A native macOS study planner, habit tracker and analytics dashboard for IELTS and SAT preparation.
Plan your day in blocks, mark what you actually did, log every mistake, and watch the numbers move. Everything stays on your Mac: no accounts, no backend, no third-party code.
Drag on the timeline to create a block, drag it to move, drag its edges to resize. Mark each block Done, Partial or Skipped and record the minutes you really spent.
Planned vs actual hours per category, completion rate, band and score trends, the error types that cost you most — and a short list of plain-language insights.
Raw Listening and Reading scores become bands automatically, and the overall band follows the IELTS rounding rule. SAT sections add up to a total, with the gap to your target always visible.
Every mistake with its skill, type, note and the mock it came from. Filter by skill, type, date range or text, and click a chip to drill into your most frequent error.
A daily checklist with current and best streaks, and a GitHub-style heatmap of the last 60 days.
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Download
PrepPlanner.dmgfrom the latest release. -
Open it and drag PrepPlanner to Applications.
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The app is signed with a development certificate and is not notarized by Apple, so the first launch is blocked with “Apple could not verify PrepPlanner is free of malware”. To allow it:
- Click Done in that dialog — not Move to Trash, which deletes the app.
- Open System Settings ▸ Privacy & Security, scroll to the Security section, and click Open Anyway next to the note about PrepPlanner.
- Confirm with Touch ID or your password, then click Open Anyway once more.
macOS only lists the app there after a blocked launch attempt, so step one is required. On macOS 15 and later the old right-click ▸ Open shortcut no longer works. The equivalent from a terminal is
xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/PrepPlanner.app.
Or build it yourself — open PrepPlanner.xcodeproj in Xcode and press ⌘R. A copy you build
locally is never quarantined, so it opens without any of the above.
The scoring rules — IELTS raw-score conversion, band rounding and SAT section scores — are covered by unit tests, since a wrong band is not visible in the UI:
xcodebuild test -project PrepPlanner.xcodeproj -scheme PrepPlanner -destination 'platform=macOS'
Day Planner
- Hourly timeline from 06:00 to 24:00 in 15-minute steps, one day at a time
- Create, move and resize blocks by dragging; overlapping blocks sit side by side
- Category, title, times, note, status and actual minutes per block
- Month calendar with a dot on every day that has blocks
- Day templates: save a day and apply it to a date or a whole range, with weekday filters and Merge / Replace / Skip handling for days that already have blocks
- Planned vs completed hours and countdowns to both exams
Results
- IELTS: raw Listening and Academic Reading scores (0–40) convert to bands automatically
- Overall band = average of the four bands, rounded to the nearest half band (.25 rounds up to .5, .75 up to the next whole band)
- Optional marking criteria (TR/CC/LR/GRA and FC/LR/GRA/P) with a suggested band
- SAT: Reading & Writing and Math (200–800) with an automatic total
- Latest score, change since the previous mock and distance to target
Error Log
- Date, skill, error type, note and an optional link to a mock test
- Editable error types per skill
- Filters for skill, type, last 7 / 30 days and free text
Analytics
- Planned vs actual hours per category, daily and weekly
- Completion rate per day (Done 100%, Partial 50%, Skipped 0%)
- IELTS band trends with dashed target lines; SAT total and section trends
- Most frequent error types, filterable
- Automatic insights, e.g. "Writing time this week is 30% below plan" or "Listening improved +0.5 since last mock"
Habits
- Daily checklist for today or any past day
- Current streak, best streak and days done in the last 60
- Heatmap per habit and one for all habits together
Also
- Reminder before each block starts, with snooze and a prompt to mark how it went when it ends
- Menu bar item showing the current block and time left
- Full JSON backup and restore, plus CSV export of results and the error log
- English and Uzbek (Latin), including dates and number formats
| Shortcut | Action |
|---|---|
| ⌘1 – ⌘5 | Switch section |
| ⌘N | New block at the next free slot |
| ⌫ | Delete selected block |
| ↑ / ↓ | Move selected block by 15 minutes |
| ⇧⌘D / ⇧⌘P / ⇧⌘K | Mark Done / Partial / Skipped |
| ⌘D | Duplicate block |
| ⌘T, ⌘[, ⌘] | Today, previous day, next day |
| ⇧⌘S / ⇧⌘T | Save day as template / apply template |
| ⌘E | Log an error |
| ⌘R / ⇧⌘R | New IELTS / SAT mock |
| ⌥⌘N | New habit |
| ⌥⌘I | Show or hide the inspector |
| ⇧⌘E | Export backup |
| ⌘, | Settings |
Everything lives in a single SwiftData store at
~/Library/Application Support/PrepPlanner/PrepPlanner.store. Nothing is uploaded anywhere.
Use File ▸ Export Backup for a JSON copy; importing saves a safety copy of your current data first.
- macOS 14 Sonoma or later
- Xcode 16 or later to build from source
xcodebuild -project PrepPlanner.xcodeproj -scheme PrepPlanner -configuration Debug build- Localization — strings live in
PrepPlanner/Localizable.xcstrings. After adding UI text, build and runpython3 scripts/sync_strings.pyto add new keys and list anything still untranslated. - App icon — edit
scripts/make_icon.swiftand run:swiftc -O -o /tmp/icongen scripts/make_icon.swift && /tmp/icongen PrepPlanner/Assets.xcassets/AppIcon.appiconset - Disk image —
scripts/make_dmg.sh path/to/PrepPlanner.app out.dmgbuilds the styled installer window (background, icon positions); the background itself comes fromscripts/make_dmg_background.swift. - Structure —
Models/holds SwiftData models plus the scoring, analytics, insight and backup logic;Views/is split by screen;Support/has theming, formatting, reminders and the menu bar tracker.
- GitHub: github.com/mahmudulashev
- Email: mahmud_u@icloud.com
Both are also in the app under Settings ▸ About and in the planner's day summary panel.