Manage Your Tasks with Planify

In May, 2026, I started planning a larger writing project. While I use todo.txt (via a custom graphical application), I wasn’t sure that it was up to helping me manage my project. So I decided to look for a more suitable piece of software.

I explored several tools including more complex todo list managers, desktop kanban boards, and the like. Then I remembered Planify, which I duly installed and gave another, more thorough, test drive than I did in 2025.

Here’s how I used Planify and what I discovered about it.

How Planify Works

At least, from my perspective:

While you can use it as a more traditional task manager, Planify is based around projects. Those are essentially a way to organize tasks based on what they’re related to. Instead of having a long list of tasks, you get compartmentalized sets of tasks.

Like what? Let’s say you’re writing a book. You can create a project for that, and break it down by the chapters that you need to write and by editing and production tasks. It sounds complex and like it requires a bit more maintenance. Actually, neither is quite accurate.

Thanks for indulging me in this little aside. Let’s get on to installing and using Planify.

Installing the Software

The easiest way to do that is via your Linux distribution’s software centre (or whatever it’s called). You can also install it as a flatpak.

If you’re into that sort of thing, you can grab the source code and compile it yourself.

Getting Started with Planify

Fire up the software. This is what you get the first time that you do:

To add a project¹, click the + in the sidebar beside On This Computer. Then, do the following:

• Give the project a name.
• Enter a description (this is optional).
• Choose a colour.
• Click Add Project.

You wind up with something that looks like this — what you’re seeing is for the writing project I mentioned at the top of this post:

Repeat that for each of your projects (assuming you have multiple ones).

The examples in this post are built around tasks and the project for this blog — specifically, tasks related to this post.

Working with Tasks

You’ve got a project. Now, it’s time to add tasks to it². To do that, select a project in the sidebar on the left. Then, click the + at the bottom right of the screen. A window like this one displays:

Enter a name for the task and optionally add a description. You can also click the Date button to add a due date for the task. You can also:

• Add a label to the task.
• Set a priority for the task.
• Add a reminder.

When you’re done, click Add Task. Rinse and repeat for all of the tasks that you need to tackle. Here’s what the project and tasks for posts for this blog looks like:

As you work through the tasks on the list, click the checkboxes beside them to mark them as complete. As you can see in the image above, completed tasks are marked with a strikethrough.

Adding Sections

Sections let you break a project up into more manageable bits. So, for the purposes of this posts those sections can be writing, editing, preparing and publishing.

To add a section to a project, select the project in the sidebar. Then, press S on your keyboard. The New Section window displays, as shown below:

Give the section a name. Optionally, choose a colour to mark it and add a short description. When you’re done, click Add Section.

To add tasks to a section, click + Add Tasks at the bottom of the new section. From there, follow the instructions above.

Here’s what a section, specifically for an upcoming post, looks like:

When you’re done with a section, you can either delete it or archive it. To to either, click the vertical three dots to the right of the section’s name and then select either Delete Section or Archive.

Tracking Your Progress and Setting Goals

This is something you don’t need to do, but if you’re into keeping tabs on your productivity, Planify can help you there.

To track your progress, click the stacker menu in the sidebar and then select Summary & Productivity. This screen displays³:

You get a quick overview of the number of your tasks, how many you’ve completed, how many are outstanding, and how many are overdue. It’s not a ton of information and it probably won’t be enough for those who like to quantify everything but it’s a start.

You can also add goals for yourself by clicking Set Up Goals. When you do that, this pops up:

Set the number of tasks that you want to complete per day and for a week, then click Save. This displays:

Connecting Planify to External Accounts

Planify saves everything in a database in a folder hidden in your /home directory. That’s great if you only work with one device. But what happens if you use multiple devices? You can hook Planify up to:

• Nextcloud.
• Todoist.
• A server or service that supports something called CalDAV.

To connect Planify to those services, you’ll need an account with them. From there, click the stacker menu in the sidebar, select Preferences, and then click Accounts. This window displays:

Click + and then choose either Nextcloud or Todoist⁴. You’ll be asked to provide your login information. Once you’ve done that an authorized the connection, it’ll take a few seconds for everything to synchronize.

Nextcloud or Todoist will display in as an item in the sidebar. You can add new tasks there, or move tasks from projects on your computer into them.

If you have Planify installed on other computers, connect those instances of Planify to your Nextcloud or Todoist account and your tasks will synchronize between those computers. You can also use mobile apps that support Nextcloud Tasks or Todoist to manage your tasks on your phone or tablet.

Customizing Planify

You can, to a point, make Planify your own. Do that by clicking the stacker menu in the sidebar and then selecting Preferences. This window displays:

There’s a lot in there, and I’m not going to into what’s there in detail. Here are some of the aspects of Planify that you modify:

• What displays when you fire up the application.
• What appears in the sidebar.
• The behaviour of tasks.
• Whether or not to create backups of your tasks.
• The application’s theme.

Play around with those settings to discover what works for you.

Wrapping Up

I spent a couple of weeks using Planify to manage the tasks for posts on this blog. It does a lot. Maybe a bit too much for my needs. On top of that, I’m not crazy about my tasks being stored in a database; I prefer them to be in one or more plain text files.

Planify is powerful yet easy to use. While I enjoyed using it, after a couple of weeks I felt that it just wasn’t for me. I’ve gone back to using plain text. That said, if your task management needs are more complex than mine then give this application a look. It might pleasantly surprise you.

— Scott Nesbitt