Some years ago I had a problem. I'd open a new tab to check something quickly, see the Google homepage, forget what I was doing, and fall down a rabbit hole. By the time I looked up, forty minutes had gone.
I wanted something kinder. Not a productivity system. Just a small, friendly nudge. Hey, remember you were going to do X.
So I built one. It's still one of my favourite little side projects.
What it is
MyTodos is a Chrome extension. It replaces your new-tab page with a clean, plain list of whatever you told it you wanted to do. That's it.
- Open a new tab — you see your to-dos.
- Tick them off when you're done.
- Add new ones as they come to mind.
- The date and time, in a calm corner.
- Nothing else.
What it isn't
No accounts. No sync. No cloud. No "premium tier." No AI assistant. No integrations with sixteen project management tools. No suggestions. No notifications. No calendar. No habits tracker. No streaks. No leaderboard.
Just a list, kept locally in your browser, on your machine, with your data.
Why so minimal?
Most productivity software is designed to be sticky. It tries to make you come back. It sends notifications. It gives you badges. It gamifies your responsibilities.
I think that's exactly wrong for a to-do list. A to-do list should be a quiet servant. You consult it, you act, you get on with your life. The fewer times a day you even think about your to-do list, the more time you have for the actual todos.
So MyTodos is designed to be maximally forgettable. You see it only when you open a tab. You read the list, close it, and get back to the thing you were doing. If it's working, you don't think about the tool.
A note on privacy
Your data is stored in your browser's local storage. It never leaves your machine. We have no servers. We don't know what's on your list. We don't know how many items you have. We don't know if you've opened the extension today. We have no analytics. We have no business model.
It's free. It's always free. There's no catch.
This is, I realise, an unusual thing to have to say about software. It shouldn't be unusual. It used to not be.
How to get it
A thought on small software
We don't build many extensions or consumer apps any more — Partech's work is mostly in AI consulting for companies. But we still maintain this one, because hundreds of people still use it every day, and the emails from them are sometimes the nicest emails we get.
A small, free, quiet tool that respects its users. It's not a business. It's a small contribution to making our corner of the internet feel a little kinder.
If you build small things too, we'd love to hear about them.
