Nextcloud Tasks

✅ Nextcloud Tasks for Obsidian

Read, create, edit and complete your Nextcloud Tasks right inside a note — over CalDAV, with no copy of your data in the vault.

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🧠 The one idea

There is exactly one copy of every task, and it lives in Nextcloud.

Other CalDAV plugins mirror markdown checkboxes into your notes and sync them — two copies, forever at risk of drifting apart. This one writes nothing to disk, not even a cache: it fetches, shows, and writes your change straight back.

Plain JavaScript, no dependencies, no native code — the same build runs on desktop and phone. 📱

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🚀 Install & set up

From Obsidian: Settings → Community plugins → Browse, search Nextcloud Tasks, install, enable.

Manually: drop main.js, manifest.json and styles.css from the latest release into <vault>/.obsidian/plugins/nextcloud-tasks/, then enable it under Settings → Community plugins.

🏷️ Any lists, any names. No fixed categories, no folder convention. Each list you tick gets a heading, a colour and a short key — the key is what a note refers to. Two lists or nine, in whatever order you drag them, is all the same to the plugin.

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📝 Show tasks in a note

```nextcloud-tasks
all
preview: 3
```

Every ticked list gets its own heading, even when empty. Past preview: rows, the heading grows an arrow and the number it is holding back — click to unfold, click to fold away.

Each list ends in a blank row: type a title, press Enter, and the task is on the server. The two small buttons on that row set a due date and a priority first; Esc clears it. Nothing you type is lost to a background refresh. ✍️

Every line inside the block is optional:

German values (due: heute, due: woche, done: ja) are accepted, so a note keeps its meaning if you switch Obsidian's language.

Rows sort the way you would triage them: overdue first, then by due date, undated last, ties falling back to your list order. The panel header carries ➕ new task, 📋 new list and ↻ refresh.

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👆 Working with a task

• ☑️ Tick the box to complete it — written to the server immediately. The row stays on screen with a line through it until you leave the note, so you can see what you did and undo a misclick.
• ✏️ Click the title to edit title, due date and priority. Only what you actually changed is written, so a repeat rule, reminder, description or subtask the plugin doesn't show stays untouched. (Moving a task to another list happens in Nextcloud, not here.)
• 🗑️ Delete lives in the same dialog, behind one confirmation.

Commands: New task · Refresh tasks · Test connection.

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📱 On your phone

Add a CalDAV account with the same address, username and app password to your phone's built-in reminders app: notifications and widgets without Obsidian running, and anything you tick there shows up here on the next refresh. The plugin itself also runs in the Obsidian mobile app.

🌍 Languages: English and German, following Obsidian's setting (or forced in the plugin settings).

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🛠️ Development

npm install
npm run lint     # eslint-plugin-obsidianmd — the rules the directory review runs
npm test         # core, render and bundle suites: no install, no network, no credentials
npm run build    # bundles src/ into main.js

VAULT="/path/to/your/vault" bash scripts/deploy-to-vault.sh          # deploy a local build

NC_URL=https://cloud.example.com NC_USER=alice NC_APP_PASSWORD=xxxxx \
  node scripts/live-check.mjs                                        # against a real server

live-check creates, reads, completes and deletes one test task: it proves the server speaks CalDAV, not that your device passes the verbs through — that's what Test connection is for.

⚠️ main.js is generated. Edit src/, never the bundle.

• Nothing is written to disk, not even as a cache. The fetched list lives in memory for the session. That is what makes "your tasks live in Nextcloud" literally true, and why there is no file that can go stale.
• Completing or editing rewrites the original calendar object line by line, copying every other byte through. Regenerating from a parsed model would silently drop RRULE, VALARM, CATEGORIES, RELATED-TO and every X- property other clients wrote. The tests assert byte identity of untouched lines, for both writers.
• An edit sends only the fields you changed. Leaving the date alone differs from clearing it: the first never mentions DUE, so a task due at a particular time keeps that time when you fix a typo in its title. The second removes the line.
• Completion is judged in the client, because three clients express it three ways: STATUS, a bare COMPLETED:, or PERCENT-COMPLETE:100. A server-side filter that gets this wrong hides tasks, which is worse than showing one too many.
• Priority follows RFC 5545 — 1 is most urgent, 0 unset: 1–4 high, 5 medium, 6–9 low, each with a coloured flag. Flagging only the top band is what made an earlier version look broken.
• Discovery walks the real chain, current-user-principal → calendar-home-set → the collections in it, instead of guessing /remote.php/dav/calendars/<user>/. Fifteen lines, and a whole class of username-casing bug disappears.
• XML is read without caring about namespace prefixes. Nextcloud's d: and cal: are not contractual.
• If REPORT is refused, the client falls back to PROPFIND plus one GET per object and remembers that for the session, so a platform blocking the verb still works.
• Everything goes through requestUrl, which bypasses CORS and works on iOS.

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📄 MIT — see LICENSE.