Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: Best To-Do/Task List Software?
Albanach writes: Despite searching, I have not identified a good solution for managing to-do lists, a problem that can't be unique or unusual. For a variety of reasons, I need something I host myself, which allows me to organize tasks, give them due dates and/or priorities and to easily reorganize. I'd prefer a web interface so that I can access my list from home/work/mobile. My searches generally turned up hosted solutions that don't work for privacy reasons, or very old software that has shown no sign of updates in years. What are other Slashdotters using to manage their real-world task list?
... or very old software that has shown no sign of updates in years.
How is that relevant? I understand if the software has outstanding major bugs or is not feature complete. However, as you point out, the todo list is basically a universal problem that has been around since the beginning of time. So what if some application was last updated 10 years ago if it does the job and is essentially bug free?
I also get it if you really want a nice responsive mobile experience and the only tool you find was "completed" before responsive design was a thing. But, the point still stands: a lack of recent releases does not automatically make a piece of software unsuitable or undesirable. Lack of responsive design would be an example of a missing feature, as opposed to an outright bug.
I would be interested to see what came in your search that you deemed "too old". Assuming that age is the only problem you found with them, I suspect that one or more are actually still quite useful.
Seriously, my phone. It goes where I go, and if I keep the list in apple notes, then it's cloudified and i can hit it from my PC or ipad or from any browser, really.
Alternatively, a... a.. *GASP* I can't say it in this day and age!
A... s small spiral-bound notebook, be it hinged at top or at the side, and a trusty old Pentel .5mm pencil. Like a really, really old one like the P225. I have at least half a dozen. Yeah. One of them dates to 1978 or so. That one has a place of honor on my piano, it's from 4th grade.
Hey, you asked. Sometimes the oldest of tools are still the best...
Truth be told, I prefer paper and pencil..
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
Google keep feels like it would be perfect as a day to day (non-work) TODO list.. if it was just a _little_ bit better.
I use it for things like my grocery list and it works well enough for that, but it could be so much better.
...pencil and paper. They take effort to use and it takes effort to stick to a plan.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
You can rather easily host an instance of Nextcloud on rather modest hardware in my experience. It just needs to be able to run apache/nginx, php, and sqlite (you're supposed to use mariadb/mysql but don't absolutely need to if you're just running it for yourself). Activate the tasks app and you're good to go. The entire infrastructure is all open source and you get a whole lot more benefits than just self-hosted tasks.
Everything is accessible with CalDAV so you can use the built-in sync from the iPhone or DAVdroid and OpenTasks on Android. For desktop/laptop you can access it from the web interface or through your preferred groupware software.
Since security is an issue, if you don't want to pay for an SSL certificate you can self-sign one or get one from Let's Encrypt.
Self-hosting is making more and more sense nowadays in the marketplace where cloud based apps offer "free" services at first and then squeeze their customers to death later.
I wonder too...
It's 'cloud' hosted, but thus far has been pretty well behaved: Todoist (https://todoist.com/). It has about a bajillion features I don't use (hell, I don't even put due dates on my tasks). It's a nice way to quickly take down items you need to remember and then tick off later though. I'm on the free version, which hasn't been 'nagware' at all, offers enough basic functionality to be useful and so far doesn't appear to be showing me "related ads" or any such thing.
So if 'self hosted' is an absolute requirement, I'd recommend checking them out so you know what you need to copy ;-)
You're right in spite of yourself: by far the best tool for this job is indeed the one you write yourself... with a pencil (it's a to-do list, for fuck's sake).