Tasks.txt Review (2026): Pricing, Features & Honest Verdict

TLDR

Tasks.txt is a free, native macOS task manager that keeps your todos in a plain-text todo.txt file you fully own, driven entirely by keyboard shortcuts. Best for: keyboard-first macOS users who distrust cloud lock-in. Price: Free (no subscription, no in-app purchases). Rating: 6.7/10

What is Tasks.txt?

Tasks.txt is a native macOS app for people who already keep their todos in a .txt file and want a faster, keyboard-driven layer on top of it. It uses the well-established todo.txt format: each task is a single line, completed tasks get an x prefix and a done:YYYY-MM-DD date, and you add +project tags for filtering and note:”…” for inline notes. The app is essentially a fast, opinionated shortcut layer sitting on top of a file that lives at ~/Documents/tasks-txt/tasks.txt on your Mac.

Built by indie developer Yevhen and launched on Product Hunt in July 2026, Tasks.txt is deliberately narrow. It is native Swift for macOS 13 Ventura and later, with no Electron runtime, no web wrapper, no account, and no servers. The pitch is simple and increasingly rare: your data is plain text you own forever, readable in Sublime Text, grep-able in Terminal, and version-controllable in Git. In a market of subscription task apps that trap your data in proprietary databases, that positioning matters.

What Are Tasks.txt’s Key Features?

Plain-text todo.txt file you own

Everything lives in a human-readable plain-text file at ~/Documents/tasks-txt/tasks.txt. There is no proprietary database and no vendor lock-in. You can open, edit, and search your tasks in any text editor, grep them from the Terminal, or commit the file to Git for version history. If Tasks.txt ever disappears, your data is still perfectly usable.

Keyboard-first workflow

Every action is a keystroke. You add tasks, move them between your “next” list and backlog with ⌘↑/⌘↓, toggle a task done with ⌘↩, search with ⌘F, and filter by +project label — all without touching the mouse. Tasks marked upcoming:true surface at the top of the list. For fast typists, this is meaningfully quicker than clicking through a mouse-driven app like Things or Notion.

Built-in scratchpad

Pressing ⌘3 opens a plain-text scratchpad stored as scratch.txt in the same folder as your task file. It handles everything that isn’t a task — notes, half-formed ideas, or the throwaway text file you’d otherwise open separately. Keeping notes and tasks in one keyboard-driven window is a genuinely useful touch.

Fully local and private

There is no account, no cloud sync, no telemetry, no analytics, and no crash reporting. Nothing leaves your machine. You control sync yourself: back the file up with Time Machine, drop it in a Dropbox or iCloud folder, or push it to a Git repo. This is a deliberate privacy-first design rather than a missing feature.

How Much Does Tasks.txt Cost?

Tasks.txt is completely free. It is a free download on the Mac App Store with no subscription and no in-app purchases — you download it once and own it. That is a sharp contrast to the polished commercial alternatives: Things 3 costs a one-time $49.99 for Mac, and OmniFocus runs roughly $74.99 outright or about $9.99/month on subscription. Todoist, the closest cloud-based competitor, is free at the entry tier but charges $4/month (billed annually) for its Pro plan. For a tool that does one thing well and asks nothing in return, the price is hard to argue with.

Who Is Tasks.txt Best For?

Tasks.txt is built for a specific kind of user: the keyboard-driven macOS power user, developer, or indie maker who already lives in plain text and wants zero lock-in.

Use Tasks.txt if you already manage todos in a text file, you value data ownership over features, you work primarily on one Mac, and you want a fast keyboard-only workflow with no subscription.

Skip Tasks.txt if you need cross-device sync out of the box, a mobile app, collaboration, reminders and due-date notifications, or a visual mouse-driven interface with calendars and boards. It is a single-user, single-platform, single-purpose tool by design.

Best Tasks.txt Alternatives

If Tasks.txt is too minimal or too Mac-locked for you, three alternatives cover the spectrum from plain-text purism to full-featured cloud apps.

TaskPaper

The original plain-text-first Mac task app, TaskPaper stores todos in a readable .taskpaper text file with projects, tags, and powerful filtering. It’s more mature and scriptable than Tasks.txt but costs a one-time $34.99 and leans on an outline model rather than the todo.txt standard.

Todoist

If you need real cross-device sync, mobile apps, reminders, and collaboration, Todoist is the pragmatic choice. It’s free at the entry tier and $4/month for Pro (billed annually), but your data lives in Todoist’s cloud rather than a file you own.

Things 3

For a beautifully designed, mouse-and-keyboard native Apple task manager with iCloud sync across Mac, iPhone, and iPad, Things 3 is the gold standard. It’s a one-time purchase (around $49.99 on Mac, sold separately per platform) and far more polished, but it uses a closed database, not plain text.

Final Verdict: Is Tasks.txt Worth It?

Tasks.txt does exactly one thing and does it cleanly: it puts a fast, keyboard-driven interface on top of a todo.txt file you own outright, with no account, no cloud, and no cost. For developers and keyboard-first macOS users who already distrust subscription lock-in, it’s an easy download — the todo.txt format means you risk nothing by trying it, and the built-in scratchpad is a thoughtful bonus.

The catch is scope. There’s no mobile app, no built-in sync, no reminders or notifications, and it’s macOS 13+ only, so you’re rolling your own sync via Dropbox, iCloud, or Git. If that trade-off sounds appealing rather than annoying, Tasks.txt is a quietly excellent free tool. If you need a task manager that follows you across devices and nags you about deadlines, look at Todoist or Things instead.