Managing Your Tasks with Nextcloud Tasks

There are more than a few free and open source task management applications out there. They run at the command line, on your desktop, and even on the web. They are, as you might expect, of varying quality, and with a varying number of functions. But there’s pretty much a task management tool for just about everyone’s needs.

Since early 2020, I’ve been trying to use Nextcloud as my personal hub. One app I’ve been experimenting with (again) is Tasks. Which, as the name implies, is Nextcloud’s todo list manager.

Let’s take a quick look at how to use it.

Enabling Tasks

Tasks isn’t enabled in Nextcloud out of the box. To enable it, click your avatar at the top-right of the and click + Apps.

Then, find Tasks in the list of apps and click Enable. After few moments, the Tasks icon displays on toolbar.

Setting Up Tasks

You can jump right in and start adding tasks. But if you find yourself adding more than a couple of tasks, your list can quickly get a bit unruly. To better organize what you’re doing, consider creating tasks lists.

Task lists group what you need to do by category — for example, Personal, Blogging, Work. To add a task list, click the Tasks icon on the toolbar.

Then, in the panel on the left click Add List.

Enter a descriptive name for the list and, optionally, select a colour to identify the list. When you’re done, click the check mark icon.

Under Settings in the panel on the left, you can:

• Select you default list.
• Set whether certain types of tasks — for example, important, current, completed — are visible or hidden.

Using Tasks

With all of that out of the way, it’s time to fill up those lists. To do that, click a list in the pane on the left of the window. In the field at the top of main part of window, type a description of task and press Enter.

Nextcloud saves the task and a panel displays in which you can:

• Set a start and due date.
• Add a note about the task.
• Select a status (for example, In Progress or Completed).
• Set a priority from 0 to 9.
• Add one or more tags to the task.

As you work on a task, you can can open the side panel by clicking the task and set the percentage of the task that’s complete.

You can also click the ellipsis (…) to right of a task and the click + Add Subtask to add one or more smaller tasks that make up the item.

When you’re done, click the checkbox beside the name of task.

Note: If you’re using the Nextcloud Dashboard app, you can add a widget to display your tasks. When you log in, you’ll see what you need to.

Using Task Lists Outside of Nextcloud

Tasks is great if you’re logged into Nextcloud (like I usually am). But what if you’re not? You can still check your tasks lists. How? Here are a couple of ways you can do that.

If you’re using an Android phone or tablet, you can hook an app called Tasks into Nextcloud. I dove into Tasks in a previous post.

If you’re using a GNOME-based desktop, you can add Nextcloud as an online account and sync one or more task lists. Your tasks display in GNOME’s To Do app.

You can’t share your task lists with people who don’t have access to the same instance of Nextcloud that you’re using.

Final Thoughts

Nextcloud Tasks is more than a basic task manager. Sure, it doesn’t have all of the bells and whistles that some people demand in a task management app, but for most of us it does enough. And it’s a solid option for one person or for groups who use Nextcloud as a hub.

— Scott Nesbitt