Nimbus — a notes and to-do list Chrome extension
Nimbus is a free Chrome extension that puts your notes and your daily to-do list one click away in the toolbar. Open it, write, close it. There is no account to create, no server to trust, and nothing to sync manually — and it keeps working with the network off.
One day at a time
Most to-do extensions show you one endless list, and by Thursday it is a graveyard you scroll past. Nimbus shows one day, and opens on today. The progress bar means this day, never a lifetime average, so finishing four out of four reads as a finished day instead of 3% of an infinite backlog.
Nothing silently disappears at midnight either. Anything unfinished from the last 14 days collects in a Carried over group on today — move one forward with the undo arrow, or pull them all in at once. Step between days with the arrow keys, jump to any date with the picker, or press T to snap back to today.
Notes with live Markdown
Write in the popup, or pop a note out to a full-screen tab when it grows. Notes auto-save as you type with a running Saving / Saved status, so there is no save button to forget. Pin the important ones, tag them with one of six colours, and search across every title and body as you type.
Turn on Markdown mode and the writing surface formats
itself live: headings grow, bold and italic render in place, and lists,
quotes and code style inline — inside the same box you are
typing in. There is no split preview pane to keep in sync, and turning
it off gives you plain text again.
Insights that are not vanity metrics
Nimbus scores how consistently you finish what you start, out of 100. It is a weighted composite — 40% completion rate, 30% consistency, 15% current streak, 15% on-time rate — which is a deliberate choice: finishing three of three beats starting twenty and finishing ten.
Underneath sit a 13-week consistency heatmap, a 14-day done-versus-planned chart, and a breakdown by priority that answers whether you actually finish the High ones or just the easy ones. Two numbers are kept apart on purpose: a task finished late counts against the day it was planned for, but lights up the day you actually finished it. That is what makes “finished on time” mean anything.
Themes and accessible colour
Light, dark, or system — system follows your OS and switches live when it does. Eight accent colours drive the entire interface: buttons, charts, the heatmap, the page wash, even the dividers. A teal Nimbus is teal all the way through, not a violet app with a teal button.
The accents are generated, not eyeballed. Each hue was solved against a WCAG contrast target, because equal perceptual lightness does not give equal contrast across hues — a cyan is far brighter than a violet at the same lightness. The worst text-on-background pair across all eight accents in both themes measures 4.65:1 against a 4.5:1 requirement.
Privacy: what Nimbus does not do
Nimbus asks for exactly one permission — storage — and it
makes no network requests of any kind. Fonts are bundled with the
extension rather than fetched, so it renders identically offline. There
is no account, no server, no analytics, no advertising identifier and
no telemetry. Your notes are written to your browser's own storage and
to your Chrome account's sync storage, and nowhere else.
Because both copies are written at once and merged on load, clearing your cookies leaves your notes untouched, and reinstalling the extension or signing into Chrome on a new computer brings them back. You can also export a JSON backup whenever you like; restoring merges by newest-wins, so it never wipes what you already have.
Frequently asked questions
Is Nimbus free?
Yes. It is completely free — no paid tier, no trial, and no ads.
Do I need an account to use Nimbus?
No. There is no sign-up and no login. Your notes and to-dos are written to your browser's own storage, so Nimbus works the moment you install it and keeps working offline.
Where is my data stored, and is it private?
Everything is written to chrome.storage.local and
chrome.storage.sync at the same time and merged when you
open the extension. Nothing is sent to any server, there is no
analytics and no tracking, and the only permission Nimbus requests is
storage.
Will my notes survive a reinstall or a new computer?
Yes. Because Nimbus also writes to Chrome sync, reinstalling the extension or signing into Chrome on another computer re-downloads your notes and to-dos. You can also export a JSON backup at any time, and restoring merges rather than overwrites.
What happens to a task I do not finish today?
It does not disappear. Unfinished tasks from the last 14 days collect in a Carried over group on today, so you can move one forward or pull them all in at once. After 14 days a task stops nagging and stays on its own date, where it still counts in your statistics.
Does Nimbus support Markdown?
Yes. Markdown mode formats the writing surface live as you type — headings grow, bold and italic render in place, and lists, quotes and code style inline — all inside the same box you are typing in, with no split preview pane.
Does Nimbus work in Microsoft Edge or Brave?
Yes. Nimbus is a Manifest V3 extension, so it installs from the Chrome Web Store into any Chromium-based browser, including Microsoft Edge, Brave, Opera and Vivaldi.