Tasks.txt

"Plain text you own, forever" is exactly why I never fully left a todo.txt file — every polished task app eventually wants an account and a sync I don't need. Keyboard shortcuts for everything on top of the todo.txt format is the combo I've been missing. Does it stay in sync if I edit the underlying file in another editor?

For me its always been scratching down a todo list in TextEdit. This is a great little app for having that experience of ticking a box and seeing the task disappear.The only things i'm currently missing for it to be perfect are:- Ability to copy paste completed tasks back out of the app (for reporting purposes).- It would also be good to be able to nest sub-tasks beneath other larger epics.

The decision to skip the cloud entirely and keep everything in plain text is genuinely thoughtful. Appreciate the respect for how some of us actually like to work.

'a shortcut layer on a file you own' is the whole pitch — so the tell is editing it in another editor while the app's open. whether that write reloads or clobbers is where owning it actually holds.

Plain text is the only task setup I've never quit, because it outlives whatever app I was into that month. Does Tasks.txt follow a spec like todo.txt so my file stays readable if I stop using the app, or is it its own format? The lock-in question is what kills these for me.

love the "almost invisible" framing, that's the right bar for a tool like this. question about the no-cloud/no-account choice though - if someone works between a laptop and a desktop, is the expectation that they drop the file in iCloud Drive or Dropbox themselves and just deal with the occasional sync conflict, or is single-machine use basically the intended use case and multi-device is out of scope on purpose

Finally a todo app that doesn't try to be a project manager. The keyboard shortcuts feel right and it loads instantly since it's just reading a text file.

Really like the decision to stay close to todo.txt instead of wrapping it in a heavy workflow. The no-cloud, no-account angle also feels right for this kind of app. One thing I'd be curious about is a very fast archive/review flow for completed days, since plain-text users usually want history without losing the minimal feel.

Congrats on shipping this, that native Swift choice instead of Electron is exactly the kind of decision people notice once they actually use it. The scratchpad for stray notes is a nice touch too. Curious if the archiving (deleting old dates) is still manual, or did you build a shortcut for that already?

I've been developing software for over 12 years and used almost every task tracker out there - Redmine, Jira, Trello, Clickup, etc. Yet I always found myself going back to a .txt file open in Sublime Text.

Of course i still have to use whatever tool the enterprise requires to track my work, but I also need a place to keep track of all the things, prioritise them and plan my day. I also track my personal stuff like groceries or phone calls in that same place. I even made a post asking if others also do this, and turned out I'm not alone.

Here's how my file looks:

20 Jun 2026
- test CI/CD
- check Mark's PRs
- call mom

21 Jun 2026
- send invoices
─────────────────────
- call electrician before friday
- update gitbook

When comparing this against more specialised tools, the benefit is that it's almost invisible. There's no project setup, no configuration, no popups, no navigation between different pages, no loading spinners or wait time. It's always open, instant to edit, and you can see everything on a single view.
Still there is some friction, like pressing cmd+S after every edit to save the file or manually archiving done tasks by deleting the old dates (or moving to another file in case I wanted a history of what I did last week). Also i have to enter dates by hand and there's no keyboard shortcut to mark something done.

So I built tasks.txt to solve exactly those little things.
It's keyboard-first, written in native Swift. No Electron, no web wrapper. Opens instantly, scrolls fast, doesn't lag on a keystroke. The format is plain text inspired by todo.txt - one line per task, readable in any text editor, grep-able in Terminal, version-controllable in Git, always on-device.

The app is mostly a keyboard shortcut layer on top of a file you own.
I also added a scratchpad for everything that isn't a task - notes, half-formed ideas, the things I'd otherwise open a new tab for.
It's free. Would love feedback from anyone who's been using plain old txt files or is looking to simplify their workflow. Less is more.