7 Free and Open-source Task list Apps for macOS (Intel and Apple Silicon)

1- Trilium Notes

Build your personal knowledge base with Trilium Notes

Trilium Notes is a hierarchical note taking application with focus on building large personal knowledge bases.

Read about Trilium Notes 's features, license, platforms, and more.

2- Joplin

an open source note taking and to-do application with synchronisation capabilities

Joplin is a free, open source note taking and to-do application, which can handle a large number of notes organised into notebooks. The notes are searchable, can be copied, tagged and modified either from the applications directly or from your own text editor. The notes are in Markdown format.

Notes exported from Evernote can be imported into Joplin, including the formatted content (which is converted to Markdown), resources (images, attachments, etc.) and complete metadata (geolocation, updated time, created time, etc.). Plain Markdown files can also be imported.

The notes can be securely synchronised using end-to-end encryption with various cloud services including Nextcloud, Dropbox, OneDrive and Joplin Cloud.

Read about Joplin 's features, license, platforms, and more.

3- Sleek

open-source and to-do app based on todo.txt.

sleek is an open-source (FOSS) todo manager based on the todo.txt syntax. Stripped down to only the most necessary features, and with a clean and simple interface, sleek aims to help you focus on getting things done.

All classic todo.txt attributes are supported and enhanced by additional features. Creating todos is straightforward, and tag-based filtering in tandem with highly customisable grouping and smart full-text search allow for rapid information retrieval. Completed todos can be hidden or archived into separate done.txt files. Easy integration with other todo.txt apps is facilitated by continuously scanning todo.txt files for changes.

sleek is available for Windows, MacOS and Linux, and in several languages. For a detailed list of features, see below. Many useful information can be found in sleek's wiki.

It has a modern and simple GUI and many functions which help users get things done, it can be used in full-text search as filters or to group and sort tasks list.

It is easy to integrate sleek with other todo.txt apps, it can be filtered by contexts, project, and properties, has a dark and light mode, hyperlinks are detected automatically on it, it supports multi-line to-dos, filters, and more.

Furthermore, it is released under the MIT licensed and written with JavaScript, CSS, and more.

Read about Sleek 's features, license, platforms, and more.

4- status-bar-todo

manage your tasks directly from the macOS menubar

status-bar-todo is a free and simple macOS app to keep your to-do list in the status bar that will keep you on track with your tasks.

Read about status-bar-todo 's features, license, platforms, and more.

5- Task Coach

open-source todo manager

A task coach is a simple to-do manager to keep track of your tasks. It offers notes, categories, and more.

Furthermore, it is available for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, BSD and released under the GPL-3.0 License and written with Python.

Read about Task Coach 's features, license, platforms, and more.

6- Todo.txt

A simple and extensible shell script for managing your todo.txt file.

Todo.txt is an open-source to-do app released under the GPL-3.0 License.

Todo.txt allows you to manage your tasks easily; without any checkboxes, drop-downs, reminders, or date pickers.

It also has full of user documentation and developer documentation, it is simple, flexible, highly effective, and convenient.

Read about Todo.txt 's features, license, platforms, and more.

7- TodoTxtMac

native minimal keyboard-driven todo/ task manager for macOS

TodoTxtMac is an open-source task manager for macOS that is fully keyboard-driven with one-key bindings for commonly-used commands

Their features include multiple selections in the task list, support due to date format, shortcuts to toggle completion, automatic update checking, displays general metadata, and more.

TodoTxtMac is a minimalist, keyboard-driven to-do manager for Mac OS X that conforms to the todo.txt format spec. Version 2.0.0 and up are supported only on Mac OS X 10.11 (El Capitan). Version 1.6.1 can be used on lower versions of Mac OS X, down to Mac OS X 10.8, though support is not guaranteed.

Read about TodoTxtMac 's features, license, platforms, and more.