A macOS desktop app to view and manage Apple Reminders and Calendar events,
built with Tauri v2, a Rust backend over Apple's EventKit
(via the eventkit crate), and a React +
TypeScript + Tailwind + shadcn-style UI.
macOS only. EventKit is an Apple framework; the app does not build/run on other platforms.
Grab the latest .dmg from the Releases
page, open it, and drag FocalPlanner into your Applications folder.
Important
These builds are ad-hoc signed but not notarized by Apple (the project has no paid Apple Developer membership). macOS Gatekeeper therefore blocks the app the first time you open it. This is a one-time step.
After moving the app to Applications, do one of the following:
- macOS 14 (Sonoma) and earlier — right-click (or Control-click) FocalPlanner in Applications → Open, then confirm Open in the dialog.
- macOS 15 (Sequoia) — double-click it once (it gets blocked), then open System Settings → Privacy & Security, scroll to the FocalPlanner notice and click Open Anyway.
- Terminal (any version) — remove the download quarantine flag:
xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/FocalPlanner.app
Once approved, the app launches normally from then on. On first run, grant Calendar and Reminders access when prompted (or later via System Settings → Privacy & Security).
Notarization requires a paid Apple Developer account. Everything else (signing, distribution, the app itself) works without it — only this first-launch approval is affected.
- Apple-style sidebar + lists layout: calendars and reminder lists on the left, an event agenda and reminders in the main pane.
- Full CRUD for both events and reminders (create, edit, complete, delete).
- Native data: reads/writes the same store as Apple Calendar & Reminders.
 Daily — agenda with reminders |
 Weekly — multi-day grid |
 Planner — Time Sector lanes |
 Review — Areas of Focus |
 Task inspector — edit & schedule |
 Scheduling context — nearby items |
 Areas of Focus — map calendars & lists |
 Themes — light & dark |
Screenshots use built-in Demo Mode sample data. Regenerate the framed images with
screenshots/normalize.sh(--webpfor the README-sized versions).
| Layer | Detail |
|---|---|
| Backend | src-tauri/src/eventkit_service.rs (sync EventKit access), models.rs (serde DTOs), commands.rs (Tauri commands). |
| Threading | EventKit's EKEventStore is !Send, so every command runs its work inside tauri::async_runtime::spawn_blocking using the crate's synchronous API. Authorization is system-level (TCC) and persists, so a fresh store is created per call. |
| Frontend | src/lib/api.ts (typed invoke wrappers), src/lib/queries.ts (TanStack Query), components in src/components. |
| Perms | src-tauri/Info.plist declares the EventKit usage-description keys (Tauri merges it into the bundle). |
The eventkit crate links a Swift bridge that references the Swift runtime
(libswift_Concurrency.dylib). A dependency's link args don't propagate to the
final binary, so src-tauri/build.rs adds the required -rpath entries
(/usr/lib/swift and the active Xcode toolchain's Swift libs). Without this the
binary builds but crashes at startup with a dyld: Library not loaded error.
npm install
npm run tauri dev # launch the app (Vite + Rust)On first launch the app shows an Access required screen. Click Grant access and approve the macOS Calendar and Reminders permission prompts. (To change it later: System Settings → Privacy & Security → Calendars / Reminders.)
FocalPlanner can sync your preferences and areas of focus across machines via a private GitHub Gist, authenticated with GitHub's Device Flow. Your calendar and reminder data stays in macOS/iCloud and is never uploaded. The OAuth token is stored in the macOS Keychain, and an optional passphrase enables end-to-end encryption of the synced blob.
If you build your own copy, register your own GitHub OAuth App and use its Client ID — the bundled one identifies the upstream app's authorization screen:
- GitHub → Settings → Developer settings → OAuth Apps → New OAuth App.
- Set any Homepage / Authorization callback URL (unused by Device Flow) and enable Device Flow.
- Copy the Client ID (starts with
Ov…) intoGITHUB_CLIENT_IDinsrc-tauri/src/github_sync.rs, then rebuild.
Sync is entirely optional — the app works fully without connecting GitHub.
npm run tauri build # produces a .app bundle in src-tauri/target/release/bundleA GitHub Actions workflow (.github/workflows/release.yml) builds a universal,
ad-hoc-signed .dmg and attaches it to a GitHub Release. To publish:
- Bump the version in
package.json,src-tauri/tauri.conf.jsonandsrc-tauri/Cargo.toml(keep them in sync), commit, and push. - Tag the commit and push the tag:
git tag v0.4.0 git push origin v0.4.0
- The workflow builds on a macOS runner and creates a draft Release with the DMG attached. Review it on GitHub and click Publish release.
Release notes are assembled automatically from .github/release-notes-head.md and
.github/release-notes-tail.md (edit these to change the intro / install sections),
with a What's changed list generated from the commits since the previous tag.
No Apple Developer secrets are required. The build is signed ad-hoc (APPLE_SIGNING_IDENTITY: "-")
and not notarized, so the first-launch Gatekeeper step above applies. To enable
notarization later, add the APPLE_* secrets to the repo and the workflow will use them.
You can also run the workflow manually from the Actions tab (workflow_dispatch).
npm run build # tsc + vite production build
(cd src-tauri && cargo clippy) # Rust lints