[todo][FEATURE] Add CalDAV support

[screwys]

Submission checklist

• I have searched existing issues and confirmed this has not been requested before.
• I have checked existing pull requests for similar changes.
• This is about a community plugin, not about Noctalia itself (those belong in the noctalia repo).

Plugin

nightwatch75/todo

Feature type

New functionality

Feature summary

Hello, nice to see this plugin in v5 as well! I wonder if you would consider adding CalDAV integration for this plugin. In v4, I had a script that formats this plugins output for my CalDAV server, and heavily patched the plugin itself, even with a lot of moving parts it was working fine for my use case (I had to disable the updates though). I didn't open a PR at that time since I found that quite opinionated, but now that Noctalia has built-in CalDAV support I believe something like this can be integrated?

Motivation / use case

This plugin is convenient, but it only saves todos to local disk. CalDAV integration would let it become usable in multiple devices and real workflows.

Proposed solution

Use the existing CalDAV integration of Noctalia Shell instead of a custom todo format.

Alternatives considered

Only alternative would be creating a clone of the plugin with CalDAV integration.

References / related projects

https://tasks.org/

Additional context

In my patched v4 version, I had a basic "compatibility layer" script, that just formats this plugins output including priorities, and that would talk to CalDAV, it would work both ways; I would add a new todo to my Tasks app in android, and it would show up here, and I also had a resync button.

[screwys]

A simpler alternative would be following todo.txt format, that way this would still be usable with multiple devices and folder would be synced with something like syncthing.

[ItsLemmy]

@nightwatch75

[nightwatch75]

Thanks for the detailed request, @screwys

Before inventing yet another todo format, I looked at wiring this into Noctalia's built-in CalDAV, since reusing that is clearly the right approach if it's available. Reading the v5 sources and docs (IA assisted I'm saying this for the sake of transparency), I hit three walls, and I'd like to confirm them with you and with @ItsLemmy before committing to a large build:

1. Events read-only / no tasks? The calendar service looks events-only (VEVENT) and read-only (based on https://docs.noctalia.dev/v5/services/calendar/ ) , the iCalendar parser ignores VTODO and the REPORT query uses a VEVENT-only comp-filter. Can you confirm there's no VTODO/task support and no write path, or is that on the roadmap? Or is this a total hallucination?

2. Is the calendar/CalDAV service exposed to plugins? I can't find any Luau binding, shared state, or IPC that lets a plugin read or write calendar/task items through core. It looks entirely internal. Is that correct, or is there a plugin-facing entry point (existing or planned) I'm missing?

3. Is the Secret Service credential store reachable from the plugin API? For a plugin to speak CalDAV itself it needs to store a password, and I don't see a password/secret setting type or a keyring binding,so today a plugin would either keep the credential in plaintext settings or shell out to secret-tool. Is there a plugin path to Secret Service, or one planned?

If the answers are "events-only, internal-only, no plugin secret access," then real CalDAV support means a full VTODO client written from scratch inside the plugin (PROPFIND discovery, REPORT, PUT/DELETE, an iCalendar parser, two-way sync with ETag conflict handling). That's doable over the plugin HTTP API, but it's a big, security-sensitive addition I'd rather not rush.

So as an interim compromise, along the lines you suggested, We could add an option to store the task list as a plain-text iCalendar file (VTODO, the same format CalDAV uses) in a configurable folder. That already makes it multi-device via Syncthing/Nextcloud, keeps the data in a standard format, and stays forward-compatible if a proper CalDAV path opens up later. Would that cover your use case for now?

[screwys]

Oh, I was not aware CalDAV integration worked inside Noctalia and how much it exposed to plugins. That might be a bigger challenge I guess. But in short, yes, I think simply using todo.txt format would be enough without needing to reinvent anything.

[nightwatch75]

Oh, I was not aware CalDAV integration worked inside Noctalia and how much it exposed to plugins. That might be a bigger challenge I guess. But in short, yes, I think simply using todo.txt format would be enough without needing to reinvent anything.

In the meantime, we could take it step by step and start with a todo.txt file, and then see how we can develop the integration further down the line.

[screwys]

Yeah simply not using a custom format would help :P

[nightwatch75]

Yeah simply not using a custom format would help :P

I've put together a version that lets you switch from the current mode (JSON) to iCal mode (.ics files in the standard iCal protocol that can be synced with Syncthing, etc.). I don’t use iCal/CalDAV, so I used a local test environment with the Radical Docker stack, Opentasks on Android, and Davx5 as the interface between them. Everything seems to be working. Would you like to try it out by accessing my personal repo? Just give me a bit of time to finalize and commit it...

[screwys]

Thanks, what I meant by a simpler version was .json/.txt format that a lot of todo apps support, like (https://tasks.org/). Basically it is a single file that has all the todos, it doesn't really need any integration or such, just need to match the standardized format.

[nightwatch75]

Thanks, what I meant by a simpler version was .json/.txt format that a lot of todo apps support, like (https://tasks.org/). Basically it is a single file that has all the todos, it doesn't really need any integration or such, just need to match the standardized format.

I understand. In any case, if you want, you can try the updated version from my repo: https://github.com/nightwatch75/noctalia-plugins . Technically, tasks.org is also supported! Let me know!

[screwys]

I have tried it, thanks for the effort, though; this just produces an .ics file, which doesn't work with CalDAV natively, and needs another bridge, right? Either way, without being able to use Noctalia CalDAV integration, this seem to be not worth the effort right now. For my use case, I was specifically using CalDAV to handle updates, but if the output was todo.txt instead of custom json, this would work out of the box since I already use Syncthing and I would just not need to setup Radicale + custom bridge lol.

[nightwatch75]

@screwys can you provide me a sample todo.txt file ?
I thought that with syncthing you could sync .ics with caldav services, but my fault it syncs only files...

[screwys]

The problem is plugin keeps creating new files, instead of a single file; so with that makes it very hard for any kind of bridge to work as well.

2026-02-26 2026-02-26 Well it is really simple, just a single file like this; apps can still apply their format
x 2026-02-26 2026-02-26 This one is created and marked as done in same day.

Documentation: https://github.com/todotxt/todo.txt

[stinem1]

Hope it’s okay if I chime in. I’ve been working on a plugin that uses todo.txt, inspired by @nightwatch75’s plugin, but built using Tuxedo.

I won’t have access to my desktop next week, so it may be a little while before I'm able to release it.

Current panel:

Alternative bar widget:

[screwys]

Oh, very nice! If tuxedo, will this also be driveable by keyboard? It would be awesome if so

[stinem1]

It uses the Tuxedo CLI to parse and manipulate the todo.txt file so the Tuxedo TUI is probably the better choice if you primarily want to interact using keyboard. It was originally intended as a GUI but I noticed that an onKey function with support for key chords was recently added to the plugin API. That might make it possible to build a slightly more keyboard-driven interface, so I may experiment with that.