Tercet is a to-do app with room for exactly three tasks a day — the three that make today count. They sit on your Lock Screen, everything else waits in the backlog, and finishing your three no matter what is how progress stops being a plan and starts being a habit.
Download on theApp StoreMost to-do apps let the list grow until it stops meaning anything. Tercet enforces the opposite.
Each day, choose the three tasks that would make today count. Everything else goes to the backlog, where it waits its turn instead of shouting at you.
Your three live in a Lock Screen widget and a Home Screen widget, so a glance at your phone is a glance at what matters. Tick them off from the widget. No opening apps, no scrolling.
Three done is a finished day — the app says so, with a streak and a quote worth reading. Tomorrow's three arrive when tomorrow does.
You can't swap out a finished task for a fresh one, and finishing early doesn't unlock three more. That's not a missing feature. That's the entire point.WHY TERCET IS SMALL ON PURPOSE
Kevin O'Leary tells the story of Steve Jobs asking him what three things he had to get done that day, and treating anything that got in the way of those three as noise. A century earlier, Ivy Lee sold Charles Schwab the same idea with six items written the night before. Oliver Burkeman calls it a closed list: a fixed number of slots, and nothing gets on until something comes off.
Tercet is that rule, built as an iPhone app. Three tasks a day, chosen in the morning, shown on your Lock Screen, done before the day ends. The limit isn't a setting you can raise, because the moment it moves, three becomes five, then eight, then the list you came here to escape.
Your three at a glance, before you even unlock. Tick them off right from the Home Screen.
Every day you finish all three, the flame grows. Miss a day and it starts over. Simple, honest pressure.
Complete your three and Tercet hands you a line from the Stoics, builders, and finishers — a different one every day.
Your tasks live on your phone and nowhere else. No account, no cloud, no analytics. We couldn't read your list if we wanted to.
Pick the three tasks that would make today count, do them no matter what, and let everything else wait. It is the rule Steve Jobs is said to have taught Kevin O'Leary, and a hundred years earlier the Ivy Lee method asked for six. Tercet keeps it at three and turns it into a habit you can see on your phone.
Yes. Tercet has a Lock Screen widget that shows today's three under the clock, and Home Screen widgets where you can tick tasks off without opening the app. When all three are done, the widget shows the day's quote.
It waits in the backlog. Nothing is deleted. Each morning you pick the next three from it, and small errands that don't deserve a slot can go in Small Things underneath your three.
No. The first 14 days are free with nothing held back. After that it is a single $9.99 purchase through the App Store, yours forever, with no monthly fee, no premium tier and no ads.
No account, no cloud, no analytics. Your tasks live on your iPhone and nowhere else, which is also why there is nothing to sign up for.
Any iPhone running iOS 17 or later. Lock Screen widgets are an iOS feature, so they work on every iPhone that can run the app.