or in another application (Dynalist)…
if it is too complicated, or too early, forget it! You are doing a very important job and perhaps my wishes are too personal…
What I mean is give me sample content that I can try in macOS TaskPaper. eg.
Project:
- Task
Note
TaskPaper desktop is not able to show only the first line of a note… unfortunately!
Only toggle show/hide note, which BTW is ok
Thanks again
Looks super neat so far.
Some feedback:
UI
- Different buttons seem to have different popovers, for example add alarm and add priority tags behave differently:
I much prefer the smaller popover.
-
line wrapping looks like it works great, and it’s not even that bad several levels deep into the outline!
-
I do wish there was a button to turn a task into a note and vice versa. Moving cursor inline to delete the dash on smaller screens is a chore. Ideally, this woud be a 3-way toggle between all 3 item types
-
I wish there was more visual distinction between notes and tags (see screenshot above). In TaskPaper, notes are italicized by default. I never enjoyed that aspect of the default theme, but woud love to see a nice rounded corner background for tags.
Bugs?
@alarmdoesn’t seem to do anything inside reminders, even though app asks for permission and has been granted it. Is it looking for a specific list?
iPad
Finally, the real daily driver test for me would be the iPad version, and in particular keyboard shortcuts for actions inside the toolbar.
Down the line wishes
- automation support through Apple shortcuts or some kind of URL scheme, in particular I’d like the option to create/append to documents through the app Drafts, which also has Taskpaper syntax support.
Those two are different by design. The first one is multiple choice: you can select more than one priority. The second one is an alert that requies action. But I’ll look into this when I test on iPad.
Great suggestion, I’ll add it.
This comes from me never having added a note in my TaskPaper files…ever! I know. But I’ll look into this.
I’ll look into this. It was the last feature I added so it definitely needs more work.
I’ve not yet tested on iPad. Keyboard shortcuts are coming soon.
Please tell me more. I own Drafts on iOS, but have never done this type of integration. Explain it to me like I’m a 5 year old. Screen recording or screenshot would be excellent.
(I know about url schemes, I’m just looking for how your want it to work and an example of what you would do with it)
Hi there, thanks for sharing!! It’s a nice app.
I found that PaperTrail cannot render Chinese and Korean words in tags.
Just shown as the picture, @百度网盘 is a tag, but the PaperTrail can’t ‘recognize it. So does the Korean tag. But the English tags are normal.
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I’m on it! ありがとう！ 
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changelog, version 1.0 (250822.1608)
- add: ellipsis button to toggle between task/note/project
- add: keyboard shortcuts (mostly untested)
- change: new icon design
- change: note text style is now black italics
- change: tags now accept unicode text
- change: toolbar is larger on iPad
- fix: alarm is now more reliable
- fix: improved natural language date processing
iPad mini screenshots
App icons
normal
inverted
- add: support for .txt (untested)
From my testing, this is not working.
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Folding has not yet been implemented.
keep waiting thanks
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This discusses Taskpaper and Drafts and while it might be a singular use case it describes moving data back and forth between the two apps. There is also a Drafts Action Group containing the required “actions”.
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OK, did some testing on iPadOS. Here are my notes:
General (includes iOS app)
- .txt files can’t be opened. This is true both for app doc browser and share menu
- Ellipsis Button is probably not very clear for new users. Possible to have the icon change for every type?
- Reaching end of screen while typing will not scroll screen up, making cursor go out of sight
- tapping any blank line anywhere except the last will apply
@donestatus to that line (this one feels like an Easter egg unlock)
- Projects that also have tags are not recognized as projects (in TaskPaper, projects can also have tags)
- Archiving
@donetasks preserves original indentation level inArchive:project; not sure this is useful (seems like a cut-paste operation?). In TaskPaper, items are nested directly underArchive:, but take descendants along with them.
UI:
- Sometimes moving lines and indenting will cause screen to jitter. Can’t reproduce this consistently.
- Moving lines up/down doesn’t follow a clear logic.
Some examples:
- Second SIBLING will become PARENT of FIRST SIBLING if moved up, but this is true only for indent level >2
- A task/note that is SIBLING to a PROJECT will become its CHILD if moved up.
This does not happen if FIRST SIBLING is not a PROJECT
- Moving lines with children does not move children
- Indenting/outdenting lines with children will not indent/outdent children
I think this is a deliberate choice to make: whether it acts like a text editor or like an outliner—especially after folding is introduced. Personally, I think it makes sense for it to behave exactly like TaskPaper for these movements (e.g. move lines exactly as they are up/down, but also move children when folded).
iPad + Magic Keyboard:
- After tapping filename to Rename file, editor loses keyboard focus and does not get it back afterward. There is no way to enter edit mode other than tapping the screen again.
- I miss keyboard shortcut for
task/project/note toggle Add taskshortcut does not act consistently beyond indent level >2
It defaults back to indent level 1 regardless of how deep previous line is
- If current line is a note or project,
Add taskshortcut will only add a hyphen to the same line
cmd+T(Tag With) shortcut doesn’t workAdd Due dateshortcut opens the date picker, but can’t manipulate date picker, confirm date or dismiss window with keyboard.- on this note, I would prefer this to be a month overview rather than the slot machine date picker
- Same for
Toggle Alarmshortcut
Overall, this looks really great. As for automation, I will have to get back to you with that because there’s a lot that Apple Shortcuts can do with plain text already.
This one is perhaps a little more critical:
When copying text out of PaperTrail, it will turn the plain-text hyphen signifier for tasks (-) into an en-dash (–). This can screw up interoperability with markdown syntax and other text editors, because they can’t recognize this as a list marker.
some quick fixes for the most glaring errors.
changelog, version 1.0 (250822.2146)
- change: improve behaviour of enter key
- change: improve plain text file type support
- change: new icon design
- fix: prevent done on empty lines
I value the detailed feedback, and my goal is to match TaskPaper as well as I can but, just to set expectations, I won’t be able to be 100% exact because this is not an official port but rather a compatible client of my own design built from scratch. Already it does what I need of it, so any further effort will need to be guided.
From now on
I’ve opened a github for issues so I can better triage and manage them: https://github.com/gingerbeardman/papertrail/
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- change: improve plain text file type support
Confirmed—it is working. Thanks!
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You even beat me to testing! LOL
7.5 years of QA testing at a major game company. 
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