Diurnal and Sunsama
Sunsama walks you through the day: what you are taking on, how long each thing takes, and when you have committed to more hours than the day holds. Diurnal has no ritual. You press ⇧⌘A and write, and every paragraph becomes a task.
Both tidy up after you. Sunsama rolls unfinished tasks over and archives them after a few days. Diurnal asks on the task first, then moves it to next week. And Diurnal opens with no network.
Side by side
| Diurnal | Sunsama | |
|---|---|---|
| Write freely, and every paragraph becomes a task | ||
| Free, with every feature included | ||
| Works with no network | ||
| Runs as a native Mac app | ||
| Walks you through a daily planning ritual | ||
| Timeboxes tasks into calendar blocks | ||
| Runs on iPhone, Windows and Linux |
Planning without the sitting down
Press ⇧⌘A anywhere and write. In “review the deck tomorrow 3pm #work” the day, the time and the tag are read as you type, and a blank line starts the next task. Hold ⇧⌘L to say it instead.
It is native Swift, and the copy on your Mac is the real one, so a bad conference network never stops it opening.
What the ritual buys you
The guided plan is the product and it is good. Sunsama estimates every task and tells you when you have planned eleven hours into an eight hour day. Diurnal leaves that discipline to you.
Its timeboxing drags a task into a block on the calendar and keeps the two in step, which Diurnal does not do. It also runs on six platforms where Diurnal runs on one.
Which one suits you
Pick Sunsama if you want the morning ritual and real capacity estimates, if your tasks arrive from a tracker rather than your own head, or if you plan from a phone or a Windows machine.
Pick Diurnal if you would rather write than sit down to plan, you work on a Mac, and you need your tasks to still be there when the network is not.
Questions
- Is Diurnal free?
- Yes, right now, with every feature included. Sunsama is $22 a month, or $17 a month billed yearly.
- Does Diurnal work offline?
- Yes, once you are signed in. It opens on a plane and catches up when you land.
- What happens to tasks I do not finish?
- They stay on the page with no overdue pile. After a quiet day a task asks if you are still on it; with no answer in two more, it moves to next week.
- Can Diurnal move my calendar events around?
- Yes. It books new events and changes ones you already have, from the overlay. What it does not do is timebox a task into a block the way Sunsama does.
Other comparisons
Facts about Sunsama were checked in . Software changes; if something here has gone out of date, it is a mistake rather than a position.