be filed into folders or left unfiled.

Organizing notes

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Click New note to start one; it opens in the editor immediately.

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Create folders and drag notes into them to file them. Unfiled notes collect under Unfiled.

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The list is searchable by title and by the text inside a note.

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Deleting a note is a soft delete — recover it later from the archive.

The block editor

Notes (and Standup) share a block-based editor. Every line is a block you can restyle and rearrange:

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Block types: paragraph, headings, bulleted and numbered items, and checkable to-do items.

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Indent with Tab and outdent with Shift+Tab to build nested structure.

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Inline formatting: bold, italic, strikethrough, underline, and inline code.

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Links: paste a URL and it becomes a clickable link.

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Date chips: type @ to pick a date and drop in a date token.

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Keyboard: arrow keys move between blocks, Return splits a block, and Backspace at the start of a line merges it upward.

Your edits save automatically a moment after you stop typing.

Standup

Standup is a daily reflective log — one entry per day — built for a quick check-in with yourself. It uses the same block editor as Notes.

A day's entry

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Click Add today to create today's entry if it doesn't exist yet.

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Each entry is organized around a few fixed prompts, and each prompt has its own editable block area.

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Past days are listed newest-first in the sidebar; select one to revisit it.

Notifications

The bell in the toolbar is Matter's in-app inbox. It collects reminders and app events, and can also surface them as macOS notifications if you allow it.

Using the inbox

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Click the bell to open the inbox. A badge appears when you have unread items.

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Unread items show a colored dot and bold text; click a row to toggle it read or unread.

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Use Mark all read to clear the unread state at once.

System alerts

If you turn on reminders, Matter can also post macOS notifications so you see them outside the app. If permission is off, the inbox offers a shortcut to enable it in System Settings — the in-app inbox keeps working either way.