Looking for a simple lists app
I've been using Google Keep (check boxes mode) for my work and personal to-do lists for a while now, and it's almost perfect for my use case. I love the simplicity and lack of options gumming up my process, and specifically I like the UI of having nested subtasks that all move with their head task when you reorder the top level tasks. That is to say, when you drag a headline task, all of its subtasks "roll up" inside it and "unfurl" when you drop the task into its new location. The fact that it syncs across devices is also really great, but not necessarily a deal breaker.
What is becoming a deal breaker is that you can only have 2 levels: top level or nested. I want more nesting levels, but with the simple touch-and-drag UI to which I've become accustomed.
Have any of you heard of/used an app such as I've described? I have issues using bigger, more fleshed-out apps because all the features distract my goblin brain, and the friction of having to use various touch menus or the keyboard on my phone to adjust indent levels keeps me from getting crap done.
Thanks in advance!
Edit: for now, I have settled on Workflowy. It seems to offer the most similar functionality with an acceptable number of interactions to do the things I want to do. Thank you to everyone who offered their experience!
I use a combination of markdown and YAML in text files... but I'm also a heathen I suppose.
Obviously I don't care much whether it's perfectly formatted, because I'm not driving any system/application with it. I'm looking at it as a human. The crutch of the basic indentation/formatting/typing of the underlying language helps me organize things super easily.
Plus side? I don't rely on any third party. Just a text file on my device(s).
But again, I'm a heathen.
Let's mock up your additional layers:
It's kinda whatever. I'm done now ... I can't imagine you want my YAML nonsense anyways :D
I'm always a fan of nonsense!
I mean, there's plenty of value in fully human-readable simpler formats, and YAML is pretty much designed for that. As another example, Org-mode is an all-purpose organization scheme that can be used for among other things taking notes, and it's entirely implemented through plaintext markup. You can see it in action in this video, in this case in Emacs (which is the
operating systemeditor it was originally designed for). OP would need to discard their existing workflow entirely to adopt it so that's probably not applicable in this specific case (also Emacs might be the furthest away possible from a simple note-taking application, although that's not the only editor that implements Org-mode), but it's definitely a valid approach.i just installed silver bullet on my server, i dont really know anything about it but i think it uses markdown, im going to try and figure it out sometime in the next few days, AI recommended it when i was looking for a habit tracker with certain features, and while silver bullet isnt a habit tracker its self, i think AI said theres a plugin for a habit tracker made by someone, so thats what im going to start with in silver bullet
I have two suggestions, both of which fit the bill. First, and most simply is Magic Todo - https://goblin.tools. It's a super-simple todo list but I think it does exactly what you ask.
edit - if you're ND, it can also help you to break down tasks into more achievable tasks if that's something you struggle with, but you don't need to use it for that. It's available on web completely free, as well as both Android and iOS for a small fee
Second is more complex, but works really well for my particular brain. https://dynalist.io - This one is free to use but there is a premium option. If you're anything like me, the premium option is a downgrade as it allows you to have unlimited bookmarks as well as a bunch of integration guff that I just don't need.
It's an outliner, rather than a todo list, but it's by far and a way the most intuitive one I've found. I use it for notes, tasks, projects, meeting minutes, in fact, everything I write down goes in there so long as it's not sensitive - it's a cloud service, after all.
You can focus in on a very specific section, and then zoom out as far as you want in a second. There are apps for all platforms (well, at least for web, win, lin, mac, iOS, Android) and there are chromium & Firefox extensions too.
Thanks! I'll try them out!
Dynalist is good and the free tier makes more sense than Workflowy. Workflowy limits the amount of items which I think is super weird. You're unlikely to need more than the Dynalist free tier.
I use Org Mode on my laptop for things that are supposed to be on a computer. I tried syncing Org on multiple devices and it was awful. Emacs and Org-Mode were not designed for this. I suggest just using an app that does that for you. Also, don't get addicted to Emacs. It will take ages for you to construct your "perfect" Emacs. It is very hard for me to use anything else now, and that is not necessarily a good thing. For good or for worse, there is no going back.
Emacs is a memetic hazard to the point I'm scared of trying it out and get sucked into yet another endless loop of spending 10x more time tinkering with my setup than actually using my computer to perform tasks. I've already got enough of that with Arch Linux as a whole, so I stick to (neo)vim whenever I edit files in the terminal. That being said, fun fact: there is a clone of Org mode for neovim. I do not know how it compares to the original Emacs implementation (presumably more limited if only by the lack of the ecosystem to extend it on Emacs) but it exists. There's also Neorg that I'm currently trying out, which, while not designed as an outright clone of Emacs' Org Mode, has similarities and shares the overall scope.
Regarding syncing files, is there anything specific that makes an external approach unworkable? I'm thinking something like a given combination of rsync/rclone, git, network storage of some description, stuff like that.
If you're an IT person go for it. I'm just a writer who likes to use weird programs. I tried using Dropbox, which at the time was my only option which didn't involve stringing things together in bash. There were neverending conflicted files. Nothing fixed it.
Every Org for Vim or Neovim that I tested was a travesty compared to Emacs. I haven't tried Neorg though.
Org was the main reason I started using Emacs.
...So, I originally launched into several paragraphs of exploring a potential file syncing solution to suggest, but after stopping mid-way through to address something else and after coming back to this I'm realizing I was operating on the completely unfounded assumption that you haven't found a solution for it on your computers, and re-reading your original comment the sentence "I suggest just using an app that does that for you." implies, if anything, that you have. And now I feel silly. Instead of throwing a bunch of paragraphs at you based on what's probably a wrong assumption, I'll just mention that Git is a plausible candidate for that purpose. It might sound silly to use a VCS just to sync plaintext notes (...and it probably is, on the same level as using a Swiss army knife just for its screwdriver) but it could be appropriate, although with some important caveats that I can elaborate on if you (or someone else reading this) are interested.
(and of course, Emacs itself, befitting its reputation as a software black hole, does have an entire ecosystem around Git integration, though that's probably one of the less surprising of its not-actually-text-editor features)
Obsidian is a pretty cool app that works across devices. The format is in markdown files, that way you can make it easily accessible and portable instead of locking down to specific file types.
They also have some near features to graphically connect different documents together to allow you to find your notes. I know it's actually sitting on top of other frameworks, but depends on how easy you want to make it for yourself.
After a year of occasionally using workflowy and continuing to use keep for most stuff, I finally decided to try Obsidian. Holy crap, it works so well! I wish I'd listened to you a year ago, so much time left undocumented! Thanks for the recommendation!
Do you mind sharing the plugins you’re using for Obsidian? I know it’s really easy to flesh out notes for subtasks because you can just insert backlinks to other files in the task, but I find that creating the perfect system in Obsidian is difficult. Half of the setup is basically designing a bespoke product for yourself and figuring out what you want is harder than actually implementing it.
Sure thing! This'll be a wall of text, be warned. I've spent a week getting this dialed in, but at this point I doubt I'll make further changes for a while.
I'm using the default core plugins (but the only two I mess with are Daily Notes and Sync, though Sync is optional and adds a tiny bit of complexity) and the community plugins called Tasks and Nested Daily Todos.
I haven't really messed with any of the community plugins' settings that I recall, and the only big change I can think of making was to Daily notes, changing Date format to "Custom," and then setting the format to "YYYY/MM-MMMM/YYYY-MM-DD" which forces daily notes to automatically generate a folder for the year, then subfolders for the months of that year into which to place the daily notes it creates. This is all being placed into a folder called Daily notes inside a folder called Daily and Yearly Planner, in which I've also placed a template file that I point the "Template file location" setting to, again under the "Daily notes" settings.
On my main device, I have the "Files and links" top setting set to default to open the Daily note, which is my central hub file day-to-day. My synced devices have slightly different settings to keep them from gumming up my daily note, namely that they default to opening the last opened file (if you're curious why, this is a good explainer).
My template file looks like this:
Ideas/thoughts:
Personal tasks for today:
Personal tasks for later:
Work tasks for today:
Work tasks for later:
Other notes:
Essentially, this creates a blank note every day with types of task I like to track. Then, the "Tasks" plugin checks a pair of files (technically, it checks any file with a name that contains those strings) that contain long term work tasks and long term personal tasks along with the "for later" sections of that day's Daily note, and if any of those places contains a task with an assigned due date of before or the same as the day of that Daily Note's title (the daily notes are generated with a title that is just the day's date), Tasks will put a clone of that task into the "for today" section it pertains to, and when I check it off it checks off the original and stays present in the clone list so I can see it was checked off on that day, hence the line about "OR (done {{query.file.filename}})".
Importantly, each morning when I open the Daily note I have to remember to click the "Nested Daily Todos" button to "Add incomplete todos to today's note." This is the only thing I have to remember, everything else is automagic. Then I just add todos as I come up with them, and the Tasks plugin handles stuff for me.
Of course, I also heavily use links to create new files from within tasks, so "Meeting with boss about Product X" becomes "Meeting with boss about Product X" and that link, when clicked, generated a new file called Product X into which I put details from the meeting and the project long term.
I've been using Obsidian for my todos, which is totally necessary to me to keep my sanity and I used to use Google Keep for. But with all the extra utility, I'm also using it for larger stuff I used Workflowy for, outlining presentations and such. Plus I can easily put my recipes in there, with links from my Daily notes so I have a record of each time they're used. Same for rating things, or grocery lists, or whatever else I'm keeping track of. The worst part of my setup is that if I move or rename certain files it can break the code for "Tasks" and I have to fix it, but I'm trying not to do that too much.
Anyway, I hope that's useful, either to you or some poor soul following my trail later.
Not OP, but I'm a very dedicated Obsidian user.
The only plugin I consider a necessity is the community Kanban plugin. I keep a very basic board going for my personal life tasks with three columns; Ready, Doing, and Done. If I'm diving into a specific hobby or project, I'll make a folder for it and create an extra board for that folder with specific tasks when I'm focused on it.
For most everything else I just maintain a light organization of top level folders and create documents inside them as I need to write things down. Spending too much time tailoring an organization system bogs me down and ends up eating my time. Obsidian has solid searching and tagging which is easier to use than most of the Obsidian setups I've seen described on YouTube and Reddit.
I like Colornote. though idk if it will fulfill your nesting request.
Thank you, I'll give it a go.
I use Workflowy and can highly recommend it. It’s extremely minimalistic (speaking as a fellow easily distractable and annoyable goblin brain), it has infinite nesting, a drag and drop UI (or easy keyboard controls if you prefer that), the lists can look like a simple list or kanban board (including nested inside each other), and it has other features like tags and such that I never need but which I’m sure are useful. It works great on mobile and desktop (including in-browser if you find yourself on a foreign computer) and syncs across everything. I used to use the apple notes app but Workflowy is my life now.
I second workflowy! Been a happy user for ages now. Super simple but a good set of smart features making it quite powerful while not doing too much.
Tried it and I gotta say, I think it's the one. Does just what I need, and the slight differences in muscle memory seem like they'll be easy to adjust to. Thanks!
Nice! Glad to hear it.
Joplin is my notetaking app of choice. It can be self-hosted, is open source and multi-platform. Big fan!
No drag&drop possibility tho I'm afraid.
Thanks! I'll keep it in mind.
It looks like you want a complicated lists app :)
Well, yes. But only a little complicated. As a treat.
I've seen you've settled on workflowy, but maybe have a quick look at checkvist. It really is like a fancy version of google keep and I've used it before to manage personal coding projects. I'm gonna have a look at workflowy, since I haven't heard of that before :)
I tried it out (very) briefly just now, and the mobile version seems to lack gesture-based tier-changing. I'll keep it in mind for when I'm using a keyboard at work, though. Thanks!
I like and pay for Tick Tick.