DayTasks

Note: To set up DayTasks to work with your todo.txt file, you may need to make the window wider in order to see the additional options in the toolbar’s dropdown button on the right side. There is an option there to choose the folder your todo.txt file is located.

DayTasks is a minimal todo.txt-compatible app for Ubuntu. It is freely available from my ppa or for purchase from the Ubuntu Software Center (purchasing from the software center is a great way to support development of DayTasks and Ubuntu at the same time!). It lets you easily manage adding new tasks, removing tasks, marking tasks complete, archiving completed tasks to your done.txt file, and even filtering and searching through tasks in a simple way that lets you find certain projects or contexts easily. It also handles adding creation and completion dates to tasks for you. Try enabling Easy Line Breaks if you want the ability to add more details to your tasks – this is the feature I’ve always wanted to include in DayTasks.

DayTasks Icon
DayTasks Icon
Task List
Click to view full size
Click to view full size
Click to view full size

This is the todo.txt app for Ubuntu that I’ve been looking for. It is basic, but simple and effective. Try it today with the following commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:thejambi/thejambi
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install daytasks

Or download the .deb files from the package details page on Launchpad.

Feel free to leave any helpful comments or suggestions in the comments.

61 thoughts on “DayTasks”

  1. Hello, I like the look of DayTasks (I purchased it in the software center because I have been looking for a good todo.txt app). I use a todo.txt file that is located in my dropbox folder for syncing with my iphone. How do I point DayTasks toward the correct todo.txt? In the screenshots I see there is a button that says Open… However, I do not see the same button in the version that I got from the USC.

    Thank you for you help!
    Nick

    Reply

    • Hi Nick, I sent you an email to answer your question. The option has been moved to the drop-down menu to the right of the About menu item. Sorry for the confusion!

      Reply

      • Thank you. The reason that I wanted to uninstall it was because after installing it, my Fn+UpArrow/DownArrow/Left/Right doesn’t work anymore. There are the shortcuts I usually use to minimize or maximize my window. But even after I uninstall daytasks, they still do not work anymore. Would you know the reasons? Thanks a lot.

      • Hm, that is strange. DayTasks definitely wouldn’t have been the reason for that. Perhaps an update reset or changed your shortcut keys? You should be able to check what your shortcut keys are and change them from the Keyboard settings in System Settings. Good luck!

  4. This is awesome. Thanks for making it. I have tried to install it on Debian Weezy with no luck. I realize it’s been created for Ubuntu, but would really appreciate some help getting it to run on Weezy.

    Thanks.

    Reply

    • Hi! I’m not sure about installing on Debian as I’ve never tried.. But, what I would suggest is to download the tar file from here and try to install it with:
      $ ./configure
      $ make
      $ make install

      And I’m not sure how easy it would be to get the dependencies installed that will be needed. Here’s a list of dependencies that may not be totally complete, but a good help either way:
      debhelper (>= 7),
      libgee-dev (>= 0.6.4),
      libgdk-pixbuf2.0-dev (>= 2.26.1),
      libglib2.0-dev (>= 2.32.1),
      libgtk-3-dev (>= 3.4.1),
      valac-0.16 (>= 0.16.0),
      cmake (>= 2.8.7)

      Good luck!

      Reply

  5. Hi, great app so far. of course there are some wishes. 😉
    what about some navigation shortcuts.

    for example:
    move with the arrow in the tasklist, if return is hit cursor jumps to edit field.

    thx

    alex

    Reply

  6. a sort feature would be great.

    sort tasks from a to z

    and

    a special filter that shows just all @context and/or all +projekts for further filtering.

    thx

    alex

    Reply

  11. Hi!

    I tried installing DayTasks in Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, but could not. I get a dependency error about “libglib2.0-0 (>=2.35.9)” (“not satisfiable”).

    I tried to install libglib2.0.-0, with no luck, since a newer version is already installed.

    Any ideas?

    Adam

    Reply

    • Hi Mark, I’m putting this on my todo list! Literally 🙂
      Let me know if you want me to notify you when I get the chance to work on it so you can try it out.

      Reply

      • Yes, I’d be happy to try it out. One other thing – quitting DayTasks and restarting works for displaying an up-to-date list, but a reload button would make it a bit easier.

      • There’s a shortcut that will trigger a reload. It should be listed in the keyboard shortcuts dialog if you open that up, but I think it’s just r or ctrl+r

    • There’s a dropdown on the very right of the toolbar with that. Sometimes it’s hidden when the window isn’t wide enough. If you maximize the window the dropdown should show the right options. It’s something I have to fix.

      Reply

  16. I just installed and can’t seem to create a new task, clicking on new doesn’t do anything. I checked permissions and they are the same as other files I own (i.e., sthompson.domain^users). Thanks for the app and the assistance.

    Reply

    • Hi, sorry you’re having trouble with it, I haven’t heard of an error like that. Does it work if you change the tasks folder and use a different location?

      Reply

      • How do I do that? Also, possibly of note, I don’t have any menus.

      • It is one of the options listed when clicking the down arrow on the right side of the toolbar (as seen in the screenshots above, you may need to widen/maximize the window for it to show properly).

      • Sorry about the new thread, please delete it. But to answer your question, no, it doesn’t work.

    • Clicking on New should only just clear an active task being edited and start a new one. Does saving a task – hitting enter in the text box, or maybe ctrl+Enter – add the task?

      Reply

  18. Great product. Been looking for some desktop magic as slick as the todo.txt android app. Would be great to turn off the append date feature… really hacks up my other todo.txt interfaces. Any plans for this? Thanks!

    Reply

    • Thanks for the comment! When I have time to work on these projects soon, I’ll put this first on my list. So keep checking back for updates. Thanks,
      Zach

      Reply

  19. Installed on Ubuntu 14.04. Program loaded a todo.txt file that is in my dropboox. Cannot change the file. When on goes to the menu all files are grayed out.

    Using the current version 2.82.

    Any thoughts?

    Reply

  21. Because I don’t spend much time in terminal, I looked for and tried several Linux alternatives to the CLI of Todo.txt. DayTasks was the easiest to set up and use straightaway. Thank you for sharing!

    Reply

  23. Hello,
    Just discovered your software and it’s excellent, love the lightweight uncluttered ui. There’s two things I’d like to do, which might be features I haven’t discovered yet, if not then can I suggest/ vote for them please.
    1- edit multiple items at once
    2- apply a sort order +/- save combinations as favourite views. I’ve seen the core todo.txt inbuilt sort hierarchy but sometimes you need a custom order.
    Would be very interested to see what you think.
    BW
    A

    Reply

  24. This application is pretty cool. It has minimal dependencies and a very minimalistic approach to its UI, which in my opinion totally fits the todo.txt-way of doing things. There is, however, a glaring deficit which makes it unusable for your todo.txt needs on *nix: it is not at all usable with a keyboard only. The (basic) functionality of navigating up and down my list of tasks and selecting a task (to edit, delete, etc.) is just not present – you have to use the mouse, which is unnecesarily slow and inefficient. This gets in the way of the minimalistic approach quite a bit.

    Also, there is no syntax highlighting at all, and auto-completion for projects and contexts is sorely missing. All in all, the alternative “todotxt-machine” just trumps this app with its functionality.

    Reply

    • Back when I made this, I built what I needed because there weren’t any suitable alternatives.. Good to hear there are more out there now!

      Reply

  25. This is very good, thanks. I like the way that it sorts the lists on priority, something the todo.txt plugin for Thunderbird doesn’t do well since its definition of priorities are different to the todo.txt way.
    In order to make this a stable program going forwards across new distro releases (and also multi distro), would you consider making it a snap package which contains all necessary dependencies? This would not then need updating in the future.
    Neil.

    Reply

  27. Hi. Thank you for your work. I have been running DT on MX Linux and the functionality has some benefits over the Windows version by Ben Hughes, but oddly, selecting text results in the selection being the same background “white” as normal, rendering the text selected indistinguishable from “spaces” absent characters. This creates psycho-optical confusion.

    I see this issue only in DT. Perhaps you can add such selection color modification? Or … do you think this is an MX Linux “theme” issue? I am new to Linux and I seem to recall that this was not an issue in running DT on an earlier “test” of LUBUNTU. 😮

    Reply

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