Todo.txt

Todo.txt for Android and iOS users noticed something bad happen last week: the apps stopped syncing to Dropbox. It’s incredibly frustrating when a tool you rely on every day stops working inexplicably.

I wanted to update the community about what happened, what we’re doing to fix it, and what you can do in the meantime.

What happened:

On September 28th, Dropbox took their v1 API endpoints offline, the endpoints Todo.txt for Android and iOS use to sync your todo.txt and done.txt files.

This deprecation was not a surprise; Dropbox announced it months ago. But unfortunately, the Todo.txt apps were not updated in time and not prepared to handle this switch-off.

This Dropbox update rendered the Todo.txt apps unable to sync your files to Dropbox. This means that unless you only use the apps to manage your todo.txt file offline, the app is now at a greatly reduced functionality.

Updating the apps to use the new version of the Dropbox API is not a trivial amount of work. The Todo.txt apps haven’t been updated since 2014, and a lot has changed since then. It will require a significant amount of effort to even get the apps to build at all in their current outdated state, using recent versions of Android Studio and Xcode.

What we’re doing now:

To prevent new users from purchasing a mostly broken app, I’ve pulled the Todo.txt apps from the Play Store, iTunes Store, and Amazon Appstore.

A community effort has begun to update the apps to make them functional again. There’s no timeline on when that work will be complete. If you are able, please pitch in! Here’s the ticket for the iOS app and for the Android app.

What you can do in the meantime:

Check out alternatives, like Simpletask for Android and Todotxt+ for iOS.

Request a refund. The Todo.txt apps cost about two dollars in the various app stores, and I used that small stream of revenue to help defray the costs of running the project. However, if you purchased the app and want a refund due to this situation with Dropbox, you can make a request for me to send you $2 via PayPal (where I am ginatrapani at gmail) or Venmo. When you do, let me know which app you’re using.

Hi everyone,

Things have been quiet around here for a long time, but I have news to share today.

Despite the lack of activity, Todo.txt isn’t dead. There’s plenty of work to do, but I have been too busy to maintain the projects on my own in recent years. I want to stop blocking progress, so earlier this year I pitched a rebranding/mobile app redesign to my company. That didn’t work out, but the great news is: the community is stepping in!

I’d like to introduce the new todotxt organization on GitHub, which contains all the repositories for the core Todo.txt projects: the CLI, the file format, the web site, the Android and iOS apps. This is NOT a fork. It is a transfer of sole control by me in my personal GitHub account, to members of the new organization. All links to the original repositories in my personal account now redirect to the new organization.

Ali Karbassi (@karbassi) created the organization to my delight and with my blessing. Ali, Ingo, and I are the initial members, and we will share maintenance responsibilities. To reflect our new “org” status, we’ve moved the website from the .com to todotxt.org, and the blog is located at blog.todotxt.org. On Twitter we’re still at @todotxt.

What’s next:

Now that merge permissions are spread across multiple leaders, we can expect renewed attention to languishing pull requests and issues, a hopeful effort to begin a website redesign (please help!), and other discussions on modernizing this 11-year-old project. Already, Ali has updated our Contributor Guidelines, and a Code of Conduct is underway, which is fantastic.

What we’re asking from you now:

Check out the todotxt org on GitHub.

Post any updates to issues you may have filed or vote up issues you care about.

Come chat with us on Gitter.im. Ali created a room to discuss all things todo.txt in real-time at https://gitter.im/todotxt/. Join us there to share ideas and find out more.

Share this update with people you care about.

Thanks so much to Ali, Ingo, and everyone who has made Todo.txt so successful for so long. I use todo.txt every single day, and I feel so privileged to be part of something that’s still relevant 11 years later.

Warmly,

Good news! A bugfix release of Todo.txt for iOS is now live in the App Store. Version 1.10 fixes the bug that prevented you from adding contexts or projects when inserting or editing a task on iOS 8.

Thanks so much to Chuck for submitting the patch that fixed this bug.

We’re so thrilled you’ve built an app or add-on that works with todo.txt! Here’s what to do next.

Make a landing page for your work. Include a clear and brief explanation of what it does and why someone would need it, step-by-step instructions on how to download, install, and use it and—maybe most importantly!—screenshots of it in use.

Get the word out on the mailing list. Over 1,000 todo.txt enthusiasts are on the community mailing list. Post a message there that announces and describes your new app with a link to your landing page. (To avoid spam on this list, an actual human moderates every message from new users by hand; therefore, it may take a day or two for your message to go through.)

Get your app added to the todotxt.com web site. Send a pull request to this GitHub repository that adds your app’s name linked to its landing page, description, and author to the appropriate section of the front page (index.html) under the Community Apps header.

Happy news: a much-needed update to Todo.txt for iOS is now live in the App Store. Version 1.9 fixes the terrible bug that caused the app to crash if your local todo.txt file differed from the version in Dropbox.

Thanks so much to Jeremy and Steven for submitting the patch that fixed this bug, and to grahamc for doing some code library upgrades and cleanup.

Todo.txt’s mobile apps sync your todo.txt file with Dropbox, and no other cloud provider. You need to have a working Dropbox account to at least start using either of the official Todo.txt apps for Android and iOS.

Don’t want to sync your todo.txt to Dropbox? See the last paragraph for a workaround.

Several users have asked if the apps could work with other cloud providers, like ownCloud, git, Google Drive/Cloud, Box, rsync, SkyDrive, ShareFile, Amazon Cloud Drive, etc. We haven’t done it for two reasons. First, writing the backend code required to support multiple cloud providers is a bigger project than the core developers can take on at the moment. Second, our goal is to create the simplest, most friction-free user experience possible. Dropbox is one of the most popular consumer cloud providers in the world, so focusing our time and effort on refining the user experience syncing to Dropbox benefits the most users.

In short, in this case, we believe less is more.

Providing a choice of cloud providers to the app is a difficult user interface problem and would introduce much more code and complexity to maintain. Right now we’re focusing on smaller improvements we can make to the current single-provider functionality.

Of course, as always, we welcome pull requests! But do note: any pull request that adds a user interface for selecting an alternative cloud provider, managing that provider’s credentials, connection, and syncing mechanism would have to provide an incredibly simple, easy user experience to get accepted. If you’re up for the challenge, start by sharing wireframes with the community on the mailing list.

Just released a long-overdue update to the Todo.txt CLI, which hasn't seen a user distribution release in more than a year and a half. Plenty of fixes and enhancements are available in the new release, including:

Term filtering for listcon

A new make install command

Add-on subfolders (for easier git cloning of add-ons)

Project and context coloring without an add-on

Improvements to help and task completion

See the CLI 2.10 release page for the full changelog and to download the update. Thanks especially to Ingo for contributing the lion's share of updates to this release, and for code-reviewing all the contributions.

Todo.txt's Command Line Interface offers hooks for developers to create add-ons that make custom commands available to users or change default behavior. For example, an add-on can offer a single command that adds a task and prioritizes it A in one shot. Here's how to create and install CLI add-ons.

If you've created a Todo.txt add-on, that's wonderful! To release it to the community, here's what to do.

1. Publish it on GitHub either in a repository under your username or as a gist.

2. Then, list it on the Todo.sh Add-on Directory. That's a community-written wiki page, so to add your information, just press the Edit button.

3. Finally, post a message to the Todo.txt mailing list letting the community know your add-on is available for download and installation.

While I (Gina) maintain a couple of sample add-ons in a branch of the todo.txt-cli repository, I only keep add-ons there which I developed. There's no need to send me a pull request for your add-on. You can simply keep your add-on in your own repository and list it in the Add-on directory to make it available for use.