Your quiet helper for the stuff life makes you forget

The four tabs

Everything in ScatteredBrain lives in one of four tabs at the bottom of the screen.

Home tab

The Home tab is your dashboard. It shows what you need to do right now, organised into three panes you switch between with the pill tabs at the top.

The three panes

Swiping task cards

Every task card is swipeable — no need to open it to act on it. What the swipe reveals depends on whether the task is still active.

Header icons

The top-right corner of the Home tab has three icons:

Quick-access chips

Below the header, four chips jump straight to the thing you need without digging through menus:

Adding tasks

Tap the purple + button (bottom right of the Home tab) to open QuickCapture — a fast input sheet designed to get something out of your head in under 10 seconds.

QuickCapture

1. 1
   Type what's on your mind

   Just dump it — "call dentist", "buy birthday gift", "pay electricity bill". Don't worry about formatting.
2. 2
   Pick a time chip

   Tap Now, 1h, Tonight, or Tomorrow — or tap the schedule card to pick a custom date and time.
3. 3
   Set a priority (optional)

   Low / Medium / High chips appear below the time row. Tap one if it matters — otherwise leave it as Low.
4. 4
   Tap Capture

   The task is saved immediately and appears in the right time slot on your dashboard.

More options — the full task form

Tap More options at the bottom of QuickCapture to open the full AddTask form. By default it shows just the three essentials:

Tap More options inside the full form to expand everything else:

Completing tasks

Tap the circle on the right side of any task card, or swipe right, to mark it done. What happens next is designed to feel like a small celebration.

The drum roll

Every time you complete a task, the phone plays a short haptic drum roll — light taps building to a single heavy impact — followed by a chime. It's a small ritual that makes completion feel earned rather than administrative.

Log as a win?

After completing any task, a toast nudge appears at the bottom of the screen for four seconds:

Wins are for the completions that feel significant — not every task needs to be logged. The nudge auto-dismisses if you ignore it.

Log to Activity? (recurring tasks)

If the task you just completed is a recurring one — a weekly gym session, a daily water target — a second toast appears alongside the win nudge:

Recurring tasks

Any task can be set to repeat. Tap More options when adding a task and choose a frequency.

Deleting a recurring task

When you swipe to delete a recurring task, the app asks:

"This event only" removes just the one occurrence. "Entire series" removes all future instances.

Bills & Renewals

ScatteredBrain includes a built-in recurring activity scheduler for the bills and renewals that come around every year without fail — electricity, internet, car insurance, income tax. Instead of creating these as recurring tasks manually, the app offers to schedule them for you.

The annual scheduling prompt

When you open the app and there are bills or renewals not yet scheduled for the current year, a sheet appears automatically. It shows every enabled activity with how many tasks it would add and when.

1. 1
   Select what to schedule

   All enabled activities are pre-checked. Deselect anything you handle differently or don't want on your task list.
2. 2
   Tap "Add to [year]" or "Schedule remaining months"

   If it's already mid-year, the button reads "Schedule remaining [Month]–Dec" so only the months still ahead are created — not the ones already past.
3. 3
   Tasks appear on your dashboard

   Each bill or renewal is added as a regular task on its due date, where it can be completed, snoozed, or rescheduled like any other task.

Built-in activities

AI prompts for bills

In the AI Quick-Add view (tap the AI button in QuickCapture), typing keywords like "pay", "bill", "insurance", "renewal", or "service my car" shows a row of chips for common recurring activities. Tap one to pre-fill the task input with the right title and category.

Managing the list — Annual Tasks screen

Open ⋯ More → Annual Tasks from the Home tab to see and edit every recurring activity — one row per task, showing what it is and when it's due.

1. 1
   Tap a row to edit it

   Change the title, emoji, priority, how often it repeats (yearly, every 3 months, or monthly), and the month and day it falls on.
2. 2
   Tap + to add your own

   Not everything is a bill — anything that comes around every year works: a passport renewal, a pet's vaccination, an annual check-up.
3. 3
   Swipe to disable or delete

   Built-in activities can be switched off but not removed — swipe to toggle. Your own custom ones can be deleted outright.

AI Quick-Add

Type naturally and let the app figure out the task, date, and priority. No special syntax — just say it like you'd say it to a friend.

How to access it

Tap the purple + FAB → QuickCapture opens → tap the AI button in the top right corner of the sheet. The view switches to a text-first input with suggested prompt chips.

1. 1
   Type what you need to do

   "Pay rent tomorrow morning urgent", "book dentist next Tuesday", "call mum this evening".
2. 2
   The app reads it

   Dates, times, priorities, and task names are extracted on-device. A preview shows what was detected before anything is saved.
3. 3
   Review and confirm

   Adjust anything in the preview card, then tap Save. The AI is a first draft, not a final answer.

On-device vs. cloud AI

Adding notes with @notes

Need to capture some context along with the task — a phone number, what to ask about, a link? Type @notes anywhere in your sentence, and everything after it is saved as the task's notes instead of being parsed as part of the task itself.

For a birthday or special date rather than a task, use the dedicated quick-add on the People tab instead — see below.

Brain Dump

The teal 🎙️ button stacked above the + on the Today tab lets you talk instead of type. Ramble out everything on your mind in one go — several unrelated to-dos, a birthday you just remembered, whatever — and it comes back as a reviewable list, not a single garbled task.

Recording

1. 1
   Tap the mic button

   The app grants itself Microphone and Speech Recognition permission on first use, then starts listening. Your words appear on screen as you speak.
2. 2
   Say everything at once

   "Call the bank about the dispute, pick up dry cleaning tomorrow, and today is Anayna's birthday" — one breath, three different things, no need to separate them into different app screens.
3. 3
   Tap stop

   The transcript is handed to whichever AI engine is active in Settings — see the callout below — and comes back as a summary plus a reviewable list.

Reviewing before anything saves

Nothing is written to your tasks or contacts until you tap Add These. Before that:

Ask Siri instead of opening the app

ScatteredBrain adds an Add Birthday Siri Shortcut the moment it's installed — no setup screen to visit. Just talk to Siri directly:

People tab

The People tab is a relationship manager — not just a birthday calendar. It tracks everyone's special dates and also surfaces any tasks you've added that relate to that person.

Adding a person

1. 1
   Tap + in the top right

   The app shows contact suggestions from your phone's Contacts app. Tap a chip to pre-fill the name and phone number, or enter manually.
2. 2
   Add special dates

   Tap Add Date to add a birthday, anniversary, engagement, pet birthday, or custom occasion. Multiple dates per person are supported.
3. 3
   Add relationships (optional)

   Link the person to a relative — e.g. a "Spouse" relationship with their own birthday. One contact card can track an entire family.

Quick-add with the 🎂 button

For a fast one-line entry, tap the pink 🎂 floating button at the bottom right of the People tab. It's built around typing as little as possible — a bare name is enough.

Viewing a contact's details

Tap anywhere on a contact row to open their detail view. It shows:

On a person's birthday

Notes tab

The Notes tab is your personal logbook — five purpose-built sections for everything that doesn't fit neatly into tasks.

Wins journal

The Wins journal tracks a streak — how many consecutive days you've logged at least one win. After completing a task, a 🏆 Log as a win? nudge appears at the bottom of the screen for four seconds. Tap Log it and the journal opens pre-filled with the task name, ready to save with one tap.

Activity Log

The Activity tab is a quick daily record for recurring physical and personal habits — without needing a separate tracker app. Log exercise, sleep, water intake, and custom activities in a few taps.

Logging an entry

1. 1
   Tap the Activity tab

   Or tap Track it on the habit nudge toast that appears after completing a recurring task — it takes you directly here.
2. 2
   Pick a category

   Built-in types: 🏋️ Gym, 🏃 Run, 🚶 Walk, 🏊 Swim, 🚴 Cycle, ⚽ Sport, 🧘 Yoga, 😴 Sleep, 💧 Water, 🧘‍♂️ Meditation, and more — or create a custom one.
3. 3
   Add quantity and a note (optional)

   "30 min run, felt sluggish" — then tap Log. The entry is added with today's date and time.

The Activity view shows your recent entries and streak counts per category so you can see patterns over time at a glance.

Lock Screen widget

ScatteredBrain includes a lock screen widget that shows your next upcoming task with a countdown — glanceable without unlocking your phone.

Adding the widget

1. 1
   Long-press your Lock Screen

   Tap Customise and then the widget area below the clock.
2. 2
   Tap the + button

   Search for ScatteredBrain.
3. 3
   Choose a widget size

   Rectangular (title + time), Circular (countdown ring), or Inline (one-line title).

Backup & Restore

Since everything lives on your phone, a backup is your only safety net. ScatteredBrain does this automatically and also lets you do it manually.

Automatic backups

The app saves a rolling backup every 6 hours whenever you use it. It keeps the 5 most recent backups.

Creating a manual backup

1. 1
   Open Settings (⋯ More → Settings)

   From the Home tab, tap the ⋯ icon in the top right, then Settings.
2. 2
   Scroll to Backup → Create Backup

   The app generates a ScatteredBrain-Backup-YYYY-MM-DD.json file.
3. 3
   Tap Share Backup File

   Save to iCloud Drive, email it to yourself, or AirDrop to your Mac — anywhere outside the phone.

Restoring from a backup

1. 1
   Settings → Restore from Backup

   Opens the iOS file picker.
2. 2
   Navigate to your backup file

   For an auto-backup: Browse → On My iPhone → ScatteredBrain → Backups. For a manual one, wherever you saved it.
3. 3
   Tap the file

   The app shows a summary of what was found. Import is additive — it never overwrites data already on the device.

Settings

Open Settings from the Home tab: tap the ⋯ More icon in the top right, then Settings. Everything is grouped into six collapsible panels — tap a panel's header to expand it — so the screen isn't one long scroll of every option at once.

Subscribe Calendars

Under Calendar & Birthdays → Subscribe Calendars, toggle on any of ten built-in calendars — their events show as banners on your dashboard when they're due. Fixed dates (like public holidays) work fully offline; the ones below with dates that move every year refresh automatically the first time you open the app in a new calendar year.

Tips & tricks

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