Here’s another ADHD-friendly app coming your way, and this time it found me.
I received an email from someone at Brite, asking me to try the app out and do an honest review. They ensured that I’d love it, and because I love looking at this kind of thing regardless, I enthusiastically said yes. It’s been about a month, and I think it’s high time we talk about what I’ve found, don’t you?
If you’d rather watch me talk about Brite, you can do so here. If you’d rather hear it, listen below, or go to your favorite podcast platform.
What, exactly, is Brite?
As Motion didn’t, Brite also doesn’t seem to have much on its website about where it came from, how it was devised, or who was involved. Maybe I’m behind the times and this isn’t a thing anymore, I dunno.
But from playing with Brite myself this past month, I can fill you in on what it is: namely, it’s a to-do list/task management system that aims to be most of what you need all in one place. It includes a number of ways to keep track of tasks, projects, important dates, and more, be it on your computer or on your cell phone.
While you don’t have to have ADHD to use Brite, it was clearly built with us in mind; as you’re building your profile for the first time, it’ll ask you why you’re using the app, and “ADHD” is one of the reasons you can choose.
Why is Brite great?
Brite makes it super easy to run your entire day within their app. You can integrate your calendar with it and then use it to not only keep track of pre-planned events, but also to follow up on personal and work tasks, which are kept in separate lists on your homepage.
Brite also boasts a pretty decent habit tracker –pre-loaded with over 80 popular habits, or open for you to add your own– an ideas list area, budget tracker, goals tracker, and weather tracker. There are also timers, soothing sounds, and reminders available, and a countdown timer, which was my personal favorite, so that you can easily keep track of personal milestones and project deadlines.
I’m also a massive fan of the attention Brite pays to mental health awareness. They include a diary area complete with some very thought-provoking prompts, an area with a few meditations, a mood tracker, and a blog with articles about productivity and mental health tips.
Every task entered into Brite can be updated with difficulty, priority, and tags, and it’s possible to attach documents, make checklists, and a host of other really cool things to ensure that whatever you enter is in its optimal state for you to use when the time comes.
Despite all of these options, Brite doesn’t come off as overwhelming in the slightest, most likely because this is all already built in, and, unlike with Amazing Marvin, you aren’t expected to put together a dashboard completely from scratch.
As you’d imagine, this is kind of a double-edged sword. Which brings us to:
How could Brite improve?
While Brite’s got a very bright future, it’s still in its infancy, and so there are things that could be improved.
Firstly, the level of functionality between the phone app and the web app aren’t equal. The phone app works wonderfully and I never had a problem with it; while the web app had some weirdness within it. For example, I’d regularly have to refresh the page every day if I wanted the countdown timer to actually update. Obviously, if you’re relying on that to tell you how many days are left until your deadline, there’s not much that can ruin a day worse than realizing that, with a quick refresh, your deadline is actually 2 days away instead of 14. I also signed in again for the first time in a couple weeks on my computer (I had been using my phone during travel), and the home screen would not update to the current day, no matter how many times I refreshed. I had to manually change the date, which wasn’t the worst thing in the world, but definitely shows that there is some updating needed to the web version of Brite.
Secondly, while I certainly appreciate the simplicity of Brite’s layout, I’d love a little more customization. You have a “private tasks” list and a “work tasks” list on your front page, but it’s not really possible to make any other lists. You can work around this, but I’d personally love to be able to add a list with a custom title when I feel like it.
Thirdly, while Brite insists that they can be used to share things with teammates, I wouldn’t use this app for work with large teams. While everything the app offers works beautifully if you’re by yourself, it’s not really robust enough to handle a large team project that would need regular status updates, analytics, and an unholy host of documents and links.
Fourthly and lastly, I do wish that Brite had a fully functioning desktop app. Their roadmap says that they’re working on releasing this, but at the time of this writing, it’s not available and it did mess with my groove a little on workdays.
In conclusion…
I didn’t think any app could top Marvin, but Brite did, by a mile. I can honestly say that, for the last month, I haven’t felt as if I’ve needed any other app to help me run my days and manage my tasks. Sure, I use other suites for things like email and time management, but Brite is perfect for keeping track of literally everything else. I’m wholly impressed by what it can do, and I think that, for ADHD brains, it’s a tough one to top. If you’d like to try it, you can download it here.
Details
Platforms: Mac, iPad, iOS, and web (Android is in the works, so keep an eye out for that if interested)
Cost: Limited free plan available, premium plan is 4.50 monthly or 15.29 for the year.
BEST FOR: Busy parents, students, solopreneurs, business owners with teams of 1-3 people.
NOT GREAT FOR: large teams, people who need more time management help, anyone in need of very granular project management.
