Currently, we’re just using Google Keep, since it at least supports syncing, sharing, and checklists, but I’m hoping to find something more privacy friendly, and/or more feature rich. In particular, what I’m looking for, in order of priority, are as follows:
- Doesn’t need to be self-hosted
- Lists that can be shared and synced across users and devices
- Basic Checklist functionality
- Reminders, ideally with options to repeat until complete or similar
- Automation, such as automatically recurring events, esspecially recurring after date of completion
- Private storage of user data, or at least better than Google
- Hierarchy and other sorting methods
- Sync to calendars, ideally Proton
There seems to be four main options I can think of right now.
First would be purely local to-do lists, on Android you have apps like Tasks(dot)org, on iOS you have Apple’s reminders app (not FOSS! iOS generally doesn’t have many good open-source apps…), on Linux you have lots of options like Planify. If you don’t need device sync, these are probably your best option. On Android, Tasks(dot)org also supports Nextcloud device sync (you can use a VPS or a public instance if you prefer) as well as any cloud storage service that supports WebDAV.
Secondly, if you do need device sync, you can use Markdown note apps that happen to tack on to-do list support, like Joplin, Obsidian (not FOSS!), Markor (Android only), etc., most of these are cross-platform. They let you either sync with their own cloud service, through syncing the files (e.g. Syncthing, Git), or with a service like Nextcloud (again, you don’t have to self-host on your own hardware if you don’t want to)
Third, there are the todo.txt apps. They use a standard “todo” file that is compatible across many clients, so you can look for yourself a bunch of options that support a wide range of different operating systems. This single file can be synced with Syncthing very easily, and the benefit of this approach is that most of the clients are pretty lightweight and aren’t too bloaty.
Fourth, you have Vikunja, which is a self-hostable option that does not have a native desktop or mobile client (the Android one is still in early beta with limited features). You access it through a web browser, and it has all the features you could want. I think you can also sync with apps like Tasks(dot)org, but WebDAV support is not perfect and it’s a little janky, so I prefer just using the web interface. Vikunja has neat tricks like showing your notes as a Kanban board, grouping them into projects, all that. This makes it closer to something like Trello (that is, for managing projects) rather than a daily to-do list for me, but your use case can vary. You don’t need to self-host it either, they offer their own hosted cloud service as well!
Nextcloud + Calendar w/ tasks support or Joplin (Server) can both do this.
Tasks.org might fit your needs
Notesnook fills in 1-4, 5 and 6.
I should mention I haven’t used this functionality of notesnook so I can’t say how good it is.
I’ve just got my family set up with wireguard vpn on their phones to my lan, then using home assistant and the todo list there works pretty well even away from home.
Unfortunately I don’t have enough money to buy a PC decent enough for a home server - or really the space for that matter.
I recommend you to take a look into Single Board Computers (SBCs) like Raspberry Pi, Orange Pi, Le Potato, Rock64, etc. They are very capable of hosting most things that ordinary people use, at the scale of a family. There are many guides online on how to make a personal VPN of it, as well as host things directly on it like your own private file share and sync.
I do have an old mini-pc with an AMD A10 in it. Do you think that might work? If so, what sort of software (particularly OS) should I be running on it, since even with its current Kubuntu install, it really struggles to run YouTube?
I’d recommend either Peppermint OS or Lubuntu as lightweight distros for an old laptop. There are many more distros that you can try out there, even without desktop environments (no graphical stuff, which saves a lot of resources), if you’re not into using your laptop for stuff outside of server-use. For that, Debian is the go-to imho. Just remember not to select any desktop environment during the installation process.
Put some of the distros on a flash drive and try them out. Distro hopping can be fun :-)
Can confirm, as I’ve got my home assistant on a 6 year old raspberry pi 4. it is just sitting in a closet, not even on ethernet i’ll admit that i do have a router with openwrt, and that made it super easy to set up a wireguard server
If you’re on iOS you can use the built in Reminders app.
Many many on f-droid.org
I couldn’t find any that meet even the top priorities, nonetheless other stuff.
Well I don’t know them. Just thought that “privacy friendly” were your top prio.
