Guide

Tips

Perch keeps its depth out of sight on purpose. The field understands more than it lets on, and the best moves are one modifier away from the ones you already make. Here are the small habits that make a quick app quicker.

Hotkeys
Open straight into the view you want
One chord from any app, and the panel opens already showing the right view.
Hotkeys
Open straight into the view you want
⌥Space opens Perch where you left it, but you don’t have to start there. Press ⌃⌥1 through ⌃⌥4 in any app and Perch opens already showing Today, Upcoming, All, or No Date. Both are defaults you can rebind in Settings ▸ Hotkeys.
Once the panel is open, ⌘1 through ⌘4 switch between the same four views, and they keep working while you’re typing. ⌘L opens the full scope menu, your own lists included.
Quick entry
Let the strip teach you the syntax
Perch names every date, priority, and list it reads, before you save.
Quick entry
Let the strip teach you the syntax
Type a reminder the way you’d say it: “Renew passport 3 Sep !!! #Admin”. As you type, the strip under the field names what Perch has read, a chip for the date, one for the priority, one for the list.
Nothing is committed until you press ↩, so you can watch the interpretation change as you edit, and you never save a parse you haven’t seen. It’s also the fastest way to learn the syntax: try a phrase and watch the chips.
Quick entry
↩ knows when you mean a new reminder
A plain title stays a search. Give it a date or a list and ↩ creates it.
Quick entry
↩ knows when you mean a new reminder
The field does two jobs: it filters your reminders as you type, and it stands ready to become a new one. A plain title stays a search, because “Buy milk” is just as likely the reminder you already have.
The moment the line carries a date, a repeat, a “#list”, or a priority, the field takes an accent ring and a plain ↩ creates the reminder. ⌘↩ creates either way, ring or no ring.
Priority
Set priority with exclamation marks
One “!” is low, two is medium, three is high, right in the sentence.
Priority
Set priority with exclamation marks
End a reminder with “!”, “!!”, or “!!!” standing alone and Perch reads low, medium, or high priority: “Buy milk #Errands !!”. A mark that touches a word is left alone, so “Fix this!” stays a plain title.
On an existing reminder, select the row and press ⌥⌘1, ⌥⌘2, or ⌥⌘3 to set the priority, and ⌥⌘0 to clear it. All four work from inside the editor too.
Dates
Type times the way you think them
A time that has already passed rolls to tomorrow on its own.
Dates
Type times the way you think them
A bare time that has already passed rolls forward: type “Standup 9:30” at ten in the morning and Perch schedules it for tomorrow, on the sensible guess that you don’t set reminders for the past.
Perch also tidies up after itself. Lift the date out of “Pay rent on 3 September” and the stranded “on” goes with it, so the title reads “Pay rent”, not “Pay rent on”.
Repeats
Write the repeat out in plain words
Daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly, intervals included, written out.
Repeats
Write the repeat out in plain words
“Standup every Monday at 9”, “water the plants every 2 weeks”, “pay insurance every year”: Perch reads daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly repeats, intervals included, and shows the repeat as a chip before you save it.
Repeat phrases are recognised in English and Slovak for now. Dates and times work in your language, and writing the day as numbers always works.
Keyboard
One key opens the whole row menu
The full right-click menu, without the right click.
Keyboard
One key opens the whole row menu
Select a row and press ⌃↩ to pop its entire menu: complete, edit, due date, priority, move to list, delete. It’s the right-click menu without the right click.
Once the menu is open, the arrow keys, type-select, and ↩ take over, so an action with no shortcut of its own, like moving a reminder to another list, is still only a few keystrokes away.
Editing
Press ⌘E to replace, or to correct
The title opens selected: type over it, or arrow in to fix a word.
Editing
Press ⌘E to replace, or to correct
⌘E opens the selected reminder for editing with the whole title selected. That one detail gives it two uses: start typing and you replace the title outright, press an arrow key first and you keep it, ready to fix a word.
From there, ⇥ moves on to notes and date, ⌘↩ saves from any field, and ⎋ steps back the way you came, reverting one field at a time.
Undo
Undo your way out of any mistake
Twenty-five named steps of history, deleting included.
Undo
Undo your way out of any mistake
⌘Z takes back every action Perch can do: completing, rescheduling, renaming, moving between lists, even deleting, where the reminder is put back as it was. History runs twenty-five steps deep, and each step is named so you can see what you’re about to undo.
One boundary is deliberate: while you’re typing in a field, ⌘Z undoes your typing and nothing else. A half-written sentence can never turn into an undone deletion somewhere else in the list.
Menu bar
Let the menu bar name the next thing
A glance tells you what’s next rather than how many there are.
Menu bar
Let the menu bar name the next thing
By default the menu bar counts what’s due today across every list, and the number holds still while you move around the panel. In Settings you can make it show the next reminder’s title instead, so a glance tells you what’s next rather than how many there are.
Or point the count at whatever the panel is showing, if you’d rather the number mirror the view you left open.
Settings
Keep the finished ones in view
A record of the day as well as a plan for it.
Settings
Keep the finished ones in view
Turn on Show Completed in Settings and the reminders you’ve checked off over the past day stay in the list, marked done. Perch becomes a record of the day as well as a plan for it, which is a better answer to “what did I actually get done?” than an empty list.

These tips lean on the keyboard because Perch does. The full list of what it answers to is on the Keyboard shortcuts page.

Open straight into the view you want

Let the strip teach you the syntax

↩ knows when you mean a new reminder

Set priority with exclamation marks

Type times the way you think them

Write the repeat out in plain words

One key opens the whole row menu

Press ⌘E to replace, or to correct

Undo your way out of any mistake

Let the menu bar name the next thing

Keep the finished ones in view