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Meet Planner, an open-source GTD (Getting Things Done) and to-do list application that will keep your life more organized and help you achieve your goals.
If you’re looking for a free app to track all of your projects and life goals, or even keep track of your calendar so you don’t miss anything, then Planner is for you.
I recently wrote about the rebirth of a really good to-do list app for the GNOME desktop, Getting Things GNOME, and a reader, which turned out to be the lead developer, suggested I take a look at Planner too. And so I did, and now I don’t want to use another GTD app. Here’s why.
I’ve installed Planner on my Ubuntu 20.04 LTS machine from Flathub. Since I already had Flatpak installed, the installation was painless and one click away. All you have to do is click on the “Install” button on the Flathub page and Ubuntu Software will take care of the rest.
Planner is available to download from the elementary OS AppCenter as well, if you’re using elementary OS. There are no native binaries available, such as DEB or RPM, but Flatpak makes it installable on virtually any GNU/Linux distribution with a few mouse clicks.
The first thing you’ll love about this app is minimalism. You can see that as soon as you visit its website. Then, you’ll love how smooth the app is and how easy is to get started thanks to the built-in “Getting Started” project that will help you learn the basics of Planner.
I suggest you thoroughly read each section in the Getting Started project before actually using the app. It will not only make it really easy to use Planner, but you’ll learn a few tricks to set up your tasks, projects and goals in the pursuit of the ultimate goal of being more productive.
Planner works both offline and online. If you have a Todoist account, the to-do list app used by millions of people, you can sync it with Planner. In fact, you’ll find Planner look very similar to Todoist, which doesn’t have a native Linux app, but there’s an Electron app (a wrapper for the web version) available.
To help you keep get things done, Planner lets you organize your life in folders, projects, sections and tasks. Folders can be used to host multiple projects, which can have multiple sections with tasks. Of course, you can also create tasks everywhere you want in the app.
To make sure you don’t forget things, the app also lets you set reminders for tasks. On top of that, you can add notes, URLs, checklists, and labels, which you can create in the settings, to each task, set priorities for tasks, duplicate tasks, and even move tasks to another project or section.
There are three main views available, Inbox, Today, and Upcoming. As you can imagine, these will help you see at a glance the things you have to do today or in the coming days. But you can also see all of your folders and projects at a glance in the sidebar.
You can even connect Planner to the built-in Calendar app of your Linux distro to see the events you’ve set up there, as well as birthdays and anniversaries.
If you have lots of tasks, a built-in search will help you find them in a flash. The app also includes a progress indicator for each project, badge counts for the Today and Inbox views, a light theme (default) and three beautiful dark themes, as well as different button layouts for the interface.
All in all, I recommend Planner if you want to keep your life organized and prevent procrastination. Check it out and let me know how it all worked out for you in the comments section below.
Last updated 4 years ago
