TaskNxt

Three lanes. One popover. Zero accounts.
Now, Nxt, and Ltr — organize what matters today, what's coming next, and what can wait.

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You could juggle a dozen browser tabs, a sticky note app, and a reminders list. Or you could press one hotkey and see Now, Nxt, and Ltr.

Install

🍺 Homebrew (recommended)

brew install thamaraiselvam/tasknxt/tasknxt

brew upgrade picks up new releases automatically — the tap is updated by CI as soon as a new version is published, so there's never a manual re-download.

Note

TaskNxt is ad-hoc signed, not notarized, so on first launch Gatekeeper will block it as from an "unidentified developer." Right-click TaskNxt.app in Finder → Open → Open (or run xattr -d com.apple.quarantine /Applications/TaskNxt.app) once to allow it — the same one-time step needed for a manual .dmg download.

Manual download

Grab the latest .dmg from GitHub Releases, open it, and drag TaskNxt.app to Applications.

Prefer to build it yourself? See Build from source below.

Features

• 🗂️ Three fixed lanes per tab — Now / Nxt / Ltr — for quick priority triage
• 🪟 Menu bar only — no Dock icon, no app window, just a popover
• ⌨️ Global hotkey — summon TaskNxt from any app with a configurable shortcut
• 🔢 Pending-count badge — the menu bar icon shows the active tab's incomplete task count
• 📑 Up to 4 tabs — separate Work, Personal, or any workspaces you like
• ✅ Drag-and-drop reordering, within and across lanes
• ✏️ Inline editing — click a task's text to rename it in place
• ⏳ Auto-cleanup — completed tasks show a countdown and purge automatically (configurable retention)
• 🗄️ Optional archive — keep a browsable, restorable history of completed tasks instead of deleting them
• ⚙️ Standalone Settings window — General, Shortcuts, Tabs, and About sections
• 🌗 Light & dark mode — follows your system appearance live
• 🔒 100% local — all data stays on your Mac; no network calls, no sign-in, no analytics
• 🚀 Launch at login support

Usage

Action	How
Open popover	Click the checklist icon in the menu bar
Quick open	Global hotkey (default ⌃Q / Control+Q)
Add a task	Click "+ add to now..." (or nxt / ltr) in a lane
Reorder / retriage	Drag a task within or across lanes
Rename a task	Click its text, edit, press Enter (Esc cancels)
Archive or delete a task	Right-click a task for "Archive Now" / "Delete", or use the hover "x"
View archived tasks	Click the archive icon (📦) in the popover header
Change hotkey, tabs, retention, archive	Click the gear icon → opens the Settings window (General / Shortcuts / Tabs / About)
Quit TaskNxt	Settings → General → Quit

Build from source

git clone git@github.com:thamaraiselvam/tasknxt.git
cd tasknxt/app
./Scripts/build_app.sh
open .build/TaskNxt.app

This packages a real TaskNxt.app bundle (with the app icon, Dock behavior, etc. all working correctly) rather than running the bare executable. Running .build/release/TaskNxt directly (or swift build alone) works for quick iteration, but macOS has no bundle to read a custom icon from in that case, so the app shows a generic icon.

Alternatively, open app/Package.swift in Xcode and run the TaskNxt scheme directly for the fastest edit/debug loop (same generic-icon caveat applies).

Requirements

• macOS 13 (Ventura) or later
• Xcode 15+ (or the Swift 5.9+ toolchain) to build from source

Run tests

cd app
swift test

Architecture

app/
├─ Sources/
│  ├─ TaskNxt/                        SwiftUI views, menu bar shell, settings window
│  │  ├─ App/                         AppDelegate (NSStatusItem/NSPopover/badge), SettingsWindowController
│  │  └─ Features/
│  │     ├─ MenuBar/                  Popover root (tabs, lanes, archive/settings entry points)
│  │     ├─ Tasks/                    Lane and task-row views (inline edit, drag-and-drop)
│  │     ├─ Tabs/                     Tab bar and tab management
│  │     └─ Settings/                 General, Shortcuts, Tabs, About, and Archive views
│  └─ TaskNxtCore/                    Models, persistence, and app state (no SwiftUI dependency)
├─ Tests/TaskNxtTests/                Unit tests for TaskNxtCore
└─ Package.swift

openspec/                             Spec-driven change proposals and capability specs
├─ specs/                             Current behavioral specs per capability
└─ changes/                           In-flight and archived change proposals

TaskNxtCore has no SwiftUI dependency, so it builds and tests cleanly with any Swift toolchain — useful in CI or sandboxes without a full, license-accepted Xcode install.

How it works

• Lanes — Every tab has exactly three lanes — Now, Nxt, Ltr — in that fixed order. Add a task inline with "+ add to now...", toggle it done, click its text to rename it in place, or drag it between lanes.
• Tabs — Organize lanes into up to 4 named tabs (e.g. "Work", "Personal"). Add, rename, reorder, or delete tabs from the Settings window's Tabs section. The menu bar icon shows a live badge with the active tab's incomplete-task count.
• Retention & archive — Completed tasks show a countdown badge and are purged after the configured retention period (default 2 days). If "Archive Completed Tasks" is enabled in Settings, purged tasks move to a browsable archive (grouped by completion date, with restore/delete) instead of being deleted outright; a task can also be archived immediately via its right-click menu.
• Settings — A standalone window (opened via the gear icon) with General (launch at login, retention, archive toggle, quit), Shortcuts (global hotkey recorder), Tabs (tab management), and About (version, links, bug report).
• Privacy — All tabs, tasks, settings, and the archive are stored only in local on-device storage — there's no account, no cloud sync, and no telemetry.

See openspec/specs/ for the full behavioral specification of each capability (task-management, tab-management, menu-bar-shell, settings, local-persistence). Additional capabilities (task archive, active-tab badge, inline editing, redesigned settings) are tracked as change proposals under openspec/changes/.

Releasing

Releases are fully automated with release-please — no manual tagging required:

1. Commit to main using Conventional Commits (feat:, fix:, docs:, ci:, etc. — already the convention used in this repo).
2. On every push to main, the release-please workflow inspects new commits and keeps an up-to-date release PR open with the next version bump and a generated CHANGELOG.md entry (feat: → minor, fix: → patch, !/BREAKING CHANGE: → major).
3. Merging that release PR makes release-please push a vX.Y.Z tag.
4. The tag push triggers build-and-release.yml, which builds the universal .dmg, runs tests, and publishes the GitHub Release with the installer attached.

So shipping a release is just: merge normal PRs with conventional commit titles, then merge the auto-generated release PR when you're ready to cut a version.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.

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_{No accounts. No cloud. No tracking. Just a fast local task list, one keystroke away.}