Best ADHD apps for adults (and Chrome extensions)

The best ADHD apps do not all perform the same vague job called “productivity.” One makes time visible, another catches tasks quickly, another remembers passwords, and another keeps the browser path intact when an interruption arrives wearing a tiny hat.

I have ADHD and build software around externalising executive function. These are ten tools I recommend for specific jobs. Pick the one that removes work from your head, keep it if it earns the space, and cheerfully ignore the rest.

Quick links:

Llama Life turns a daily list into visible slices of time. Founder Marie Ng built it after using timeboxing for her own ADHD, and the result is friendly without becoming a carnival. Give each task an estimate, start the timer, see when the list will end, and compare the estimate with the time it actually took. Abstract time becomes a row of llamas doing arithmetic. Excellent.

Claude is excellent at turning a heap of half-formed thoughts into a structure you can inspect. Paste the brain dump, ask for the decisions and next actions, then correct anything it misunderstood. The correction matters because an AI assistant is a collaborator, not an oracle in a tasteful beige cave.

For longer work, Claude Projects can use uploaded documents and project instructions as shared context across chats. That makes it useful for writing, planning, debugging, and breaking a task into a first move. It is externalising executive function with a conversation box attached.

Notion is excellent when notes, documents, tasks, and project context need to live together. Pages can be as plain as a checklist or as elaborate as a related set of databases with calendars, boards, and timelines.

That flexibility is the gift and the trade-off. Start with one useful page before constructing the municipal government of your future workspace. Notion will happily let you do either.

If music helps you settle into a task, Brain.fm makes functional music for focus, relaxation, and sleep. It now includes an ADHD mode with adjustable stimulation. The company also funds research into how its modulation affects attention, but your own ears remain the decisive committee: try it on real work and see whether the sound supports the task.

TickTick combines quick task capture with reminders, calendar views, habits, Pomodoro timers, and an Eisenhower Matrix. That breadth is useful when you want one app to make several kinds of structure visible. Use the views that help today and leave the remaining control room respectfully untouched.

1Password saves and fills passwords, passkeys, two-factor codes, payment details, and secure notes across devices. The ADHD win is delightfully boring: the login does not become a surprise side quest that consumes the task you arrived to finish.

Horse 3.3 beta supports the 1Password extension directly. Apple Passwords is also excellent if your devices already live happily inside Apple’s garden.

Goblin Tools is a collection of small, focused tools for moments when something feels too large or complicated. Magic ToDo breaks a task into steps, Compiler turns a brain dump into actions, Estimator guesses how long an activity might take, and Taskmaster presents one item at a time.

The chilli-pepper “spiciness” control tells Magic ToDo how aggressively to break the task down. This is both useful interface design and the correct amount of ceremony for taking out the bins.

Momentum turns the new-tab page into a calm dashboard with one daily focus, a to-do list, links, timers, sounds, and a beautiful photograph. It is a good choice when the new tab is the moment you tend to forget why you opened one.

Todoist has spent years making task capture extremely fast. Type “call Mum every Sunday at 10” and its natural-language parser creates the recurring schedule. Projects, priorities, filters, and reminders can grow around that simple capture when you need them.

For ADHD, the useful bit is the short distance between remembering and recording. Get the thought into a trusted place before it puts on a disguise and disappears.

Horse Browser is the browser I created after realising that tabs make working memory hold the structure of the internet. If an interruption breaks your context, the task can vanish even while every tab remains technically open.

Horse replaces tabs with Trails: visible, nested pages that preserve where every branch came from. Follow the tangent, collapse the project, return tomorrow, and pick up from the same path. The browser gets the remembering job. Computers love promotions!

The useful question is not “Which app is best for ADHD?” It is “Which invisible job am I asking my brain to perform?”

Make time visible with Llama Life. Catch tasks with Todoist or TickTick. Break the first step down with Goblin Tools. Keep project knowledge in Notion or Claude. Let 1Password handle credentials, and let Horse keep the browser path alive. Better systems are a team sport, and every little machine gets a position!

Outside the app store, a brain dump, dopamine menu, or commonplace book can externalise the same kinds of work with paper and a pen.

Try Horse Browser free for two weeks. Follow a real task a few links deep and see whether one Trail earns its place.