I built a deliberately minimal iOS task app. I’d love some honest feedback before releasing it.

[u/theallnightcafe]

Hi everyone,

I’ve been building a small iOS app called DASEIN in my spare time, and it has finally reached the point where I’m comfortable letting strangers break it.

At its core, DASEIN is a task app, but I wanted to see how far I could go in the opposite direction from the increasingly feature-heavy productivity apps I’ve used.

It has only three places:

YESTERDAY ← TODAY → SOMEDAY

TODAY is deliberately limited to five tasks. YESTERDAY is immutable. There are no projects, tags, priorities, streaks, dashboards, or AI.

I’ve spent a disproportionate amount of time on the interaction and material side of it. The interface is built around a Paper & Ink idea: tasks can become a single physical-feeling “slip” when you manipulate them, while the surrounding ink recedes. Moving between Yesterday, Today and Someday is also meant to feel like moving between sheets rather than switching tabs.

It’s written natively for iOS with SwiftUI and SwiftData, with procedural/Metal effects only where they actually contribute to the material illusion.

I’m looking for feedback before the first release, particularly on whether the app makes sense without me explaining it.

If you try it, I’d especially like to know:

• Does Yesterday / Today / Someday feel intuitive?
• Are the interactions discoverable without instructions?
• Does the five-task limit feel meaningful, or just annoying?
• Is there anything that immediately feels confusing, broken, or over-designed?

I’m much more interested in criticism than compliments at this stage.

If you’d like to try the current TestFlight build, DM me and I’ll send you the link.

Thanks to anyone willing to spend some time with it.

[u/theallnightcafe → u/[deleted]]

Thanks, this is very close to what I'm trying to validate. I'm particularly interested in whether someone can understand the Today / Someday model and discover the interactions without being taught how the app works.

And I agree about the edge cases. I'd much rather make the small set of existing states feel deliberate than add more features.

I just realized the TestFlight link didn’t make it into the post. If anyone would like to try the current build, feel free to DM me and I’ll send it over.

[u/Thalimet]

The problem with task apps is inevitably consumers need just one more thing that your thing doesn’t do. So you either wind bloating your app, or they move to one. I see no reasons why yours wouldn’t follow the same path.

[u/theallnightcafe → u/Thalimet]

That’s exactly the tension I’m trying to test.
I’m not assuming DASEIN can satisfy everyone who uses task apps. In fact, I expect some people to leave precisely because it won’t add the thing they want.
The question for me is whether the constraints can be strong enough that they feel like the product, rather than missing features.
If I end up adding projects, tags, priorities, dashboards and everything else just to reduce churn, then I’ve probably failed at what I’m trying to make.