Desktop App Overview

The desktop app provides an interface for working with your task, project and area files as you would in any normal task management app. Instead of editing markdown and YAML, you get a clean, fast interface designed for getting work done.

Installation & Setup

Download and install the desktop app…

Download for macOS Alpha Release Download for Windows Experimental

Open the settings ( Command + Comma Command, Control + Comma Control, ) → Vault and set the paths to the three directories containing your tasks, areas and projects.

Tip

If you have the CLI installed and configured via a ~/.taskdn.json file, you can click Read from CLI Config to import your settings from there.

Using this documentation

This documentation provides a comprehensive userguide for working with the Desktop App. I’ve tried to write them in a way that is both succinct and helps you learn how everything works quickly and fully. If you’re just getting started with taskdn, you should read the Getting Started guide first.

Overview

The main window contains three main sections. The left sidebar allows you to navigate between different views and shows your active areas with their projects nested below them. The main area shows the currently selected view. The right sidebar shows the details of the currently selected task and allows you to edit it.

In the desktop app, Areas and Projects serve only to keep tasks and projects organised and provide useful context. It is not possible to modify area and task files, since that’s best done via another interface like Obsidian or a text editor.

Note

There is no way to modify area files, and only two ways to modify project files through the desktop app:

1. Dragging a project between areas updates its area field.
2. The status dropdown on project pages allows you to update its status field. Area and project files cannot be created or deleted via the desktop app.

Tasks can be freely edited, created and deleted in the same way you’d expect of any task management app.

A note on reordering

The specification provides no way to store order in task files. This avoids overcomplicating the files on disk with dependencies which would likely become confusing (and stale) when working in Obsidian, Claude and the CLI. But in the desktop app we’re using as our daily task manager, we do want to reorder and arrange our tasks.

The desktop app allows reordering on a per-view basis: the order of your tasks in a project or area view has no effect on how they appear in your Today view, for example. No ordering data is ever written to your files on disk – instead it’s saved in the desktop app’s internal data store.

Tip

If you have a series of very small tasks which must be completed one after the other in the same context, we recommend treating them as a single task and tracking them using a standard markdown checklist in the task body.

What the desktop app isn’t…

This is a task management app intended primarily for short-term planning and day-to-day work. It is not:

• A file browser or full-featured markdown editor for your files. Use Obsidian or a text editor for that.
• A project planning tool. In taskdn, tasks should be actually actionable and concrete. The best place to do speculative planning is in the body of a project or area file.
• A project management system. While the spec includes some project fields to help with project management, this app isn’t the right place to do that. [If I ever decide to include that, it’ll almost certainly be as a standalone separate product.]
• An AI product. There are no AI features in the desktop app. If you want AI to work with your tasks, use the Claude Plugin, CLI or a tool which can work directly with your files.

The desktop app is focused on one thing: helping you manage and complete your tasks.