Nextcloud Tasks: Mobile, Recurring, and Compatibility Gotchas

DRAFT

I’ve been running my main personal to-do lists on Nextcloud Tasks for a while now. The web interface works well, and it syncs lists over CalDAV, so it can work with a lot of different apps.

Android

DAVx⁵ is a set-and-forget app that syncs the remote task lists (and calendars and contacts) with my phone, so local apps can interact with them offline. I did find that it syncs faster with an app-specific password than with the main one. (One downside: syncing from the server is scheduled, not immediate, though syncing to the server can be immediate.)

OpenTasks is an app for actually using the to-do lists, and it’s the most reliable app I’ve used so far. Especially where recurring tasks are concerned. (See below)

Time Zones

Some apps mess up the time zone on a task when editing it and set it to UTC:

• Gnome ToDo at least used to break it, but I haven’t used it in a while.
• Something else, possibly Thunderbird?

OpenTasks is fine. I’ve used it to fix time zones.

Recurring Tasks

Behind the scenes, the tasks are handled like a calendar, and Nextcloud is perfectly capable of tracking a recurring task. But not all apps interact with them correctly.

OpenTasks works great for this case. You can set or change whether a task repeats and how frequently. It only shows the first upcoming instance of the task. And when you mark the current one as complete, it surfaces the next one.

Nextcloud Web treats them as any other task. Even when you mark them complete. Which means you’ll never see it again.

Thunderbird shows the next few tasks and seems to handle them correctly most of the time.