Tot Pocket

I rarely write reviews, but I am here to evangelize because Tot has changed my life, no exaggeration. I started using Tot only on MacBook initially, and it worked excellently as a little text holder or spot to start drafting a thought. I think the menu bar quick access and hands-free nature makes it stick better than other apps for me. I didn’t start to really use the heck out of Tot until I realized there was an iPhone and iPad app. I think having access across all of my devices, in addition to the high quality design and function of Tot, is well worth $20. Syncing across devices is instant. New features come out occasionally, and they are well thought out, not at all overwhelming, and never cause functionality issues. I think Tot serves a different function than any other note app system — I love Tot because it is the perfect pre-note app. How many of us have dozens, if not hundreds, of individual (abandoned) notes in our preferred notes app with a single word/thought, lost in the mix and bogging down the notes app that otherwise begs for organization and structure in order to be used to its maximum capabilities? Tot bridges a gap I never realized I had in my personal note-taking system by giving me a clean placeholder for those in-between thoughts or links or passcodes or whatever, and the finite number of pages forces me to clean up and organize regularly. I wouldn’t dare ask for one more dot… As someone who can never nail down my workflow to one device or app, who benefits from the lower stakes/ease of use that comes with limited formatting options, and who always has a lot of irons in the fire, Tot is a lifesaver for me. I really appreciate the devs who made this tool!

I almost never write reviews. I read about this app several months ago, when it first came out. I thought it sounded interesting but not worth $20, although I did download and use the free version on my MacBook Pro. I now have purchased the iOS/iPadOS version, and I must say I amazed. I expected this to be simply a place to keep scraps of writing. Well, it is, but it is so much more. It’s a simple app by design, but it’s true — that simplicity masks some amazing power. The level of attention to detail of these simple functions (one example: keyboard shortcuts on Magic Keyboard), the nearly instantaneous iCloud syncing across devices, the meticulous design, and more make Tot a joy to use. I do use it for those occasional times when I have to jot down some information, such as when I’m on a phone call and need to write down sometime. I also use it as a minimal bookmark keeper. I use it to quickly, without friction, write down an idea. Just a lovely app. I was wrong — it absolutely is worth $20.

I’m going ahead and giving this 5 stars because I already find it 5 stars worth of useful, although see below for a couple of suggestions for the future. I’m a heavy nvALT / 1Writer user for text snippets and such (h/t Merlin Mann) and I thought at first this was like a less-functional version of those. But having used it, I can see that it has different use cases. It doesn’t replace those apps for me, but it turns out I still needed Tot in my life. For me, I like the fact that it has 7 dots, and there are 7 days in the week... so right now I am using Tot to map out my to-dos / notes for each day of the week. Previously, this job was accomplished either by a messy, rotating series of nvALT notes or a bunch of index cards, but Tot seems like a simpler and cleaner solution. You already have my money and my five stars, but here are some suggestions for the devs for future versions in case you want six stars in my heart. Apologies if these already exist and I missed them somewhere... I haven’t been using the app super-long. * Configurable number of dots * Support Control-Tab and Shift-Control-Tab for navigating between dots (or make the shortcut configurable), for those of us who immediately tried to use the web browser shortcuts * This one’s a bit weird, and I don’t feel as strongly about it... but for those of us who might use this as a week-ahead planner, maybe add an easy way to rearrange the order of the dots (e.g. when Monday’s over, it might be nice to be able to move my “Monday” dot to the end of the list) Thanks for making this!