Install Onplana Tasks for Mac

All plansMember

Onplana Tasks for Mac keeps your work one keystroke away all day. It lives in the menu bar with your open-task count beside it, shows everything assigned to you across every project, lets you add a task from any app with a global shortcut, and tells you the moment an AI agent needs your input.

It’s a companion, not a replacement: the heavy planning (Gantt, dependencies, governance) stays in the web app, one click away.

Install

Install it from the Mac App Store or download it from onplana.com. Both are the same app with the same sign-in. The download updates itself as soon as a release is out; the Mac App Store copy is updated by the App Store.

From the Mac App Store

Open Onplana Tasks on the Mac App Store and choose Get.
Open it from Applications or Launchpad and sign in.

As a download

Download the app from onplana.com/download.
Open the DMG and drag Onplana Tasks into Applications.
Launch it from Applications and sign in.

The download is signed and notarized, so macOS opens it with no security warning. The app runs natively on Apple silicon and Intel Macs, and needs macOS 13 Ventura or later.

Using the app without an account, inviting people, starting a new project and opening a project in Onplana Schedule need version 0.3.39 or later.

Updates

The downloaded Mac app updates itself. It checks on its own, and when a new version is ready it downloads it, applies it, and relaunches, so there is nothing to download again and no reinstall.

To check on the spot, open Settings → About and choose Check for updates. The same panel shows the version you are running. A copy installed from the Mac App Store is updated by the App Store instead, and shows no update control.

Every update is signed, and the app verifies that signature before installing. If verification fails you will see:

This update failed its signature check and was not installed. Please report this.

That is a fault on our side rather than yours, and retrying will not clear it, so please do report it.

The other message you might see is:

Onplana Tasks could not replace itself. Move it to your Applications folder, or ask an admin to update it.

An app can only replace itself if it is somewhere it is allowed to write. This usually means it is still running from your Downloads folder or from the disk image, so drag it into Applications and try again. On a Mac managed by your employer the location may be locked and updates handled centrally, in which case your IT admin needs to push the new version.

Click Sign in. macOS asks whether Onplana Tasks may use onplana.com to sign in; choose Continue, and a sign-in window opens on onplana.com for you to approve access. Your password is only ever typed on onplana.com, never into the app. If you are already signed in to Onplana in Safari, you are not asked for it again. The app receives a scoped access token that can read and update your tasks and projects, nothing else, and stores it in the macOS Keychain.

The sign-in appears as Onplana Tasks on Mac under Settings → Connections → Your Onplana apps in the web app, separate from any Windows or browser-extension sign-in, so you can sign each device out on its own.

Use it without an account

You can use the app before you have an Onplana account. On the first screen, choose Use without an account. The app remembers the choice and opens on a task list kept on this Mac. Add tasks in plain language, from the app or with Cmd+Shift+Space, complete and snooze them, change their priority and due date, pin them to My Day, and get due-date reminders.

Your tasks are kept only on this Mac, in the app’s own data folder. Settings shows them under On this device, with Copy all, which puts every task on the clipboard, one per line, and Clear local tasks.

Projects, agents, issues, ideas and the inbox need an account, so they appear once you sign in. Invite and a task’s assignee are shown before you sign in, and clicking either explains that inviting people and assigning tasks need a free Onplana account. If you sign in from there, the app moves your tasks first, then opens the invite form on the project they moved into, or the task you clicked with the list of people to assign it to. If you kept your tasks on this Mac, it tells you to open a project and use Invite there.

When you sign in, the app offers to move your tasks into Onplana: choose the tasks and a project, or let it create a project called My tasks for you. If you already own an open project called My tasks, they go there. New project in Onplana, beside it, is the way to a project with its own name or from a template. The moved tasks are assigned to you, and anyone who can see that project can see them. They leave this Mac once they are in Onplana, and you can undo the move for 10 minutes. Completed tasks stay on this Mac. Choose Keep on this device to leave them where they are; Move to Onplana in Settings brings the offer back.

Save your list as Project XML

Save as Project XML… in the list’s header saves your tasks as a Project XML file, which Onplana Schedule and Microsoft Project both open. Each task becomes a one-day task on its due date, tasks without a date start on the first day, and completed tasks go in as complete. After the save, Open in Onplana Schedule opens the file there, or the app tells you if Schedule isn’t installed.

Open a schedule file

In Settings, under Open a schedule file, press Choose a file and pick a Microsoft Project file (.mpp, .mpx or Project XML), a Primavera .xer, or a task list in CSV or Excel (.xlsx). Onplana Tasks lists its tasks with their dates and durations, and marks the milestones.

Without an account, Add tasks to my list (the button says how many) puts the plan’s tasks, not its summary rows, in your list on this Mac. Opening the same file again updates the tasks already there instead of adding them twice.
Signed in, Create a project from this file opens the import in Onplana. Choose the file there and it becomes a project with the same tasks, dates and progress.
The file is sent to Onplana only to be read. The uploaded copy is deleted within 3 days, and removed from backups 7 days after that.

Files up to 50 MB open. A large file can take up to a minute; Cancel stops it. If you do not see Open a schedule file, update the app: it is in the download and in the Mac App Store version from 1.1. To see the whole plan as a Gantt chart and change it, open the file in Onplana Schedule.

The menu-bar icon shows your open-task count at a glance. When something is overdue, the number switches to the overdue count; when an AI agent is blocked waiting on you, it shows ! instead, because an idle agent beats a late task for urgency. Click the icon for the menu: Open Onplana Tasks, Quick add task, and Quit.

Closing the window with the red button hides it; the app keeps running in the menu bar, and clicking the Dock icon brings the window back. To exit fully, use Quit in the menu-bar menu.

See and complete your work

The task list groups everything assigned to you into Overdue, Today, This week, Later, and No date, with completed work from the last two weeks in a collapsible section at the bottom. The sidebar adds My Day (overdue, due today, plus anything you pin for the day), your Projects with open counts, and the Agents, Issues, Ideas, and Inbox views.

The list is keyboard-first: press / to jump to the add bar, J / K to move, X to complete or reopen, S to snooze to tomorrow, Cmd+K for the command palette, and ? to see every shortcut.

Click a task to open its detail panel: edit the title, due date, and description, tick off subtasks, reassign it to a teammate or an agent, add attachments (pasted screenshots work), and read or write comments with @mentions. Open in Onplana takes you to the full web app for anything deeper.

Work in one project

Select a project in the sidebar to see its tasks. The number beside each project counts your own open tasks there.

Mine or Everyone: above the list, Mine shows the tasks assigned to you and Everyone the whole project, each with its count. A project opens on Mine when you have open tasks assigned to you there, and on Everyone when you have none. Your pick is remembered for that project on this device. An empty Mine offers Show everyone’s (N).
Open a task that Mine would hide, from the Inbox, a notification or search, and the project shows Everyone for that visit only, so the task is in the list.
Sort by Due date (the default, grouped by when tasks are due), Priority, Title, Newest created or Last modified. Every order but Due date is one list without groups. The choice is remembered on this device for every project; My tasks and My Day always group by due date.
Created and Modified narrow the list to tasks created or changed Today, in the Last 7 days or the Last 30 days. Any time turns the filter off. This is remembered on this device too.

Open a project in Onplana

In a project, Open in Onplana in the project’s header opens that project in the web app, where its Gantt chart is one of the project’s tabs. It opens in the workspace the app is signed in to, even when your browser has a different workspace open.

Open a project from the web app

In the web app, Open in Onplana Tasks sits in the row above a project’s task list, and as an icon on each project card on the Projects page. It opens this app on that project’s task list. The app opens the project only if it is signed in to the same workspace and the project is in its list; otherwise it tells you why instead.

If the app doesn’t open within a couple of seconds, the app download starts. Open the downloaded file, drag Onplana Tasks into Applications, then click the button again. You stay on your task list while it downloads.

On an iPhone, iPad or Android phone the same button opens the App Store or Google Play instead, because the phone app can’t open a project from a link. The button doesn’t appear on Linux or ChromeOS, where there is no Onplana Tasks app, or inside Microsoft Teams.

Invite people to a project

If you own a project or are one of its project managers, Invite appears in the project’s header. Type one or more email addresses, one per line or separated by commas. Someone new joins your workspace as a guest and the project as a member; guests can be given tasks, complete them and log time. Someone already in your workspace is added to the project straight away. To make someone a full member of the workspace, invite them from the web app.

Inviting someone new can use a seat on your plan. If it would add a paid seat, people who can invite members to the workspace (Owners, Admins and Portfolio Managers by default) add it straight away; for anyone else, a workspace Owner or Admin is asked first. The app tells you what happened to each address.

People who can see every project in the workspace but aren’t on this one see Invite from the web instead, which opens the project in Onplana.

Give a task to someone who hasn’t joined

In a task assigned to you, the assign control offers Invite someone new. If they are already in your workspace, the task is theirs at once. If they are new, the task stays with you until they accept, then moves to them, and the task shows who it is waiting for. If you give it to someone else in the meantime, or they haven’t accepted within 30 days, it stays where it is.

When you can’t use it, Invite someone new is greyed out and says why when you point at it: only the project’s owner or a manager can invite people, and only to a task that is assigned to you.

Start a new project

New project in Onplana, on the + beside Projects in the sidebar and in the project list when you add a task or log an issue, opens New Project in the web app, in the workspace this app is signed in to. When you come back within the hour and exactly one new project has appeared, the app asks whether to add your tasks to it. If more than one appeared, it asks nothing, so pick the project yourself.

It appears only if your workspace lets you create projects. If yours runs new projects through a proposal, use Propose a project in the web app instead, or ask a workspace Owner or Admin.

Open a project in Onplana Schedule

In a project’s header, Schedule opens the project in Onplana Schedule, the free desktop app for durations, dependencies and the critical path. If it isn’t installed, Get Onplana Schedule opens the page to download it. Schedule asks you to sign in once, separately from this app. After you add three or more tasks to one project, some of them with dates, the app suggests Schedule once.

Ask what to focus on

What should I focus on? sits above your task list. Click it and Onplana’s AI names one thing to start with, in two to four sentences. Nothing is asked until you click.

It looks at your open tasks that are overdue, due today or due in the next seven days, and at any AI agent that is blocked waiting on you. With a project selected in the sidebar, the answer covers that project; otherwise it covers all your work. The card says which.

To answer, Onplana sends those tasks’ titles, project names, due dates and priorities, and the names of the agents waiting on you, to its AI provider: Anthropic’s Claude or Microsoft Azure OpenAI. See the privacy policy. Answers draw on your workspace’s AI allowance, and you can ask up to 20 times a day. When nothing is pressing, the app says so without asking the AI.

If an answer the AI wrote is inappropriate, click Report under it, or use Settings → Report AI content at any time, to send it to us. The button is hidden offline, when you have no open tasks, and when you use the app without an account.

Log your time

If your workspace uses time tracking, open a task and choose Log time. Enter the hours (1.5, 1,5 and 1:30 all work), pick the day, which starts on today and cannot be a future day, and add a note if you like. Your week shows the week grouped by day, each day’s total, and the week’s total last.

One entry per task per day. Log time on a task you already logged that day and the app shows the entry that is already there, with Edit that entry, so you change it rather than add a second.
Drafts can be edited or deleted. If your workspace approves timesheets, Submit sends the week’s drafts for review, and Take back returns anything still waiting for review. An approved entry cannot be changed here.
Returned entries show why your approver sent them back. Edit one and it becomes a draft again, ready to resend.
You log your own time only. Logging time needs a connection, so the Time row is hidden while you are offline.

No Time row? It only appears when your workspace includes time tracking and your copy of the app is up to date. If it asks you to reconnect, this device was connected before time entry was available, so choose Reconnect and sign in again. See Log and submit timesheets for plans and approvals.

File an expense

If your workspace uses Onplana Services, the add bar has a 🧾 button. Type what the expense was for and select 🧾: the expense form opens beside your task list, with your text as the description and the project from the add bar already chosen. Fill in the Amount (42.50 and 42,50 both work; leave out thousands separators), check the Currency, which starts on the project’s own, pick a Category and the Date, and select Log expense.

In the command palette (Cmd+K), Log an expense opens the same form and Your expenses opens your list. The list is grouped by what needs doing: returned to you, drafts, waiting for approval, approved. Each group shows a subtotal per currency, never one figure across currencies.

A new claim is saved as a Draft. Submit sends it for approval, and Take back returns one that is still waiting.
Returned claims show why your approver sent them back. Resend sends one again.
Approved claims can’t be changed.
Filing needs a connection. Offline, the add bar is hidden, and the form opened from the palette says so and won’t file. Nothing is queued to send later, because a claim sent twice is a double charge somebody has to catch.
The quick-add window you open with the global shortcut adds tasks only.

No 🧾 button? It only appears in workspaces with Onplana Services, and in version 0.3.33 or later of the app. See Track rebillable expenses for approvals and how claims reach the margin report.

Quick-add from anywhere

Press Cmd+Shift+Space in any app to pop up a small quick-add window, type the task, press Enter, and get back to what you were doing. Inside the app, the add bar understands plain language: press Tab to preview the due date, priority, and project it read from your wording (parsed on your Mac, no AI call), or press the ✨ button to have AI do a smarter parse. Paste a multi-line list and the app offers to add them all as separate tasks, and the 💡 button saves the text as a private idea instead, no project needed.

If another app (a launcher like Raycast or Alfred, say) already owns the shortcut, Settings says so plainly and the menu bar’s Quick add task works instead.

Works offline

Completing, reopening, snoozing, and reprioritising keep working with no connection. Changes queue on your Mac, survive a restart, and replay automatically when the app can reach Onplana again; anything that can’t be applied is surfaced rather than silently dropped. Creating and deleting tasks, and editing titles or descriptions, need a connection.

Hear about what matters

An agent needs you: when a task you delegated to an AI agent becomes blocked, the app raises a native notification, once, not repeatedly. A While you were away brief on the Agents view sums up what finished and what’s waiting on you since you last looked.
Teammate activity: mentions, comments, and assignments land in the Inbox and can notify natively.
Daily reminder: one nudge at the hour you choose on days something is due. Reminders are best-effort while the app is running.

Quiet hours in Settings silence agent and activity notifications on a schedule you set.

Turn on Launch at startup in Settings and the app starts quietly in the menu bar when you log in. macOS has the final say: if you turn it off under System Settings → General → Login Items, the app respects that, tells you where to turn it back on, and never re-enables itself behind your back.

Send feedback

Signed in, choose Send feedback in Settings, pick what kind it is, and write a title and the details. It goes to the Onplana team, not to your workspace. In the app downloaded from onplana.com, if you are the Owner of a Free workspace that has never had a trial, the thank-you also asks whether you want 14 days of Pro to try the paid features. Start the free trial opens Billing in Onplana on the web with the trial’s confirm open; nothing starts until you confirm there. See Try Professional for 14 days.

Tasks from a plan in Onplana Schedule

Onplana Schedule can copy a plan’s tasks into this app: File > Add to Onplana Tasks… there opens Onplana Tasks, which asks before adding anything, for example Add 42 tasks from Website relaunch?, and says how many are new and how many it already has. Add puts them in your list; Not now adds nothing.

They go to the list the app keeps on this Mac, the one it opens with Use without an account on the sign-in screen, and nothing leaves your Mac. If the app is still on that screen, it says a plan is waiting. Signed in, it says that nothing was added. Sending the same plan again updates the copies instead of adding them twice. See Add the tasks to Onplana Tasks.

How it connects

The app talks to Onplana over the same secure surface as the browser extension and the mobile app, with a token scoped to your tasks, your projects and your own time entries. Sign out from the sidebar to disconnect this device, or sign it out from Settings → Connections → Your Onplana apps in the web app.

To delete your Onplana account, open Settings → Account in the app and choose Delete account. It opens your account settings on app.onplana.com (signing you in first if needed), where Delete my account is at the bottom of the Profile tab. Delete your account explains what is erased and when.

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