nia-todo

Self-hosted todo system — SQLite + FastAPI + Web UI + offline PWA + native Windows/Android/Debian clients.

nia-todo is designed for private self-hosting: install the server, open the web app, then download the bundled native apps directly from your own instance.

📸 Screenshots

Desktop web app — light and dark theme

  

Mobile/PWA layout — light and dark theme

✨ Features

• 📝 Todos with rich descriptions, status, priority, deadline, reminders, recurring schedules, checklist subtasks, comments, and attachments
• ✅ Checklist-style subtasks with progress chips, parent-complete confirmation, realtime sync, and recurring-todo carry-over
• 💬 Todo comments with author display, edit/delete actions, shared-project permissions, and realtime updates
• 📎 Todo attachments with authenticated uploads/downloads, image/PDF preview, native download handling, quotas, file-type controls, and backup/restore coverage
• 🔁 Recurring todos with daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly intervals; completing one creates the next occurrence and carries compatible reminders/subtasks forward
• 📅 Calendar sidebar view with day, week, and month modes for due todos
• 📁 Projects/categories with subprojects, sections, workspaces, protected per-user inboxes, curated icons/colors, and sidebar drag-and-drop todo moves
• 🤝 Project sharing between users with invitations, undo, member management, and shared-project access checks
• 📧 Email/SMTP integration for invitations, password reset, and email verification
• 📱 Offline-capable PWA with local IndexedDB sync queue and offline app-shell precache coverage
• 🖥️ Native Windows app wrapper
• 🤖 Native Android APK
• 🐧 Native Debian desktop app wrapper with autostart, tray/global-hotkey settings, OIDC return handling, desktop notifications, and cache cleanup
• 🔐 Auth, admin panel, API keys, CSRF protection, OIDC/SSO, and per-user data isolation
• 🛡️ 2FA/MFA with TOTP, passkeys/WebAuthn, email-code fallback, recovery codes, trusted devices, and admin policy
• 🔔 Native local reminders on Windows and Android, plus Debian desktop notifications; browser/PWA push remains browser/PWA-only
• 🎙️ BrainDump voice capture for turning spoken notes into reviewed todo candidates, backed by configurable STT/LLM providers
• 🎨 Next UI refresh with polished light/dark themes, shared modal/form primitives, Lucide icons, and responsive mobile/desktop layouts
• 🆕 Localized “What’s new” release tour with per-user seen state
• 🌐 12 UI languages with localized app UI, system emails, release-tour content, native/OIDC handoff screens, and locale-aware dates/times
• 🗄️ Local SQLite database with packaged runtime-data backups

🌐 Supported languages

nia-todo currently supports:

• German (de)
• English (en)
• Czech (cs)
• French (fr)
• Italian (it)
• Dutch (nl)
• Polish (pl)
• Brazilian Portuguese (pt-BR)
• Russian (ru)
• Swedish (sv)
• Spanish (es)
• Simplified Chinese (zh-CN)

Language support covers the web/native UI, system emails, and release-tour content.

🔁 Recurring todos

Todos can be configured to repeat daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly with a custom interval. A recurring todo requires a due date; when the current occurrence is completed, nia-todo keeps it done and creates the next pending occurrence automatically. Existing reminders move forward with the same recurrence rhythm when possible.

📅 Calendar

The Calendar sidebar view shows due todos in day, week, and month modes. Day and week views use a timeline-style layout, while mobile month mode focuses on a selected day list for compact screens. Calendar interactions reuse the normal todo actions, so opening, editing, completing, and navigating todos works consistently across list and calendar views.

✅ Subtasks, comments, and attachments

Todo detail now supports checklist subtasks, comments, and attachments in one reviewable workflow:

• checklist subtasks can be created, reordered, completed independently, and carried into recurring follow-up todos
• comments support author display, edit/delete permissions, shared-project access, and realtime updates
• attachments are stored server-side with authenticated access, image/PDF previews, native download handling, quota/type enforcement, and backup/restore coverage

Admins can enable uploads globally, restrict allowed extensions, set the default storage quota, and override quota per user.

🎙️ BrainDump

BrainDump is an optional voice-capture workflow for turning natural spoken notes into todo candidates that the user reviews before creation. It is disabled by default and must be enabled by an admin.

Supported provider styles include:

• remote or local STT endpoints compatible with whisper.cpp-style transcription APIs
• OpenAI-compatible LLM endpoints such as LM Studio
• Ollama API endpoints, including local Ollama and Ollama Cloud
• OpenClaw's OpenAI-compatible gateway using an agent model such as openclaw/braindump

Admins configure BrainDump in /admin, test provider connectivity there, enable the global feature, and then grant access per user. Native desktop apps, the Android app, and the desktop web app can use the microphone workflow when the underlying platform grants microphone permission.

🆕 What's new tour and Next UI

Releases can show a localized “What's new” tour after users sign in. The tour tracks seen state per user and is precached for offline/PWA use.

The refreshed Next UI uses shared detail-modal, button, field, dropdown, icon, and navigation primitives across the app and admin panel. The result is a calmer, more consistent responsive interface across desktop, tablet, mobile, PWA, and native shells.

📦 Release artifacts

Public releases provide these main distribution targets:

• Full server bundle: nia-todo-server-vX.Y.Z-full.deb
  • installs/updates the server
  • includes the Web/PWA frontend
  • includes bundled native app downloads under /downloads/
• Docker images: for container-based installations via Docker Hub or GHCR

The Windows, Android, and Debian desktop clients are shipped inside the server bundle so your own instance can serve them locally from /downloads/.

Bundled native client filenames use the shared release version:

• nia-todo-vX.Y.Z-windows-x64-setup.exe
• nia-todo-vX.Y.Z-android-arm64.apk
• nia-todo-desktop-vX.Y.Z-debian-amd64.deb

🚀 Debian/Ubuntu installation

Download the full server bundle from the release page, then install it:

sudo apt install ./nia-todo-server-vX.Y.Z-full.deb

The package enables and starts the server automatically. Check it with:

sudo systemctl status nia-todo
sudo journalctl -u nia-todo -f

Then open the setup page in your browser and create the initial admin account:

http://YOUR-SERVER:8753/setup

After setup, open the app at:

http://YOUR-SERVER:8753/

The admin panel is available at:

http://YOUR-SERVER:8753/admin

Native app downloads are served by your own instance under:

http://YOUR-SERVER:8753/downloads/

For production use, put nia-todo behind HTTPS/reverse proxy and set the public base URL in the admin panel. Passkeys and native app integrations rely on the public URL being correct. Native passkeys are supported on Windows and Android; Debian desktop passkey support is intentionally deferred.

🔄 Updates

Debian/systemd installations can be updated from the admin panel when a newer GitHub release is available. The server downloads the .deb, verifies the published SHA256 checksum, creates a pre-upgrade SQLite backup, installs the package through a restricted root helper, and restarts the service.

Manual update still works:

sudo apt install ./nia-todo-server-vX.Y.Z-full.deb

The package keeps existing runtime data and creates a pre-upgrade SQLite backup when a database exists. It also installs a daily systemd backup timer by default.

Recommended before major upgrades:

sudo systemctl stop nia-todo
sudo cp -a /var/lib/nia-todo /var/lib/nia-todo.backup.$(date +%Y%m%d-%H%M%S)
sudo apt install ./nia-todo-server-vX.Y.Z-full.deb

🐳 Docker

Docker images are published to Docker Hub (docker.io/weedpump/nia-todo) and mirrored to GHCR (ghcr.io/weedpump/nia-todo). Docker installations are not self-updated from inside the nia-todo container. The admin panel can show that a newer release exists, but you update Docker by pulling the newest image and recreating the container/stack:

docker compose pull && docker compose up -d

Run the published image directly:

docker run -d \
  --name nia-todo \
  --restart unless-stopped \
  -p 8753:8753 \
  -e NIA_TODO_HOST=auto \
  -e NIA_TODO_PORT=8753 \
  -e NIA_TODO_DATA_DIR=/data \
  -e NIA_TODO_DB=nia-todo.db \
  -v nia-todo-data:/data \
  docker.io/weedpump/nia-todo:latest

Or create a local compose.yml without cloning the source repository:

services:
  nia-todo:
    image: docker.io/weedpump/nia-todo:latest
    ports:
      - "8753:8753"
    environment:
      NIA_TODO_HOST: auto
      NIA_TODO_PORT: 8753
      NIA_TODO_DATA_DIR: /data
      NIA_TODO_DB: nia-todo.db
    volumes:
      - nia-todo-data:/data

volumes:
  nia-todo-data:

Then start it:

docker compose up -d

GHCR is also available as a mirror if you prefer GitHub Container Registry:

ghcr.io/weedpump/nia-todo:latest

Default container data volume:

/data

This volume contains the SQLite database, generated keys, avatars, backups, todo attachments (/data/attachments), and local runtime data. Keep it persistent.

🧱 Default package layout

• App: /opt/nia-todo
• Data: /var/lib/nia-todo
• Config: /etc/nia-todo/nia-todo.env
• Service: nia-todo.service

Useful commands:

sudo systemctl status nia-todo
sudo systemctl status nia-todo-backup.timer
sudo systemctl start nia-todo-backup.service
sudo systemctl restart nia-todo
sudo journalctl -u nia-todo -f

⚙️ Setup / operations

• Initial setup: /setup
• Admin panel: /admin
• Native app downloads: /downloads/
• Runtime data: /var/lib/nia-todo
• Configuration: /etc/nia-todo/nia-todo.env

For production use, configure a correct HTTPS public_base_url in the admin panel. Passkeys and native app integrations rely on it. Android passkeys use the bundled app signature through /.well-known/assetlinks.json; Debian desktop passkey support is intentionally deferred.

🔑 Reset the admin password

If you lose the admin password, reset it directly on the server. The tool reads the configured database location automatically.

Debian/systemd installation:

sudo nia-todo-admin-password-reset
sudo systemctl restart nia-todo

Docker Compose installation:

docker compose exec nia-todo nia-todo-admin-password-reset

Plain Docker installation:

docker exec -it nia-todo nia-todo-admin-password-reset

The password must follow the normal admin password rules. Existing admin sessions are invalidated after the reset.

📚 Documentation

• API documentation
• Changelog

🧪 Development / source builds

The public repository is a clean source snapshot for releases. For normal self-hosting, use the release package or Docker image.

Basic local source run:

python3 -m venv .venv
. .venv/bin/activate
pip install -r requirements.txt
./start.sh

Frontend/native development uses the Node/Tauri tooling declared in package.json and src-tauri/.

🗄️ Backup

The Debian package installs an automatic daily backup timer by default:

sudo systemctl status nia-todo-backup.timer
sudo systemctl start nia-todo-backup.service

Manual backup:

sudo nia-todo-backup

Manual restore:

sudo systemctl stop nia-todo
sudo nia-todo-restore /var/lib/nia-todo/backups/nia-todo-YYYYMMDD-HHMMSS.zip
sudo systemctl start nia-todo

For migrating an existing install, the simplest path is:

1. Create a backup on the old install.
2. Install the new package or start the new Docker deployment.
3. Restore the backup into the new data directory.

Runtime data lives in /var/lib/nia-todo. It contains the SQLite database, generated keys, avatars, todo attachments, backups, and local runtime data.

Keep custom runtime paths such as NIA_TODO_AVATAR_DIR, NIA_TODO_ATTACHMENT_DIR, and NIA_TODO_VAPID_KEYS inside NIA_TODO_DATA_DIR; the packaged backup helper snapshots NIA_TODO_DATA_DIR plus a consistent SQLite backup and intentionally excludes the backup directory itself.

📄 License

Copyright (C) 2026 Tobias Kneidl

nia-todo is free software licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 or later (AGPL-3.0-or-later). See LICENSE and NOTICE.