Using Whitewolf
Whitewolf Guide helps you keep track of what you need to do while keeping your everyday view focused on what needs your attention now.
How Whitewolf works
All keeps everything
Everything you need or want to do goes into All, whether it needs doing soon or is simply something you'd like to do eventually.
You can group tasks into projects to keep things organised.
Tasks that another person has assigned to you initially appear under Received. Once you place one into your own workflow, it behaves like the rest of your tasks. Your projects, Today placement and ordering remain private.
≡Work
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Send final homepage copy to Nina
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Review packaging samples
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Confirm photographer for the launch
≡Home
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Buy dog food
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Plan Saturday dinner
No project
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Book anniversary trip
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Send photos to Maria
Choose what matters today
Each day, choose from All the tasks you'd like to work on and add them to Today. Put them in the order you want to tackle them.
Today is the work you have deliberately chosen for your current Whitewolf day. You can change your mind at any time—add something else, remove something, or reorder the list. Removing something from Today does not delete it; it remains in All.
At the end of your Whitewolf day, Today clears. Anything you didn't finish remains in All, ready for another day. Today does not automatically carry over.
A Whitewolf day can begin at a time other than midnight; this is explained later under Your Whitewolf day.
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Send final homepage copy to Nina
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Buy dog food
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Send photos to Maria
Focus on what matters now
Now shows what needs your attention at the moment.
Due routines come first, followed by tasks that are currently urgent. After those, Whitewolf shows the top task from your Today list.
Normally, if no routine is due and nothing is urgent, this means Now simply shows the first task you chose for Today. Want to work on something else? Reorder Today, and the new first regular task will appear in Now.
Now may be much shorter than your actual task list. That is deliberate: it lets you focus on doing the work in front of you instead of repeatedly reconsidering everything else you could be doing.
Evening dog walk
Pick up Anna — 6:00 PM
Send final homepage copy to Nina
WorkWhen a task can no longer wait
For many tasks, it doesn't matter exactly when you do them. You can buy dog food today or tomorrow, in the morning or evening. But some tasks reach a point when they can no longer wait.
Urgent at is Whitewolf's way of setting that point. If you need to pick up Anna at 6:00 PM and the drive takes half an hour, you might set the task to become urgent at 5:30 PM—or earlier if you need time to get ready before you leave.
When the time comes, the task appears in Now above your regular task from Today, even if you hadn't selected it for Today. Whitewolf can also notify you at that time.
Pick up Anna — 6:00 PM
Send final homepage copy to Nina
WorkThings you need to do again and again
Some things aren't one-off tasks. You walk the dog every day, water the plants several times a week, or put the bins out every Thursday. In Whitewolf, you define these as Routines.
When a routine is due, it appears in Now. For routines with set times, you can also choose to get a notification.
If you miss a routine, it doesn't accumulate. If you miss vacuuming one Saturday, there's no reason to vacuum twice the next Saturday. The missed occurrence simply passes, and the routine continues normally the next time it's due.
Evening dog walk
Send final homepage copy to Nina
WorkThings you might want to do one day
Sometimes you want to remember something you don't intend to do now, but might want to do eventually. Whitewolf lets you note these things as Thoughts, so they don't fill up All before you're ready to act on them.
If you decide it's time to act on a thought, you can turn it into a task.
- ≡Books to read
- ≡Try the new Italian place
- ≡Idea for balcony lighting
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Book a table at the new Italian place
Your tasks go with you
Use Whitewolf Guide on the web, iPhone and Android. Your tasks stay in sync across your devices.
You can keep working offline, and your changes will sync when you're back online.
You can also add Whitewolf to your calendar, so your Today tasks, urgent tasks and routines appear alongside your schedule.
Using Whitewolf day to day
Quick Add
Quick Add is directly available throughout the normal app.
It starts in Task mode, where you can enter the task title, assignee, project and urgency.
You can switch it to Thought mode without navigating away. A quick thought asks only for a title and optional project, and you can add a description later by opening the thought.
When you use Quick Add from Thoughts, it starts in Thought mode.
Notifications
Notifications are enabled separately on each device or browser where you use Whitewolf.
The first time you set a future Urgent at, or turn on Send notifications for a routine with a future fixed time, Whitewolf offers to enable notifications on that device. Whitewolf shows its own explanation first; the browser or operating-system permission request appears only after you choose to enable notifications.
If you later sign in on another device and Whitewolf finds an upcoming task or routine that you asked to be notified about, it can offer to enable notifications there too and identify the relevant task or routine. Enabling notifications on one device does not enable them on your other devices.
If you choose Not now or deny permission, Whitewolf does not keep prompting you automatically. You can enable or disable Notifications on this device at any time in Profile. Turning notifications off on one device does not change your Urgent at times, routine Send notifications choices or notification settings on your other devices.
If notifications are blocked at the browser or operating-system level, you may need to allow them in the device or browser settings before Whitewolf can enable them.
Notification delivery is best effort rather than a guaranteed alarm. On iPhone and Android, locally scheduled Whitewolf notifications can still fire while the phone is offline. Web notifications depend on browser/platform support and web-push connectivity around the notification time.
Calendar subscription
You can add a read-only Whitewolf calendar subscription to calendar apps such as Google Calendar, Apple Calendar or Outlook.
The calendar shows the parts of Whitewolf that already have a useful place in a schedule: your Today tasks without an Urgent at time appear as all-day items; tasks with Urgent at appear at that time instead; routines with fixed times appear at those times; and a Morning-block routine with no fixed time appears as an all-day item. A Today task with an Urgent at time is shown only once, as the timed item.
Thoughts, ordinary All tasks that are not in Today and have no Urgent at time, and tasks you assigned to someone else are not included. Incoming tasks assigned to you follow the same Today/Urgent rules as your own tasks.
Timed calendar items are five minutes long and marked as free/non-blocking. This is only a calendar presentation convention; it does not mean Whitewolf expects the task or routine to take five minutes.
The subscription is one-way. Whitewolf remains the place where you manage tasks and routines, and editing an item in your calendar does not change Whitewolf. Whitewolf does not import calendar events.
You can create or manage the subscription from Profile → Calendar subscription. The private calendar link acts like a password: anyone who has it can read the Whitewolf items exposed through the feed. You can regenerate the link to invalidate the previous one, or turn the subscription off completely.
When you first begin using Today, Whitewolf may show one small Add Whitewolf to your calendar card on a later visit to Today. You can add it there or choose Not now; either choice dismisses that discovery permanently for your account, and Calendar subscription remains available in Profile.
Calendar apps decide when subscribed calendars are refreshed, so changes may not appear there immediately. The calendar view is a convenience and does not replace Whitewolf's own Urgent behavior or notifications.
Past tasks
When you finish one of your own tasks, it leaves your active work immediately. A brief Undo option appears straight away in case you completed it by mistake. After that immediate Undo opportunity, the completion is final.
Completed personal tasks are available in Past tasks from the Account menu. You can open a personal historical task to review its details or permanently delete it.
Shared tasks keep their recent outcome visible in Shared for 30 days, and their history is also available in Past tasks.
Your Whitewolf day
A Whitewolf day does not have to begin at midnight.
By default, New day begins at is 04:00, so work done after midnight can still belong to the previous evening. You can change this in Profile.
Your timezone is also stored in your Whitewolf account so Today, routines and local times behave consistently across your devices.
Finding things
On desktop, Now, Today, All, Thoughts, Routines and Shared (when available) stay directly in the main navigation.
On mobile, the bottom navigation is Now, Today, All and More. More contains Thoughts, Routines and Shared when Shared is available. Account remains separate at the top of the screen.
Keyboard shortcuts
On web and other supported hardware-keyboard contexts:
- E — open Thoughts and start a new thought
- R — open Routines and start a new routine
- T — focus Quick Add in Task mode
- 1 — Now
- 2 — Today
- 3 — All
- 4 — Thoughts
- 5 — Routines
- 6 — Shared, when Shared is available
- / — open All and focus task search
- ? — open Using Whitewolf
- Escape — close the top dismissible modal or sheet where supported
Single-key shortcuts do not activate while you are typing in a text field or editor.