Hi everybody, I was wondering if anyone has a solution for viewing Taskpaper files on Android devices. Right now my lists from Taskpaper are saved with the *.taskpaper file extension and whenever I try to open them using the Android Dropbox client, I’m offered the choice of two apps I have installed, neither of which are text editors (one’s a podcast program and the other is a graphing calculator app, somehow). So I can’t view the files; I think Dropbox doesn’t know how to handle the file extension.
I’m aware that there are currently no Android clients for editing Taskpaper files along the lines of Taskmator on iOS, etc. Since I use an Android phone, I wish that were not the case, but I can live with it for now as long as I can at least look at my Taskpaper lists on my phone to check for next actions, etc. Is there a way to view these on Android? Should I be using a *.txt extension instead of *.taskpaper?
I don’t know of any TaskPaper specific apps for Android. But yes, if you just name your file with a .txt file extension then you should be able to open in any plain text editor. It should also continue to work fine opening in TaskPaper.app on the Mac.
This post was a while back, but it was the first one to come up when I searched for ‘Android.’
I have just launched LucidPad for Android this week. Currently, it has basic features, but I am adding more features in coming weeks. Here is what is included now.
Reads and writes .taskpaper files.
Writes to the ‘public’ folder on Android, Documents or Downloads, depending on the version of the OS. This is accessible by USB.
Works with Dropbox!
Filter by tag name.
Some UI features to make some things easy, like marking done, changing indents for multiple items, changing items to project, task, or note.
Keyboard friendly. Most things can be done just by typing, in the spirit of how Taskpaper for the iOS was.
Toggle project, task, and note when beginning a new item by pressing the enter/return key.
Start a new item by pressing enter/return after typing your item text.
Change item indent with space or tab key when the cursor is at the beginning of the line.
You can get LucidPad on the Google Play store now. I am looking in to supporting Chromebooks and the Amazon app store as well.
Hi @chris! It’s great to see a TaskPaper application made for Android! I’ll have a look when I have some time! Thanks for the mention and for developing it!
Apart from Lucid app taskpaper format is a frustrating issue on Android, the native Dropbox app doesn’t even recognise the extension. Same for iA Writer and Jotterpad two apps I have tried. Just being able to open it in a text editor would help. I’m not sure how Android share extensions work, but wouldn’t it be great if .taskpaper extension was recognised as text/plain on Android. Does anyone official need to be notifiied, I’m a bit vague on what the issue is?
I’m not sure, but I guess it must be the same as on iOS. Meaning that each app must register for the extensions that they support. I know that iA Writer recently added “.taskpaper” support on iOS, you could ask them to add on iOS also…
But maybe much easier… you can also ask TaskPaper on the Mac to open/save plain text files with any file extensions. I would recommend just using “.txt” for your TaskPaper files and those should open in most apps on Android I would think.
I see iA Writer uses markdown style check lists, not quite the same as taskpaper format.
The usage of .txt extension would be a great idea but when I get back to my Mac, Taskpaper has not registered itself with launch services for the .txt extension. So I can only conveniently edit it by renaming it back to .taskpaper. Silly issue, but I can’t build a workflow around this method.
Right click on file (In Finder) and choose Open With > TaskPaper
Right click on the file (In Finder) and choose “Get Info”
In that get info panel there is a “Open With” place where you can choose which app will be used to open that specific file … or if you want to switch all files with that file extension there’s a “Change All…” button.
There are a number of other issues (i don’t see how to right click) if you store a document in Dropbox on a Mac, saving it back somewhere else eg phone clears the recent items of any reference to the taskpaper document. It’s kind of a catalogue of silly gotchas, I’ve given up trying to use my phone for this, particularly syncing with Dropbox. I have an iPod so I’m half mobile as it were.
Edit: Just so as we are not talking at cross-purposes this is what I see when I right-click a plain text file on macOS Sierra (a taskpaper document that I changed to .txt as it happens)
That is the menu i’m talking about … you’ll need to choose the bottom item “Other” and then find and select the TaskPaper app in the dialogue that shows.
I could do that, but then it would be my default text editor. Emacs is quite good I find, sometimes I just want to edit stuff without worrying about the format.
Gosh it’s not like a can’t open a taskpaper file in any number of ways, more like how to do it on a routine basis? I love your app, I use it more and more these days, and I do share with Dropbox, Editorial works fine for me, but this is about the only reason I can find for exchanging my Moto G4 for an iPhone.
If it’s just a few Taskpaper files an easy trick is renaming them into .txt files (for compatibility) and make symbolic links with .taskpaper extention so you can still open them simply by clicking them into taskpaper.
It’s difficult to get app developers interested in adding the.taskpaper extension even after pointing them to this forum. Dropbox don’t even want to know it’s baffling. For now I’ve given up using my Android phone for this, there are plenty of todo apps after all, but that’s not the reason I like Taskpaper, it’s more of a planning tool for me.
Please note that if you just want to open TaskPaper files in a android text editor … just save them with a txt file extension. TaskPaper for Mac will still open them fine, and they should open in pretty much any text editor. Of course they won’t recognize the underlying TaskPaper format, but should work for simple viewing, editing.
As I say I’ve given up on using Android. It’s a three way sync problem, symlinks get replaced. I know its a plain text format which is why it’s baffling that no one will just add a new extension to their roster not even Dropbox, their inline text editor would be fine. I don’t currently recommend Lucidapp it seems kind of old school, I don’t know whether you’re supposed to have a physical keyboard or something.
I just wanted to say that there still isnt a real solution for android. This dev has release an app with a really intrusive subscription model. The UI for the subscription doesn’t even work on my android phone. So I really hope that someone can release a real taskpaper app for android. Im really suprised that more apps for this format are not being developed. This format is really good. I want to use this format across all of my devices, I am sick of dealing with the limitations of proprietary tasking formats.
This is the first time I am thinking about trying to develop my own app for this format, its so important that we support these innovative non-proprietary solutions.
I willing to pay for a solution, so I hope someday a non-subscription model app gets developed.
