StudyNest
A Mac dashboard for university students
Lectures, deadlines, focus and habits, all in one quiet window. StudyNest reads the timetable already in your calendar, counts down to every essay and exam, and grows a tree while you study. When something comes up, you write it down in two seconds without leaving what you're doing.
Free while in beta · macOS 15 or newer · Apple silicon & Intel
No account. Everything stays on your Mac.
Try the capture box. Type, then press Return.
Due soon
Home is the page you open with your coffee: the next lecture and its room, what's due this week, and how many days you have left for each assignment, with a nudge for when to start the heavy ones.
01
Press ⌥Space in any app and a small box appears. Type !email tutor tomorrow
and press Return. StudyNest reads the date, the urgency and the course code, then gets out of your way. What you typed is saved first, so nothing is ever lost.
02
StudyNest reads the calendars already on your Mac: Google, iCloud, Outlook, or the feed your university gives you. Tell it which one holds your lectures and it shows what's next, where, and how long until it starts. It only reads; it never changes your calendar.
03
Plant a tree, pick the course and a length, and study. Switch to Instagram or YouTube and you have ten seconds to come back before the tree dies. Every focused minute earns a coin for new trees, flowers and animals.
04
Focus time by day and by course, and a study balance that shows the subject you've been quietly avoiding. Also a year of study as a grid of days, if you like that sort of thing.
05
Pick a few habits and a weekly target. On a bad day, do the minimum, like five pages or a ten-minute walk, and it still counts. Link a habit to focus and it ticks itself once you've studied enough.
Free while in beta. From March: €15 once, no subscription, with a 14-day free trial.
Download StudyNest 0.9Needs macOS 15 Sequoia or newer. Works on Apple silicon and Intel Macs.
StudyNest is a Mac app. Open this page on your Mac to download it.
The beta isn't signed by Apple yet, so your Mac asks you to confirm it once. It takes about a minute.
Open the downloaded file and drag StudyNest onto the Applications folder.
macOS says it couldn't verify StudyNest. That's expected for a beta.
Go to System Settings › Privacy & Security and scroll to Security. Next to StudyNest was blocked
, click Open Anyway and enter your password.
From now on StudyNest opens like any other app. A short setup adds your courses and calendars; you can skip any of it.
Made by a student
I built StudyNest during my first year at university because my week lived in five places: a calendar, a to-do app, a focus timer, a habit tracker and a notes file that nobody else could read. None of them knew about the others, so I spent more time checking apps than studying.
StudyNest is what I wanted instead: one window that knows my timetable, my deadlines and how much I actually studied. If you try it, tell me what's missing. There's a Send Feedback button in the Help menu, and I read every one.
Mark