🎛 Dashboard

What's changed in 🎛 Dashboard plugin?

For more details see the plugin's documentation.

[2.3.2] 2025-12-02

• fix display when there are no priority items shown.

[2.3.1] 2025-12-01

• fix for possible loss of settings error seen by @jim when upgrading
• dev: updated default handling for dashboardSettings and perspectiveSettings

[2.3.0] 2025-11-30

New

• support for (Team)Space notes in all Dashboard operations
• new % complete pie charts in Section areas for Calendar notes
• you can now change the displayed order of Sections, using a new panel in the Settings window. This is set per Perspective (if used). It can be reset to the default sort order.
• new setting "Do 'Move all items' buttons only move shown items when filtering?"
• new setting 'Include #tag/@mention(s) scheduled to future dates?' (default: false)
• new setting 'How to show progress in Calendar sections?'. If set to 'number closed', then the number of tasks completed in that note will be shown in the section heading area. If set to 'number open', then the number of tasks still open will be shown instead. Or can be set to 'none'. (Default: 'number closed'.)
• new /backupSettings command
• added little circles for task completion in section headings, and tweaked the text after it

Changes

• big speed up of #tag and @mention sections (at least after the first call; it creates a cache in the background for new tags and mentions)
• when the "filter out lower-priority items" is on, this now calculated across all sections, not just each one independently.
• show Tag/Mention sections that have no items
• hide Referenced calendar sections (e.g. ">Today") that have no items to show
• the label that says there are hidden items now includes "(click to show all)" text to make it clearer how to turn off the filter for that section.
• the Overdue section now shows the number of overdue beyond the 'lookback N days' setting limit, if that's applied (requested by @tastapod)
• a backup of Dashboard settings is created whenever installing a new version
• when using "Move to Note" task action, if the note starts in a Calendar note, and is moved to a Regular note, then that >date is added.
• completing, cancelling or updating an item will also now immediately update the same item if it is shown in a different section (e.g. Yesterday and Overdue).
• change de-duplication of sync'd lines to now favour showing the one in the Regular, not Calendar, note
• the Priority and Overdue sections now apply the 'Apply to sections under Calendar note headings' sub-setting of 'Ignore items in notes with phrase(s)' where set
• lots of visual polish

Fixed

• fix incorrect display after Unscheduling a task
• fix to Refresh button continually showing 'Generating' long after it should.
• fix to display of hashtags and mentions with included hyphens or underscores
• several fixes to display of URLs
• lots of other small fixes

[2.2.1] 2025-04-16

Changed

• You can now order results in Tag and Overdue sections by due date, as well as by the existing options (for @laurah)
• Tweak layout of text & stop overscrolling behaviour under an open dialog

[2.2.0] 2025-04-11

New

• Search section. Click on the new icon in the header and a small search bar opens up, where you can type a term to search for open tasks and checklists in regular or calendar notes. This uses the extended syntax from my separate Search Extensions plugin to allow more complex searches than NotePlan natively allows. The Search Section stays until either you manually refresh the dashboard, or you click the close [x] button. This means you can edit the items like any other section contents, and also use Interactive Processing.
• new externallyStartSearch x-callback for this, with arguments:
  • search terms string
  • search over 'calendar', 'project', or 'both' (optional, default is 'both')
  • ISO start date for calendar notes (optional, default is empty)
  • ISO end date for calendar notes (optional, default is empty)
• add easier x-callback 'showDashboard' command alias
• allow CalendarPicker to be opened when ⌘-clicking the task edit or project edit icon
• add ⌘-click option to 'All → Tomorrow' and similar buttons which temporarily toggles between what is your normal set mode ('move' or 'schedule').

Changed

• the 'add task to any date' button in the Today section area has moved to the Header bar and is now an 'add task to any (calendar or regular) note'.
• many small improvements to display, layout and tooltips
• removed '<>' as a possible heading from the 'add a new task/checklist' dialog

Fixed

• when using 'All → Tomorrow' and similar buttons, stop trying to move child tasks, which raises errors, as they've already been moved with their parents
• workaround for child tasks not behaving correctly on iOS
• Made workaround for undefined value of NP timeblockTextMustContainString preference
  -->

[2.1.10] 2025-02-16

New

• When you move/schedule an item from one note to another, there are two additional workflows:
  1. if you want the current hierarchy of headings to be maintained in the new note (if they aren't already present), you can now use special setting <<carry forward>> in 'Section heading to add/move new tasks under'. For example, if the item to move is in section ### Project VENONA which in turn is under heading ## Work, then ## Work and ### Project VENONA will be inserted first, if they aren't already present. (For @jgclark)
• 2. now if you set the 'Heading level for new Headings' setting to 0, that tells the Dashboard to only create the wanted heading if it isn't already present in the destination note. (For @dwertheimer)

Changed

• Whole Dashboard a little quicker to generate, particularly in the case of notes with many parent/child items.
• The Tag section(s) are now about twice as quick to generate, and if there are multiple ones to show, they start appearing more quickly.
• The Tag section(s) now show "first X of Y items", not "X items".
• Moved the Tag/Mention section settings higher up the list of settings, to come straight after the 'What to Include and Exclude' section. Also improved the description.

Fixed

• Fix '>Yesterday' section not appearing (thanks, @MC-1848)
• Fix the referenced sections not being removed when 'Show referenced items in separate section' is turned off
• Fix (re)scheduling items when the Heading setting was set to '<>' (thanks, @dwertheimer)

Dev notes

• Speeded up isAChildPara() by using children() once instead of calling it multiple times. This is called by makeDashboardParas() which is used in all generation.
• Restructured makeDashboardParas() and found it could be a lot quicker as a result. I don't understand this, but it's a bonus.

[2.1.9] 2025-02-08

Changed

• Larger tap targets for buttons on iOS/iPadOS
• on iOS: Added 'Move all' and 'Interactive Processing' buttons to the Section heading, but removed the 'New Task' button from the edit dialog (as it can't work there).
• Updated '/generate diagnostics' command to write to a note in the root folder

Fixed

• Added workaround for slow API response with particularly large notes

[2.1.8] 2025-02-05

New

• Added a '+ New Task' button to the end of the Task edit dialog. This effectively runs the '/quick add task under heading' command (from Quick Capture) which allows you to add a new task in any note under any heading without having to leave the Dashboard.
• When you switch to a new Perspective, Dashboard now tells Projects & Reviews plugin (if it is already open) to update.
• New '/generate diagnostics' command to make it easier in future to diagnose problems, as there are so flipping many settings to understand.

Changed

• When clicking on a Section Title or a note link (which opens the relevant note in the Editor), the Editor is now brought to the front.
• Some colour changes to bring more in line with NP's app sidebar.
• If you have enabled the Timeblock section on, it will now show/hide relevant new timeblocks much more quickly.
• The Edit All Perspectives table now has subtly shaded alternate rows
• The window starts up saying 'Generating' not 'Refreshing'
• Improved text in Projects section heading
• Updated passing of data from Projects & Reviews plugin (v1.1) to Dashboard.

Fixed

• Issue with 'Last Week' section taking a long time to appear (big thanks to @JPR1972 for tracking it down)
• Issue with 'Last Week' section not working if 'Show referenced items in separate section' was turned on
• Regression with task counts not reducing when completing items
• Issue affecting @MC-1848 with timeblocks (thanks for patiently helping us track it down)
• The 'Add a task' dialog box dropdown menu for Heading was clipped

[2.1.7] 2025-01-30

Changed

• Perspectives: if you have 'Apply to sections under headings in Calendar notes?' turned on, this now applies to all the preceding headings up the H5->H1 hierarchy for that line.
• task and project edit dialogs now can be closed by clicking outside the window
• setting 'Automatic Update frequency' renamed to 'Automatic Update interval'

Fixed

• issue after project edit dialog opened

[2.1.6] 2025-01-27

New

• if a task is marked complete, and it has a @repeat(date) (using the Repeat Extensions plugin) then it will now automatically generate the new repeat. (This works around a limitation in the API where the usual trigger doesn't fire.)

Changed

• when you click on a task/checklist line in the Dashboard window, it will highlight that line in the open NP Editor, and now bring the NP window to the front.
• allow all current timeblocks to be shown, not just the first
• styling improvements in Edit All Perspectives... window and various dialogs

Fixed

• an extra item could stop being displayed when the item before it was marked as complete
• timeblocks in list items ignored if also filtering out checklists

[2.1.5] 2025-01-21

New

• when moving an item to a different note, and the item contains a scheduled date, it now offers to remove the date (suggested by @drb)

Fixes

• fixed regression when (re)scheduling an item (thanks, @sneakattack)
• fixed timeblock still appearing on completed items (thanks, @MC-1848)

Dev notes

• changed doMoveToNote to finish with REMOVE_LINE_FROM_JSON not UPDATE_LINE_IN_JSON
• refactored REMOVE_LINE_FROM_JSON to happen in processActionOnReturn() not updateReactWindowFromLineChange(). This simplifies things a bit. @dbw please review to make sure I'm not doing something silly here.

[2.1.4] 2025-01-19

Changes

• the 'Edit All Perspectives' dialog now shows a modified Perspective as well as the unmodified version of that Perspective, plus options to 'Save' or 'Revert' those changes. (Feedback welcome on this.)

Fixes

• fixed Interactive Processing dialog failing

Dev notes

• Remove vestiges of showModal() using component instead
• Changed some
  s to be , and

  instead -- should provide better accessibility, and recommended by ARIA
• Fixed Feature Flags not being saved.

[2.1.3] 2025-01-16

New

• the task dialog box is now a bit smarter: it won't display 'this month' when the item is from the monthly note, but will give 'next month' option instead. Similarly for items in 'This week' and 'This Quarter' sections.

Changes

• made the message to user more useful on (valid) occasions where Dashboard can't update something because its recently changed in the underlying note

Fixes

• fixed regression that stopped 'hide checklists' from being honoured in some parts of the display
• the 'current timeblock' could stop being displayed too soon
• fixed settings from the Filter dropdown menu getting out of sync
• fixed special '<>' option in setting 'Section heading to add/move new tasks under' not being handled properly (thanks, @dwertheimer)

Dev notes

• I realised that some of the logic for what to display and not is spread out in several places, making it difficult to reason with and test. So I've moved a checklist filter out of ItemGrid up to Section level (through its useSection... effect) which has much more logic about how to filter and display this.

[2.1.2] 2025-01-13

New

• Spinner after final section to indicate when a Perspective is still changing

Fixes

• Today section not showing up before a settings change
• fix perspectives where some tags were being shown even though they were not included in the tagsToShow setting for the current perspective
• settings description for max items to show
• fix ESC key on PerspectiveSelector non-perspective options
• hide Interactive Processing button in Projects section (will be introduced later) (thanks, @Wook5000)
• fix 'Last Week' section not refreshing after clicking 'All->This Week' button
• spacing after folder names in referenced links

[2.1.1] 2025-01-06

New

• time blocks are now found in regular notes that reference to today (e.g. >2025-01-04 at 11:00) as well as calendar notes
• new 'show Today' toggle, as you can now choose to hide the Today section. [This is in preparation for future changes.]
• new '/test Perspective filter' command in case we still need more logging

Changed

• eliminated some background refreshes -- feedback wanted on whether any sections are not fully up-to-date straight after an automatic or requested refresh
• removed "Add new Perspective", "Delete Perspective" and "Update current Perspective" commands, as they're now more easily used in the Perspective dropdown menu.

Fixed

• some open tasks were being included in a Perspective when they shouldn't have been excluded by folder (thanks @ormler, @dwertheimer)
• fixed the Tomorrow Section sometimes not showing
• fixed the (re)schedule actions (e.g. "+1d", "+1w") in the task dialog box not firing in regular notes that are referenced to >today

Dev note

• cut down logging
• commented out updateReactWindowData()
• removed unused version of getInitialDataForReactWindow and renamed what we are using to this same name
• testing deactivation of START_DELAYED_REFRESH_TIMER

[2.1.0] 2024-12-31

A major effort by @jgclark and @dwertheimer over the last 5 months. There are lots of new things, particularly Perspectives, that allow you to switch very quickly between different complete sets of settings.

New

• new settings to control what items/folders/sections are shown and what is ignored in a Perspective.
• new Perspectives dropdown menu that allow you to switch very quickly between different complete sets of settings
• this menu also has commands to 'Save As...', 'Delete...', 'Rename...', 'Copy to...' and 'Edit all...' Perspectives
• new "/Add new Perspective", "/Delete Perspective" and "/Update current Perspective" commands
• new setPerspective x-callback to use from outside NP
• new 'Current Time Block' section at the top of the window, that only shows if the current time is within a time block defined in your daily note. (Note: This honours the 'Text must contain' setting in the main NP Todo settings pane.)
• new 'Last Week' section and related 'All → This Week' button
• new 'Add a new task to future note' button on Today Section, which allows you to pick any date for the future task
• added support for 'child' items of tasks:
  • child items are now indented like in the NP Editor
  • an item with children is now shown with a new 'ellipsis' indicator at the end of the item
  • when moving/scheduling items, any child items are moved/scheduled as well.
  • the 'All → Today' and 'All → Tomorrow' buttons now don't try to move child items on their own, but only as part of the block with their parent.
• child tasks are now ordered following their parents, when sorted by priority
• now there is a 'Show completed task count?' setting which can be turned off.
• now uses the user's 'Editor Font Size' setting to determine the base font size for the Dashboard -- and so can be changed up and down quite easily -- rather than only using what the Theme defines.

Changed

• speeded up data generation significantly in some places (particularly refreshes), and everything else should feel snappier
• parent items now show a '・・・' indicator, like NP does
• child items are now indented like in the NP Editor
• in the item dialog, there's now a note if an item has children
• Turn off 'Referenced' Calendar sections if they have no items to display.
• the "Ignore items in calendar sections with these term(s)" are now checked case-insensitively
• the completed task count is now smarter and quicker at operating, and covers tasks completed in notes not shown in the current Dashboard sections.
• turned off underlining on the 'take a break' message lines, and added colouring of it from your theme's completed task colour
• Week/Month/Quarter sections now show a compact line so that their respective add buttons will show, even when there are no open task/children items to show.
• improved details in title of project dialogs
• changed order of skip buttons in Interactive Processing dialog
• new type of dialog to replace the command bar for adding new tasks/checklists, and some other operations
• the layout has been polished up in lots of places
• removed setting "Add dashboard auto-update trigger when dashboard opened?" ('autoAddTrigger')
• changed callbacks to be showDashboard, showSections and showPerspective. E.g.:
  • noteplan://x-callback-url/runPlugin?pluginID=jgclark.Dashboard&command=showDashboard
  • noteplan://x-callback-url/runPlugin?pluginID=jgclark.Dashboard&command=showPerspective&arg0=Work
  • noteplan://x-callback-url/runPlugin?pluginID=jgclark.Dashboard&command=showSections&arg0=DT,DO,@home

Fixed

• worked around an API limitation so that you can add tasks/checklists to future calendar notes that don't exist yet.
• fixed some items not being found when referenced to weekly notes
• add time to @done(...) when "completing then"
• fixed spinner icon not spinning
• projects that are paused are now not shown in the projects section
• changed Interactive Processing icon to not imply 'refresh'
• fixed various things related to truncated display of long tasks, particularly those with bare or Markdown-style URLs
• improved ordering and descriptions of some of the settings
• removed warning if Project & Reviews plugin is not installed

[2.0.7] 2024-10-23

New

• new 'All -> Next Week' button in Week section.
• clicking on 'there are X items hidden' message lines now turns off filtering in all sections
• added version number to end of Settings dialog

Changed

• under-the-hood changes to match Project + Reviews Plugin v1.0 release.
• stop check dialogs on "Move all ..." operations on iOS/iPadOS, as they stopped them working
• changed Interactive Processing icon to not imply 'refresh'
• add time to @done(...) when "completing then"

Fixed

• fixed edge case when filtering lower priority items from the display
• fixed typos in "Move all to today" dialog

[2.0.6] 2024-09-06

Changes

• new setting "When (re)scheduling an item, also show it as a scheduled item in main Editor?". If set on then it uses the [>] marker in the underlying Markdown which is shown with 🕓 in the main Editor. By default this is on, to match the standard behaviour of NotePlan's UI. (requested by @tophee in issue 589)

Fixed

• Fixed full generation sometimes having Project rather than Priority section
• Removed double generation of Tag sections in getSomeSectionData()
• tighten up removal of priority indicators, to only happen at the start of a line's content
• now won't display buttons in the Section header if there are no items to work on. (However, the 'add' buttons in the calendar sections are still shown.)
• Fixed project progress 'pie charts' layout issues, and added them in to the project dialog header.
• multi-part hashtags now display properly (thanks for tip, @lbednarski)

[2.0.5] 2024-07-30

• some layout tweaks in the main Settings dialog
• fix to 'All -> Today' button action in Overdue section (thanks, @Oldielajolla)

[2.0.4] 2024-07-23 unreleased

• new 'Priority' section for all items with a priority marker (>>, !!!, !! or !) (for @lbednarski). Note: this will be slow to generate, as it can't use any of NotePlan's internal caches.

• fixed setting 'Add folder name in note link' not working
• updated some of the icons in the section descriptions

[2.0.3] 2024-07-19

• fixed filter dropdown menu placement issue
• fixed Today section description when there are no open tasks left
• added greyed-out 'save & close' button when opening settings dialog
• added some constraints to number fields in the settings dialog
• fixed tooltips hidden by window header
• tidied up other z-index-ing

[2.0.2] 2024-07-16

• fixed 'All Overdue → Today' button not working (thanks for the report, @Oldielajolla)
• fix to auto-refresh
• fix to stop 5s refresh in DEV mode
• improve wording around number of open items in section descriptions
• small layout tweaks when on a narrow screen
• reverted the Filters dropdown menu to be single column while we work out why 1 user is having trouble with 2-col layout.

Note: I intend to remove the "Add dashboard auto-update trigger when dashboard opened?" setting and functionality in a future release. It is much less needed now Dashboard can auto-refresh after a given number of minutes.

[2.0.1] 2024-07-15

Added

• new x-callback setSetting command to change a single Dashboard setting.
• new x-callback setSettings command (plural) to change multiple Dashboard settings in one call.
• new /Make Callback from Current Settings command that copies the current setting as a URL or a markdown link to the Clipboard.
• dbw: remove "tooltip" prop for featureFlags
• dbw: remove DEV limitation on 5s refresh
• dbw: fix edge case bug on ReactSettings and saving/reading from plugin.settings
• fix issues with logSettings not saving/reading properly and not showing DEV FFlag menu

Changed/Improved

• made the Filters dropdown menu a two-column display (except on narrow screens)
• removed most settings from old setting system
• removed "edit settings (for iOS)" command, as not needed
• improved spacing and ordering of heading, and made tapping heading elements easier on iOS
• other UI tweaks
• improved communication between Projects and Dashboard plugins
• (under-the-hood) add quite a lot of logTimer() calls, and added a new setting for it to both old and new setting systems
• (under the hood) complete refactoring of settings data structures under the hood

Fixed

• fix task completion timestamps using GMT not local time (thanks, @mjd9ball).
• updating the Project List (in Projects & Reviews plugin) now refreshes the Project section in the Dashboard again.
• fixed Project item display when project in root folder
• a newly-added Project progress line will now be shown in the main window

What's improved in v2.0?

New

• The different sections are now generated or refreshed progressively, so the first sections appear more quickly. When refreshing the display, the dashboard is smarter and will only update the necessary sections, displaying indicators next to the section items as it does so.
• Auto-refresh: by default the Dashboard will now automatically pick up new/changed tasks in NotePlan after it has been idle for 15 minutes (configurable). This means that you probably no longer need to add a trigger to the notes with tasks you're completing/changing frequently.
• New Processing button that opens up the Task Edit dialog showing the first item in the section. When you click on an action button it then updates to show you the next item, and so on. In this mode there's an extra 'forward' button that lets you leave that item where it is.
• Can now show multiple tags/mentions, by specifying them in the setting separated by commas
• New Filter dropdown that allows you to quickly toggle on or off all the main display settings, including which sections to show -- moved from the Preferences Pane
• New Settings button which opens a window that has the rest of the more detailed settings for the plugin -- moved from the Preferences Pane
• In the task dialog box, added a couple of new controls, including the 🗓️ control which opens up a date picker to allow picking any date to move a task to
• In the project dialog box, added:
  • a new 🗓️ control which opens up a date picker to allow picking any date to schedule the next project to
  • new "Complete Project", "Cancel Project", "Pause Project" buttons, that each mimic the same command from the Project & Reviews plugin
  • now shows the latest 'Progress' comment for a project, and a button to add a new comment.
• When the NotePlan Theme is changed (manually or automatically), the Dashboard window will automatically pick this up on the next refresh.
• ^-click (ctrl-click) on an item's status icon now deletes the item entirely (after a check with the user).
• Added an x-callback to allow specifying which sections you want to see. For details see README.
• Note: some of the buttons are hidden when running on iOS or iPadOS because of limitations in the environment the Dashboard runs in. We are hopeful these will be removed in time.

Changed

• Should now work better on iPhones and iPads
• Removed the separate limit on number of Project items shown; it will now use the main limit setting (if set).
• The 'Update Overdue section when triggered?' setting has been removed, as it is no longer needed with the smarter data generation
• Removed the keyboard shortcuts to toggle sections, as there is the new Filter quick menu.
• The count of tasks done today now includes those completed in project notes, not just from the calendar sections shown. Note: this requires having the NotePlan setting 'Todo > Append Completion Date' setting turned on, as otherwise we can't tell when a task is finished. (As @done(...) dates don't get appended to completed checklists, it's not possible to count completed checklists.) To save space, this is not shown on iOS devices.

Fixed

• a task in today's note "* a task >today" doesn't show up on today's dashboard
• tasks in future notes showing up in #tag section
• synced copies dated for today were duplicated
• "Dashboard: update plugin settings" command not working (reported by @todd9252 on v1.2)
• other bug fixes

[1.2.1] - 2024-04-18 by @SirTristam

• Add option to use the current date instead of '>today' to schedule tasks for today