Welcome
This is the user manual for OpenTodoList - a free and Open Source todo and note keeping app that runs on a variety of platforms and hence, allows to keep your precise information synchronized across all of your devices.
Note
This documentation is heavily work in progress. OpenTodoList is already quite old (in terms of software) and provides a relatively big set of features. We will keep extending this documentation over time, documenting new features on the fly and one by one also add documentation for existing ones.
About
OpenTodoList is a cross platform tool which allows you to maintain the following items:
- Todo Lists which in turn contain Todos which finally contain Tasks.
- Notes, which consist of text and can contain additional Pages.
- Images, which combine an image file with some text.
These items are organized in Libraries - think of them as a kind of folder which can be configured for synchronization (or not!) and also be shared with other people.
See the Features section for a brief overview of all supported features that the app provides.
OpenTodoList originally dates back all the way to the year 2013 - in July that year, a first announcement was made about the first version of the app. Frankly, the app started as a playground to learn about the (back then) pretty new QML and Quick stack within the Qt framework - the cross platform toolkit that backs the app and allows easily building it for a wide range of operating systems and devices.
Over time, though, the app evolved quite a bit, incorporating ideas from other applications. Notably:
- Wunderlist: This app was - for a long time - the main inspiration for OpenTodoList. Wunderlist was a pure todo list app, concentrating on managing work.
- Google Keep: This app had an interesting approach, allowing other types of items next to your todo lists.
Of course, it didn't stop there: Due to suggestions of users, new features where added that eventually made OpenTodoList a quite unique application.
Installation
OpenTodoList is available on various operating systems and device types - thanks to the wonderful Qt framework! Qt allows us to maintain a single code base for the app and simply build and deploy for a lot of targets with relatively low effort.
For this reason, we are able to provide you with pre-built, ready to install and use packages of the app. But: Even if your system is not directly supported, this doesn't mean you cannot use the app. Both Qt and OpenTodoList are Open Source, so you can try to compile the app yourself for your system.
Check out the Installation for details about various options for getting the app.
Features
Over the years, a lot of features have been added to the app. We cannot describe all of them here in detail, so please refer to the Features section for details. The list of features that the app implements includes (but is not limited) to the following:
Data Model
- The app structures items in Libraries. These can contain the following types of items:
- Todo Lists, which in turn contain Todos. Todos can further be broken down into Tasks.
- Notes, which are text containers and which can optionally include further Pages.
- Images, which combine an image file with additional meta information like a title and notes.
Sync
The app allows to synchronize libraries across your devices using the following services:
Besides, you can always add local libraries, which stay on the device you create them on.
Further Reading
Over the years, we repeatedly received some questions on how the app works and why some features cannot be implemented as some users wished while others can. To shed some light on these aspects of the app, please feel encouraged to continue reading in the Basics section.