Lantern is a calendar and planner for people who find it hard to see the big picture: how today's small jobs add up to the things you actually want. It keeps your goals, the work that feeds them, your habits and your day in one quiet place, and lays them out as a path of lanterns that you light as you go.
One purchase for iPhone, iPad and Mac · No subscriptions, ever · No account
Today's checklist has an add line that understands plain words:
call the bank at 3
lands at 3 PM and dentist fri
goes to
Friday. Each task's tick is a small lantern that lights when it's done.
Anytime holds the jobs with no day. Plan tomorrow lets you pick open work from all your goals, and when a day gets away from you, Carry over moves the rest along. Nothing moves on its own.
Every day with something on it is a lantern on one winding trail, lit once its work is done, up to a NOW lantern. A goal's finish line stands on its day like a post.
Scroll back through everything you've lit or ahead to what's coming, and pinch from a single week out to twenty years. Tap a day for its list, and light things there.
Each goal has one ring, filled by its steps and the habits that feed it, a line in plain words (on track, behind, drifting, quiet for a few weeks, all done) and always the next step. Goals measured in words, miles or pounds get a pace chart and a projected finish. Reach one, and Wins keeps it.
Or start from a plan: a half marathon, a first novel draft, NaNoWriMo, Couch to 5K or steady weight loss.
Run every mon wed sat at 7am
becomes a habit; dentist fri 2pm for
45 min
becomes an event. On the Mac, it's Command-K.
Prefer paper? Photograph a written list or a notebook page. Lantern reads it on your device, lets you check each line before anything is added, and flags the ones already in your calendar. Rescan the page later to tick off what's done.
Tap the clock on any task to focus on it, with one timer or Pomodoro
breaks. A ring burns down around the task's lantern, and Light it
ticks it off and starts the next task with a fresh clock.
While you focus, a Live Activity shows the time on the Lock Screen and in the Dynamic Island, with Light it, Pause and +5 minutes.
Widgets: a checklist you can tick right from the Home Screen, Focus, This week (your path of days) and Lock Screen habit rings.
A morning lantern with the shape of your day, a heads-up before events, a
nudge for a habit whose time has passed, and evening embers only when
something's still open. Quiet hours and a daily limit. No badges, no
sounds, and never you broke your streak
.
Under the ember rule, one missed day keeps a streak glowing; only two in a row lets it cool. Rest days and pauses, like a trip or a week of being ill, never count as misses. Keep every day of a week for a full set of jewel lanterns.
On iPad and Mac, Lantern opens like a book: today on one page and your week on the other, or the calendar across the whole window. The Mac adds the Horizon, a timeline of every goal out to the years ahead. Link a writing goal to your manuscript and the Mac counts the words for you.
Your calendar is plain files in your own iCloud. There's no Lantern server in between, so there's nothing of yours for us to see.
Pay once. No subscriptions, ever.
A one-time purchase that covers iPhone, iPad and Mac together. No in-app purchases and no account. Buy it once and it's yours.
Requires iOS 18, iPadOS 18 or macOS 15, or later.