Product1 publisher2 min readPublished
Tasks.txt keeps the whole to-do list in a plain text file on one Mac
A free Mac app from Yevhen Kharkivskyi holds Done, Next and Backlog in documents you can open in any editor. Its own site says there is no account and no cloud sync. Those terms decide who it can serve.
The Product Desk · Product desk
What happened
- Tasks.txt is a free Mac app from Ukrainian programmer Yevhen Kharkivskyi, built on the todo.txt system Gina Trapani developed.
- The window shows one list in three categories, Done, Next and Backlog, with Next for today's tasks, Backlog for later ones, and Done cleared out at the beginning of every day.
- Everything is stored in a couple of text documents on the user's own computer, locatable through the app's settings and openable in any text editor.
- According to the product's website, "There are no servers. Nothing leaves your machine."
Compiled by The Product DeskSomething wrong?How this is made
Why it matters
- constraint A Mac binary with no cloud sync means the list is only true on the computer holding the files, so a shared list or a phone check rules the app out before anyone gets to the trial.
- decision Because the app collects no telemetry or analytics, a buyer has no retention curve to lean on, and the only evidence available is the two weeks you run yourself.
- capability Because the store is readable, abandoning the app is a copy of two documents, with no export request and no waiting on a vendor.
- contradiction The same review that calls most to-do apps far too complicated concedes that due dates, recurring tasks, sharing and an AI integration are genuine needs for some people, so the argument against feature accretion rests on taste.
Open the window and the cursor is already in the text box at the bottom, so you start typing. Enter files the line into Next or Backlog, depending on the drop-down beside the box; Tab moves you into the list; the arrow keys change the selection; Cmd+Enter marks a task complete; Cmd+Up and Cmd+Down move it up or down [7]. That is six keyboard actions covering the full life of a task, and none of them needs the mouse [1]. Wired's reviewer says the mouse is just as intuitive for anyone who prefers it [8].
Two more tabs sit behind the list. Archive holds every task completed in the past, emptied out of Done at the end of each day, and Scratchpad is a blank document for notes [3]. The product's site states the terms in one sentence: "There is no account, no cloud sync, no telemetry, no analytics, no crash reporting," the website says [5]. Three of those five are the developer's own instrumentation. The user does without the other two [2].
The daily clearing matters to anyone who reports upward. Done empties each morning and its contents land in Archive, so a weekly account of what got finished means opening the archive document and reading it [5].
The case here rests on one reviewer's experience. Wired's writer says they have spent decades testing, reviewing and using to-do list applications [9], and argues that most of them are far too complicated for what a list is [11]. The same piece calls the app's privacy posture a rarity in an age where "every piece of software is trying to hold your data hostage to sell a subscription" [14]. The piece stops short of naming a price for any paid app this would replace, and the features it describes leave out due dates and recurring tasks [15].
The test that settles it is a list of the features you touched in your current app over the past month. If every item on that list fits into three buckets and a notes tab, a plain file is a fair experiment for a fortnight. Wired's reviewer sets the boundary this way: "It won't work for everyone, sure, but it might work perfectly for you" [10].
What to watch
- Whether Kharkivskyi ships an iOS or Windows client, the only change that would lift the one-machine limit.
- Whether due dates or recurring tasks arrive in the text files, and what that does to the three-list model.
- Whether a paid tier appears, given the site's current claim of no account and no servers.