A calm outliner for macOS

Sift your thoughts into focus.

A keyboard-first, infinitely nested outliner for organizing ideas and tasks in a state of flow. Zoom into any list, navigate with your arrow keys, and let everything else fall quiet.

Download for Mac See how it works →

Free to try · macOS 12 and later

Sift's home view: a tidy column of lists — Today, Projects, Reading list, Ideas, Groceries, Errands — with the Today list's items previewed alongside.
Keep every list one glance away
Sift drilled into Projects then Launch plan, showing three columns: the outer lists, the focused list, and the selected item's children.
Zoom into any list, as deep as you like
Sift's search overlay finding every item containing 'page', each with a breadcrumb trail showing where it lives.
Find anything across every level
Sift's keyboard shortcut cheat sheet, grouped into Select, Notes, and View.
Drive it all from the keyboard
Sift in dark mode, showing the same nested outline in a calm, low-light palette.
Easy on the eyes, day or night

Built for thinking

Everything in its place, nothing in your way.

Sift gives structure to scattered thoughts without ever getting loud. A handful of focused ideas, working together.

  • Infinitely nested lists

    Every item can hold its own list. Outline a whole project, then drill into any single thought without losing the bigger picture.

  • Three-column miller view

    Overview, focused list, and details side by side. Move through your hierarchy with arrow keys and always know where you are.

  • Fully keyboard-driven

    Create, rename, move, nest, and navigate without ever reaching for the mouse. Everything has a shortcut, and they fade into muscle memory fast.

  • Focus & zoom

    Zoom into any list to make it your whole world for a moment. The rest of the tree waits patiently until you zoom back out.

  • Colour tags

    Mark items with a soft palette of colour tags to group, prioritize, and scan at a glance. Calm hues, never circus colours.

  • Checkboxes & progress

    Turn any item into a task with a tap. Completed children roll up into a gentle progress bar so you can feel the momentum.

  • Dark mode

    A warm light theme for daytime and a deep, low-glare dark theme for late nights. One shortcut flips between them instantly.

  • Monotasking mode

    Go fullscreen on a single list and let the interface melt away. Pure focus for deep work, with nothing left to distract you.

  • Instant search

    Find any item anywhere in your tree in a keystroke. Jump straight to it, no scrolling, no remembering where you filed it.

  • Import & export

    Your outlines are yours. Move notes in and out as simple indented plain text, or as a full-fidelity JSON backup — no lock-in, no proprietary cage.

  • Keyboard-driven filters

    Press a key to narrow the view to a colour or a status, then clear it just as fast. Sift to exactly what matters without lifting your hands.

  • Drag to rearrange

    When you'd rather use the mouse, drag any item to move or re-nest it — even across columns. Structure follows your thinking either way.

  • Automatic backups

    Sift quietly keeps a local backup as you work, so a wrong move is never the end of the story. Everything stays on your machine.

Designed for the keyboard

Hands stay home. Thoughts keep moving.

Sift is built to be played like an instrument. The shortcuts you reach for most are the ones already under your fingers, so capturing and reshaping ideas never breaks your flow.

  • ↩ New note
  • ⌘↩ Rename item
  • Tab Nest deeper
  • ⇧Tab Outdent
  • ⌘↑ Move up
  • ⌘↓ Move down
  • / Search
  • f Filter
  • ⌘C / ⌘V Copy / paste notes
  • ⌘D Toggle dark mode
  • ⌘M Monotasking

Start sifting today.

Bring calm, structured order to everything on your mind. Download Sift and write your first list in under a minute.

Download for Mac

Free to try · macOS 12 and later

Also on Windows & Linux