Replacing Ticktick with a Self-Hosted ToDo App

submitted by

Hi Folks,

I’ve used Ticktick as a SaaS task manager app for years now. There was a time when I had tried almost every productivity app under the sun and Ticktick had the best features and app and a WAY better pricing structure than alternatives like Todoist. Nevertheless, I had growing concerns about privacy and control of my own data as I need to be able to trust my to-do app with information about my life that I don’t want repeated to every advertiser on the internet. Bearing in mind the state of the internet in general, I’ve been slowly cutting away all my SaaS dependencies and it may be close to time for me to say goodby to an app that kept me sane for over a decade of my life. I’d like to move to a self-hosted solution, first for myself and eventually I’ll migrate my family to a shared project on the new solution.

What do you use to stay organized? Why do you like it?

Can you recommend something for my needs?

  • Some sort of custom lists logic where I can filter with some sort of typed or gui-button filter to see and save specific views of my tasks/cards, for example “overdue+project:yard+tag:do_it_later”
  • Must be source available, but I prefer open-source especially the less shareware-y less crippled versions. There’s a lot of subscription/shareware/FOSS+sub kind of stuff in this space and I’d rather use whatever the neckbeard & fedora FOSS purists use.
  • I’m mostly used to the getting things done (GTD) methodology with task managers that use lists, but I am not opposed to using a tool that uses Kanban boards or something else.
  • I’m partial to something that I can grow into (more of a accessible but powerful project management tool and less of a simple todo app) but I only need to account for 2-3 users and a few thousand tasks a year with minimal media attachments.
  • I prefer something I can deploy via docker though I wouldn’t completely rule out a bare-metal install if the feature set justified it.
  • Must have support for recurring tasks natively or via a plugin.

  • Bonus points for native android(graphene)/ios apps, but access via webapp is acceptable

    I’ve tried a lot of the NextCloud based solutions. I’ve tried Vikunja (which is pretty good and AGPL), and I’m currently messing with Planka which is good, but isn’t open-source which really isn’t where I’m trying to go with this. Kanboard is under the MIT license, but seems to have a steeper learning curve.

I’m looking forward to hearing what the community uses!

9
38

Log in to comment

Hot Top New Old

My solution is to be disorganised and unproductive. And I am entirely serious.

 reply
10
edited

Have you taken a look at TaskWarrior? It’s pure FOSS, extremely powerful, has multiple self hosting options, multiple front ends, including Android native, and supports everything on your list. Simple projects, fully nested projects with complex dependencies, customizable tags and filters, supports GTD, kanban, or just a basic list of todos. Asynchronous synchronization for devices that can’t connect for long periods for whatever reason. It weakest point is that it’s recurring task model is weird, but there is very active work to fix that.

It also has a huge plugin ecosystem and can pull from things like jira and tons of other issue tracking systems.

It’s also extremely neckbeardy, has a boring website, decent online documentation but a much better man page. TaskWarrior is highly scriptable, with json input/output options if you like. I love it.

EDIT: The filter from your example would be written +OVERDUE +do_it_later proj:yard in TaskWarrior’s filter method.

EDITx2: I use Debian Stable, btw. ;)

 reply
5

I use Donetick.

 reply
3

I use Obsidian

 reply
2
OP

I use Obsidian in other contexts (e.g. long-term goal setting, journaling, knowledge recall). I tried to use it for tasks, but quickly over-complicated things. I have a lot of tasks and it can be hard to wrangle everything without a bunch of smart lists and tags and such. I may give it another try. I’m making a list of solutions I want to try for a week or two each. This is the core of my daily routine (along with my calendar), so it feels reasonable to over analyze the choice.

 reply
2
edited

Vikunja is a great option, but the mobile app is still in development (lots of missing features). I like it, but I have found that using a simple markdown editor like Markor (on Android) and Marktext (on Linux, available on Windows + Mac too) works for me, and I use Syncthing to sync with my laptop. Note that Marktext isn’t being actively developed anymore, but it was the best one I could find that respects the folder structure of my notes. Obsidian is great too, but it’s closed source and having everything in vaults is annoying for me. You might also like VSCodium or Kate, which are code editors that also have markdown highlighting (but not Markdown preview).

However, you can’t easily use custom themes with Markor and Marktext. For Markor, you can only change the background, font, and text colour of the editing mode (not the preview mode!) while Marktext does let you change the font universally, but you have to use one of the prebuilt themes (I found One Dark to be the closest to my system theme). One day I would like to try my hand at making my own cross-platform markdown editor, maybe once I have less schoolwork to worry about.

edit: I was wrong, Marktext is actively developed! Additionally, the latest version of Marktexts lets you use custom CSS to create your own theme, and there are far more default themes to choose from now!

 reply
1

Some one just added recurring tasks to Nextcloud, so it will be a much better option for every day use now. Feature should come out soon I think.

 reply
1
edited

Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:

Fewer Letters More Letters
NAS Network-Attached Storage
NUC Next Unit of Computing brand of Intel small computers
NVR Network Video Recorder (generally for CCTV)
RAID Redundant Array of Independent Disks for mass storage
SSD Solid State Drive mass storage

5 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 14 acronyms.

[Thread #329 for this comm, first seen 2nd Jun 2026, 17:20] [[FAQ](http://decronym.xyz/)] [[Full list](http://decronym.xyz/acronyms/selfhosted@lemmy_world)] [[Contact](https://hachyderm.io/@Two9A)] [Source code]

 reply
0
Insert image