1 Get Started
Productivities is a local-first desktop workspace for people who want their tasks, notes, saved material, calendars, routines, structured data, visual thinking, and AI-assisted work to belong to the same personal operating system.
Beta 3 documentation. This guide covers the current desktop workflows, including Feeds, the revised workspace navigation, Page editing modes, and Migration Centre. See the Beta 3 release notes for the changes in this release. Screenshots may show an earlier beta interface.
1.1 Understand Productivities
Productivities is not just a task manager or a notes app. It is a workspace for the messy middle of personal work: the moment when a thought might become a task, a link might become research, a page might become a plan, and a project might need a calendar, a timeline, a table, and a few reminders around it.
The app works by creating durable objects and letting those objects travel. A task can link to a page, a pin can sit in the Universal Inbox until you decide what it is, a canvas node can reference a task, and a Space can collect a whole project without forcing everything into one folder. That matters because real workflows rarely fit one surface for long.
A useful way to think about the everyday loop is: capture something, decide what it is, place it in the right context, connect it to related work, and return to it through the view that helps today.
Core tools
- Tasks and Planner help you turn intention into visible commitments, then decide what belongs today, later, or inside a larger Space.
- Pages give your thinking somewhere portable to live, while still adding backlinks, properties, tags, embeds, graph views, and search.
- Pinboard gives captured material a holding area before you know whether it is reference, reading, research, or fuel for a task.
- Tables help when information needs structure: records, properties, filters, groups, formulas, and views rather than another loose note.
- Canvas helps when you need to understand shape and relationship visually, especially when tasks, pages, pins, and tables all belong to the same problem.
- People, Highlights, Forms, and Routines connect relationships, reading, structured capture, and repeatable actions to the work they support.
- Feeds brings RSS and Atom articles, YouTube videos, Bluesky posts, and Automation output into a reading queue. Save useful items into the rest of your workspace.
- Rediscover brings useful Pages, Pins, and Highlights back into view.
- Focus, Automations, Activity, and AI support the operating layer around the work: concentration, maintenance, history, and assistance.
1.2 Install and set up
Productivities is distributed as a desktop app for macOS and Windows. On macOS, install it by opening the disk image, dragging Productivities into Applications, and launching it from Applications or Spotlight. On Windows, use the Productivities installer, choose the installation location if prompted, and launch it from the Start menu or desktop shortcut.
The first run is deliberately about ownership. Productivities keeps the app database locally by default, while Pages and media folders can live in folders you choose. That means your writing and files are not trapped inside a hidden app format.
First run
- Create the first local user account. This account becomes the administrator for the installation.
- Choose where file-backed content should live. Pages are Markdown files, while media folders keep images, PDFs, videos, and audio accessible outside the app.
- Open the main workspace and use the sidebar to move between Planner, Tasks, Spaces, Pages, Pinboard, Calendar, People, Highlights, Databases, Forms, and whichever tools are enabled for your plan and user.
Your app database lives in the Productivities application-data folder. Your Pages and media can live wherever you choose, so they remain accessible in Finder, File Explorer, and other tools.
1.3 Learn the interface
The main window has a left sidebar for destinations, a central workspace for the active Tool, and a right utility rail for Search, the Action Panel, and Productivities AI. Companion panels keep the current workspace visible while you use supporting tools.
If you are new to the app, start by noticing that the sidebar changes the kind of work you are doing, while the objects themselves can remain connected. Moving from Planner to Pages or Pinboard is not switching to a separate silo; it is changing the lens.
Common navigation
- Sidebar separates Productivity tools from Workspace tools, alongside Spaces, tags, bookmarks, and saved views. Customise the sidebar to choose what appears and in which order.
- Application menu opens Settings, Getting Started, Trash, and Send Feedback. In the feedback form, select Keep this feedback private to share it only with the Productivities team.
- Action Panel opens from the utility rail or Alt+Q. It gathers available built-in, custom, plugin, and companion actions. Use Manage to hide or reorder cards and pin favourites.
- Split workspace places two tabs side by side for comparison or reference work and restores the session when you return.
- Title-bar actions hold commands that depend on the current view, such as creating a task, changing a table view, importing, filtering, or opening a panel.
- Context menus are available on most objects. Right-click tasks, pages, pins, rows, canvas nodes, Spaces, and events when you want to ask, “what can I do with this?”
- Global search helps you find work across object types, while the command bar helps you move quickly, capture quickly, or trigger an action without hunting through navigation.
1.4 Choose a plan
Some features depend on the plan, the current user, and the environment the app is running in. If something is missing, it does not always mean you are in the wrong place: the installation may not include it, an administrator may have disabled it for your user, or the current runtime may not support the native capability.
- Free
- Core personal tools for getting started, including Tasks, Pages, Pinboard, Spaces, Calendar, Routines, Plugins, saved views, Apple Calendar, and local-first use.
- Personal Pro Pro
- Advanced tools and capabilities for deeper personal workflows, including Canvas, Databases, Forms, People, Highlights, Feeds, Rediscover, Workspace Map, Media Manager, Activity, Automations, Time Tracking, Deep Work, Command Bar, Productivities AI and Space Agents, external connections, and mobile access.
- Cloud and shared deployments
- Personal Pro capabilities with hosted sync and collaboration where offered. Self-hosted shared environments can also use PostgreSQL-backed operation, shared Spaces, groups, assignment, administration, and expanded operational controls.
Always use the Pricing page as the commercial source of truth; this documentation explains how the product behaves once a feature is available.
1.5 Import your existing work
Open Settings → Import & Migration to use Migration Centre, or choose Bring your work in onboarding or Getting Started.
- For Obsidian, Notion, or Evernote, select your export and choose a destination Space. ZIP is a portable option for Obsidian and Notion; Evernote uses ENEX.
- Review the preview, object counts, storage estimate, warnings, and any content that cannot be converted faithfully before selecting Import.
- Return to Recent imports to inspect progress or resume an interrupted job. Undo moves unchanged imported objects to Trash; objects edited after import are retained and reported.
Importing Pages and ordinary media is available on Free. Database and Canvas destinations require those tools to be available. Apple Notes opens its existing macOS importer; Trello opens task import; CSV and Obsidian Base direct you to the corresponding Database import action. These existing importers have their own workflows.
