todoist-shortcuts is a browser extension or greasemonkey script which adds a bunch of keyboard shortcuts to Todoist. Along with this repository, it is also available from the following places:

• Extension for Google Chrome

• Extension for Mozilla Firefox

These keyboard shortcuts are directly inspired by the shortcuts used for GMail, which, in turn were inspired by vim-like keyboard interaction. I highly recommend enabling the advanced keyboard shortcuts if you use GMail.

So, if the choices of keypresses seem strange, stick with it! Many of the keypresses used here can also be used in GMail or even vim (or, better yet, evil-mode ;) ).

Keyboard shortcuts guide sheet

See this printable shortcuts guide, created by kimaero (see #71). This guide can also be brought up while using Todoist by pressing ?.

Keyboard shortcut details

Add tasks

See the "Task Quick Add shortcuts" section of todoist's keyboard shortcuts documentation for information about shorthands to use when adding tasks. "Adding or editing tasks" is also a good section to read, which includes keyboard shortcuts not described in this document.

Navigation

In "section navigation mode", the different selections in the left pane are annotated with the keys to press to navigate to that section. Sometimes the sidebar can have more than a screenful of content. While in this mode, you can scroll the left pane down and up with space and shift+space. For smaller scrolling jumps, you can also use up arrow and down arrow.

When projects have sub-projects, they are automatically expanded when the project is selected from the list. To collapse the sub-projects, just use navigation mode to select the same project again.

Manipulation of tasks at cursor

Note that there are some known bugs related to task motion - see #27 and #29.

shift+c clicking of time tracking buttons supports both the toggl-button extension and clockify extension.

Selection

Manipulation of selected items

If none are selected, then these will apply to the cursor instead.

Deleting a task via e or # is fairly similar to marking it complete via d. Here are the differences:

1. Deleting a child task (nested under another task), it will be removed from the list. Completing a child task will mark it complete, but it will stay in the list.

2. Deleting a Recurring Task (e.g. every day) will cause the task to no longer be scheduled.

Scheduling

When scheduling is opened via t, the following keybindings will apply:

The "Smart Scheduler" is opened by pressing s when scheduling multiple items. Currently there are only two keybindings for the smart scheduler: enter to apply the choices, and escape to cancel.

Sorting

When viewing the inbox or a project, the following keybindings can be used to sort the tasks:

Bulk reschedule mode

Once bulk reschedule mode is entered, it will repeatedly bring up the reschedule dialog until there are no more tasks after the cursor. All of the normal cursor navigation keys can be used while in this mode.

Bulk move mode

Once bulk move mode is entered, it will repeatedly bring up the move-to-project dialog until there are no more tasks after the cursor. By holding down alt, you can use the normal cursor navigation keys in this mode.

Task view

NOTE: Some shortcuts may only work in the english translation, as the DOM structure chosen by Todoist for this part of the UI has obfuscated IDs.

The task side panel can be opened for the task under the cursor by pressing i. Once the side panel is visible, you can use the following shortcuts:

The rest of the bindings match the shortcuts used in other contexts. Listed here for completeness:

Menus

Once a menu is open, the following shortcuts can be used to interact with it:

Other

Note that undo only works when the "UNDO" button is visible at the bottom of the screen. Some actions are not undo-able, such as deletion or archiving multiple tasks

How to customize keyboard shortcuts

Ideally, there would be a UI for customizing keyboard shortcuts. However, it seems like this would take a substantial amount of development effort (PR contributions appreciated!). For now, you can do the following to customize the keyboard shortcuts in Chrome:

1. Clone this repository (run git clone https://github.com/mgsloan/todoist-shortcuts)

2. Go to chrome://extensions in the url bar, and switch from the official version of todoist-shortcuts to a local version.

   • Disable the official version of todoist-shortcuts by unchecking "Enabled".

   • Click the "Developer mode" box in the top right if it is not yet checked.

   • Click the "Load unpacked extension..." button. In the directory selecter navigate to the folder you cloned todoist-shortcuts to, and point it at the src sub-directory.

3. Edit src/todoist-shortcuts.js in a text editor.

   • You will probably just want to edit the definition of KEY_BINDINGS near the top.

   • To disable a keybinding, put // in front of it.

   • The functions in the section marked Actions are intended to be bound directly to keys. You can also combine multiple actions via use of the sequence and ifThenElse action combiners.

   • Multiple key sequences can be bound to the same action by using a list of key sequences (like ['j', 'down']) instead of a single string for it. The docs for mousetrap may be helpful in figuring out how to express key sequences.

4. Use ctrl+r on chrome://extensions. This causes the extension to be reloaded from your local files.

5. If you reload Todoist, you will now be using your modified version of the extension.

I'm sure there is a similar mechanism for Firefox, but I do not use it for developing the extension, so not sure of the details.

One thing to note is that you will no longer receive automated updates. To update your locally modified extension, do the following:

1. git stash to store your changes.

2. git pull to fetch the most recent changes in this repository.

3. git stash apply to bring back your changes. This may cause merge conflicts.

See the git documentation. A miscellaneous aside is that I highly recommend git from the bottom up as a guide to understanding git's data model.

Extra functionality only available via manual editing

There are some extra functions that can be used to define your own keybindings:

• navigateToLeftMenuItem selects a specific section from the left menu. See #239.

• moveToProjectNamed moves the current selected tasks to a specific project. See #237.

todoist-shortcuts in electron application

This repository provides browser extentions for both Chrome and Firefox, and therefore augments the browser's web client of Todoist. If you wanted the todoist-shortcuts in the standalone Todoist desktop application it is not as easy/straight-forward. The following article and associated repository outline how you can achieve such a solution:

• https://kevinjalbert.com/todoist-with-keyboard-navigation-via-nativefier/
• https://github.com/kevinjalbert/todoist-shortcuts-nativefier

An alternative approach, suggested here, is to use google chrome's "open as window" functionality.

Development

Contributions are appreciated. See development.md for more information about development.

Supported by bounty from Doist company

Much of the work on this has been kindly supported by Amir Salihefendic of Doist company. They're awesome!

In response to a "Need a way of buying beer" issue, I've created a "Buy Me a Coffee" account. If you feel the urge to show some appreciation for this project, feel free to send me a few dollars. If not, that's fine too, I hope you enjoy using todoist-shortcuts :)