Obsidian TodoTxt Plugin

Manage *.todotxt files in Obsidian.

Install the plugin and put your todo file in your Obsidian vault with the .todotxt extension (ie, TODO.todotxt).

Creating a .todotxt file from within Obsidian can be a bit tricky. When you create a new note Obsidian will automatically append the .md extension, so TODO.todotxt becomes TODO.todotxt.md. To fix this, you can right-click on the file in Obsidian sidebar, select Reveal in Finder/File Explorer, and then change the file extension to .todotxt. If you are successful, the file will be listed in the Obsidian sidebar followed by a TODOTXT badge.

Additional Features

The TodoTxt Plugin supports some extensions to the basic todo.txt spec:

Due Dates

Due dates can be specified by including due:yyyy-mm-dd in the text of the task item. The plugin will highlight the due date and shift to orange as the date nears then red when the due date is missed. The date must be specified in the yyyy-mm-dd format (including padding the month or day with a 0 if needed) and no whitespace may be included.

Preserving Priorities on Complete

EXPERIMENATL: This feature is experimental and needs to be enabled in the settings.

As described in the todo.txt spec, priorities are typically discarded when a task is marked as complete. This extension to the spec will preserve the priority in a pri:X tag. It will also restore the priority if the task is later marked as uncompleted.

Recurring Tasks

EXPERIMENATL: This feature is experimental and needs to be enabled in the settings. This is not part of the todo.txt spec.

Recurring tasks can be specified by including the rec: tag. When such a task is marked as complete a new task will created with a due: tag based on the value in the rec: tag.

See further documentation of recurring tasks.

Threshhold Dates

Threshold dates are indicated by the t:YYYY-MM-DD tag. Tasks with a specified threshold are not considered ready to be undertaken until the threshold date. The Todotxt Plugin will display tasks with threshold dates in the future with a subtlely muted text.

How to Install by Hand

1. Clone this repo.
2. pnpm install to install dependencies
3. pnpm run dev to start compilation in watch mode.

Manually Installing the Plugin

Copy main.js, styles.css, manifest.json to your vault VaultFolder/.obsidian/plugins/todotxt-plugin/.

cp dist/* VaultFolder/.obsidian/plugins/todotxt-plugin/

Keyboard Shortcuts

Use tab and shift-tab to navigate through your todos.

• ctrl-n to create a New todo task
• ctrl-/ goto filter input
• e or enter to Edit the current todo task
• d to Delete the current todo task
• space toggle done

Future Development

• Delete a Todo
• Edit a Todo
• Keyboard shortcut to create new Todo
• Keyboard navigation through TODOs
• Priority colors are a bit bright
• Better handling for Todo.parse() errors
• Global keyboard shortcut to create new Todo
• Command palette command to create new Todo
• Config menu set the default .todotxt file
• Command palette to create a new .todotxt file

Development

Helpful commands to run while developing:

pnpm run dev # compile typescript to ./dist via esbuild
pnpm run css # compile css to ./dist via postcss
pnpm run cp # copy files from ./dist to Obsidian plugins dir
pnpm run parser:watch # compile .peggy grammar to parser.js
pnpm run test:watch # run tests in watch mode

We are using the moment package because Obsidian already requires it. Otherwise would use something lighter weight (like date-fns) or built-in.

Thanks

• Thanks to the authors of todotxt.
• Thanks to the authors of SwiftoDo for documenting the due and recurring extensions to the spec.

Support

I've been asked if there are ways to support this plugin. I created it to scratch my own itch and am just happy that others find it useful. Giving it a star on github would be appreciated. If you are feeling extra generous, you can buy me a coffee ☕.