Use case · Launch checklist

Plan a launch you actually finish.

Use Milestones to turn the launch of your app, product, or side project into a real plan — milestones for the phases, tasks for the details, deadlines that mean something.

Download on the App Store Free · Works on iPhone, iPad, and Mac.

Most launches don't fail because the work is hard. They fail because there are forty small things — App Store assets, a working website, a Stripe page, a launch tweet, an email to your list — and three of them get forgotten until the day before. By then it's too late to do them well.

Milestones is built around that exact problem. A launch is a project. Each phase of the launch (build, polish, submit, market, ship) is a milestone. Every small TODO is a task under the right milestone, with a due date you can actually plan against. You see what's left at a glance and you stop discovering work the day of.

How it works

Step-by-step

  1. Create a project for the launch

    Open Milestones and create a project named for what you're launching — "Recipe App 1.0", "Q2 Newsletter Launch", "Indie Game Demo". One project per launch. Don't mix it with day-to-day work.

  2. Add a milestone for each phase

    A typical launch has 4–6 phases: Build, Polish, Submit / Review, Marketing assets, Launch day, Post-launch follow-up. Add one milestone per phase with its own target date. The dates force the plan to be realistic — you'll see immediately if you've left two days for App Store screenshots.

  3. Fill the tasks under each milestone

    Under Build: every feature you still need. Under Polish: empty states, copy, error messages, the icon. Under Submit: App Store metadata, screenshots, age rating, privacy nutrition labels, TestFlight build. Under Marketing: landing page, launch tweet, mailing list draft, Product Hunt scheduling. Capture them as you think of them — that's the whole point.

  4. Mark the active milestone

    Set the milestone you're currently working on as Active. The Today and Upcoming smart lists then surface only its tasks first. You stop staring at a 70-item backlog and start seeing the next ten things.

  5. Tag launch-day must-dos

    Create a tag like #launch-day and apply it to the handful of tasks that absolutely have to happen on day one — flip a feature flag, send an email, post the tweet, update pricing. Filter by the tag the night before so nothing slips.

  6. Review and check off

    Open the project once a day in the morning. Re-tick what's done, push what slipped, add anything new. Progress fills in visually as you go. By launch day the only open tasks should be the launch-day ones.

Why it works

Launch checklists in a notes app or a spreadsheet rot the moment something changes. A launch in Milestones doesn't, because the structure — Project → Milestone → Task — already maps to how a launch actually unfolds. You're not maintaining a list. You're following a plan that updates itself as you check things off.

Made for the people doing this work

Persona pages with the full pitch for each kind of user.

For
The project planner indie devs actually finish projects in.

Milestones gives you a clear path from idea to ship — without Trello's clutter, Notion's lag, or Linear's enterprise overhead. Native on iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Private iCloud sync.

For
One founder. Every project. Always one move ahead.

Milestones turns a solo founder's chaos — product, marketing, fundraising, content — into a few crisp projects with one active milestone each. Native, private, and on every Apple device you carry.

For
From garage idea to finished build.

Milestones turns the chaos of half-finished projects into a clean list of what's next. Plan the build on Mac, check the BOM on iPad in the workshop, mark tasks done from the bench.

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Do I need a separate project per launch, or one big "Launches" project?

One project per launch. Mixing them blurs the milestones together — "Submit to App Store" only makes sense in the context of a single product. Spinning up a new project takes seconds; reuse pays off the moment a second launch starts overlapping the first.

What if my launch slips by a week?

Move the milestone target dates forward and Milestones recalculates the smart lists automatically. There's no shame in slipping a milestone — the point of the deadline is to surface the slip early, not to punish you for it.

Can I share the launch plan with a collaborator?

Not yet. Milestones is single-user; iCloud sync moves your data across your own devices. If you absolutely need shared editing, export the task list into a shared doc for the launch period — but for the planning itself, single-user is usually a feature, not a bug.

Is there a template I can start from?

Not built-in (yet). The fastest way is to copy the milestone names from this page — Build / Polish / Submit / Marketing / Launch day / Post-launch — into a new project and customize from there.

Plan your launch in Milestones.

Free, native, private. The milestones structure was built for this exact problem.

Download on the App Store

Free · No account required · Private iCloud sync