Daily Focus

An opinionated iOS productivity app built around one idea: three tasks a day, nothing more.

Daily Focus is a native iOS application that enforces a hard limit of three focus tasks per day. The constraint is intentional — the app is designed to push you to be selective about what actually matters, rather than maintaining an endless to-do list. When your three tasks are done, you're done.

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Screenshots

        

_{Onboarding                  Focus – Dark               Focus – Light               Add Task}

     

_{Calendar – Dark              Calendar – Light              Task Detail}

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Features

Focus Tab

• 3-task daily limit — enforced at every entry point with a clear error message if you hit the ceiling
• Task states — each task is automatically classified as In Focus (the first uncompleted task), Next Up, or Completed, with distinct visual styling for each
• Priority sorting — tasks are sorted High → Medium → Low; tasks of equal priority keep their original insertion order (stable sort)
• Completion toggle — tap the action icon on any card to mark it complete / incomplete
• Swipe to delete — standard iOS trailing swipe on any task card
• Carried-over tag — tasks flagged as carried over from a previous day show an orange "CARRIED OVER" badge
• Overview card — animated circular progress ring in the header shows how many of today's tasks are done, with a live "X of Y" count
• Completion celebration — full-screen confetti animation (DotLottie) fires when all tasks are marked complete; plays only once per day
• Empty state — first-launch onboarding screen with brand copy, three bento-style step cards, and a gradient CTA button
• Add task sheet — centred modal overlay with a text field, Low / Medium / High priority selector, All Day toggle, and start / end time pickers

Calendar Tab

• Monthly calendar grid — navigate by month; shows priority-coloured task stripes beneath each date
  • Blue (high priority), amber (medium), green (low)
  • Selected day rendered as a filled accent-coloured rounded square
  • Today (when not selected) rendered with accent-coloured number text
• Month navigation — left/right chevron pill to step between months
• Month header — large month name with year and "X Tasks Completed" subtitle, computed live from the displayed month's data
• Day agenda — tapping any date updates the "Focus for {Month Day}" panel below the grid, listing that day's tasks with a left priority border, icon box, title, time range, and a circle completion toggle
• Add task FAB — floating "+" button appears when the selected day has fewer than 3 tasks
• Swipe to delete on any calendar task card
• Task detail sheet — tap any card to edit title, priority, all-day flag, and start/end times

Cross-Cutting

• Light & Dark mode — entire colour system defined as adaptive UIColor instances in AppTheme; no hard-coded colours anywhere in UI code
• Appearance toggle — side drawer lets you switch between light and dark regardless of the system setting, persisted across launches
• Side tools drawer — slides in from either screen edge via a drag gesture; remembers which edge and vertical position between sessions; contains the appearance toggle and a daily reset button
• Auto midnight refresh — listens for UIApplication.significantTimeChangeNotification and refreshes both tabs when the calendar day rolls over
• Data migration — PersistenceManager automatically upgrades the old flat-array storage format to the current day-keyed dictionary format, and fills in default values for any missing fields from earlier model versions

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Tech Stack

Layer	Technology
Language	Swift 5
UI Framework	UIKit — 100% programmatic Auto Layout, zero Storyboards or XIBs
Reactive bindings	Combine (@Published + sink for ViewModel → ViewController)
Animation	Core Animation (CAShapeLayer, CAGradientLayer, CABasicAnimation)
Lottie animation	DotLottie iOS SDK
Persistence	UserDefaults + JSONEncoder / JSONDecoder
Minimum deployment	iOS 16
Architecture	MVVM — TaskViewModel owns data and business logic; ViewControllers own layout and interaction

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What I Learned

Building this project end-to-end without Interface Builder was a genuine deep dive into UIKit. Key takeaways:

• Programmatic Auto Layout at scale — chaining complex constraint trees across custom UIView subclasses, using intrinsicContentSize, contentCompressionResistancePriority, and UIStackView axes to avoid ambiguity without magic numbers
• CALayer-based custom drawing — building the circular progress ring entirely with CAShapeLayer + CABasicAnimation, and compositing CAGradientLayer onto a UIButton with correct frame lifecycle (layoutSubviews for gradient resizing)
• Combine in practice — connecting a @Published array in the ViewModel to the ViewController with sink, handling thread dispatch back to main, and managing AnyCancellable lifetime with Set<AnyCancellable>
• Stable sort in Swift — Swift's Array.sorted is stable (documented since Swift 5), making it safe to sort by priority while preserving relative insertion order within priority groups
• UICollectionView for a calendar grid — driving a 7-column month grid with UICollectionViewFlowLayout, computing leading padding cells for the first weekday, and dynamically updating the height constraint as the number of rows changes between 5 and 6
• Screen-edge pan gestures — combining UIScreenEdgePanGestureRecognizer with UIPanGestureRecognizer for the side drawer, with axis-locking logic to distinguish a horizontal open gesture from a vertical reposition drag
• UserDefaults data migration — writing forward-compatible Decodable init(from:) with decodeIfPresent so existing users' data survives model changes without a separate migration script
• DotLottie integration — embedding a .lottie bundle file and loading it at runtime via the DotLottie Swift SDK, with proper play/pause lifecycle tied to the view hierarchy
• Semantic colour system — defining every colour as a UIColor { traitCollection in ... } closure in a single AppTheme enum so every view automatically responds to dark/light mode transitions

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Project Structure

Daily Focus/
├── App/
│   ├── AppDelegate.swift          # UIApplicationDelegate, appearance applied at launch
│   └── SceneDelegate.swift        # UIWindowScene setup
│
├── Model/
│   └── FocusTask.swift            # FocusTask struct, TaskPriority enum, TaskFormPayload
│
├── ViewModel/
│   ├── TaskViewModel.swift        # Business logic, Combine @Published tasks, stable sort
│   └── TaskError.swift            # LocalizedError cases: limitReached, emptyTitle
│
├── View/
│   ├── MainTabBarController.swift            # Root tab bar (Focus + Calendar tabs)
│   │
│   ├── ── Focus Tab ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
│   ├── TaskListViewController.swift          # Main focus screen; Combine binding to ViewModel
│   ├── TaskListHeaderView.swift              # Overview card + CircularProgressView
│   ├── TaskListFooterView.swift              # "Add New Focus" pill button + message label
│   ├── TaskCardCell.swift                    # UITableViewCell; TaskDisplayState styling
│   ├── EmptyStateView.swift                  # First-launch onboarding / empty state
│   ├── CompletionCelebrationView.swift       # DotLottie confetti overlay
│   │
│   ├── ── Calendar Tab ──────────────────────────────────────────────────────
│   ├── CalendarViewController.swift          # Month + day agenda, FAB, data persistence
│   ├── MonthCalendarView.swift               # UICollectionView month grid + Stitch header
│   ├── CalendarEventCell.swift               # Stitch-style calendar task card
│   ├── TaskCalendarDetailViewController.swift # Edit/delete sheet for calendar tasks
│   │
│   ├── ── Shared ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
│   ├── AddTaskSheetView.swift         # Centred modal overlay for adding tasks
│   ├── TaskFormView.swift             # Reusable form (title, priority, timing)
│   └── SideToolsDrawerView.swift      # Edge-pinned drawer (appearance toggle + reset)
│
├── Service/
│   ├── PersistenceManager.swift           # UserDefaults JSON read/write + migration
│   └── PersistenceManagerProtocol.swift   # Protocol for testability
│
├── Theme/
│   ├── AppTheme.swift             # All adaptive UIColor tokens
│   └── AppearanceManager.swift    # Light/dark preference, persisted, broadcast via NotificationCenter
│
├── Utilities/
│   └── DayKey.swift               # "yyyy-MM-dd" string ↔ Date helpers
│
├── Resources/
│   └── Confetti.lottie            # DotLottie animation file
│
└── SCREENS/                       # App screenshots and animation preview
    ├── 01-onboarding.png
    ├── 02-add-task.png
    ├── 03-focus-dark.png
    ├── 04-focus-light.png
    ├── 05-task-detail.png
    ├── 06-calendar-light.png
    └── 08-confetti.gif
    └── 07-calendar-dark.png

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Getting Started

Prerequisites

• Xcode 15 or later
• iOS 16+ device or simulator
• Swift Package Manager (dependencies resolve automatically on first build)

Install & Run

git clone https://github.com/<your-username>/daily-focus.git
cd daily-focus
open "Daily Focus.xcodeproj"

Select a simulator or connected device and press ⌘R.

No API keys, no backend, no configuration needed. All data lives in the app's local UserDefaults sandbox.

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Dependencies

Package	Purpose
dotlottie-ios	Confetti animation on all-tasks-complete

Managed via Swift Package Manager — Xcode resolves it automatically.

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Project Status

This project is feature-complete from the author's perspective. I am no longer actively developing or adding new features. The codebase is stable and all the functionality I set out to build is done.

That said, contributions are very welcome! If you spot a bug, have an idea, or want to extend the app, feel free to open a pull request or an issue. Some directions that could be interesting:

• iCloud / CloudKit sync
• Home screen widget
• Local notifications / reminders for scheduled tasks
• Haptic feedback on completion
• iPad adaptive layout
• Unit & UI tests for TaskViewModel and PersistenceManager
• Accessibility improvements (VoiceOver labels, Dynamic Type support)

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Contributing

1. Fork the repository
2. Create a feature branch: git checkout -b feature/your-idea
3. Commit your changes: git commit -m 'Add your feature'
4. Push to the branch: git push origin feature/your-idea
5. Open a pull request

Please keep PRs focused — one feature or fix per PR makes review much easier.

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License

This project is available under the MIT License.

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Built with UIKit, Combine, and the conviction that three tasks a day is enough.