Vault Todo
Your Obsidian todos, without opening Obsidian
Vault Todo is a lightweight macOS menu bar app that surfaces your most recent Obsidian Daily Notes todos in a clean, always-accessible panel — no need to open Obsidian. It reads your vault's markdown files directly and writes changes back instantly, keeping Obsidian and Vault Todo perfectly in sync.
Features
Obsidian-Native Integration
- Zero configuration — automatically reads your Daily Notes plugin and Rollover Daily Todos plugin settings to find your daily note folder, date format, and template heading
- Live two-way sync — file watching means any edit you make in Vault Todo appears in Obsidian instantly, and vice versa
- Heading-based filtering — show only the section you care about (e.g. "Tasks and Problems") based on your template configuration
Full Todo Management
- Toggle — click any todo to check or uncheck it
- Add — insert a new todo directly below any item with the + button
- Edit — click the pencil icon to edit inline; press Enter to save or Escape to cancel
- Delete — remove a todo with the - button, with a 10-second undo window so you never lose work accidentally
- Indent / Outdent — use the left/right arrow buttons to nest todos, matching Obsidian's tab-based indentation
- Drag to reorder — grab the drag handle to rearrange todos while preserving nesting
Menu Bar Access
- Lives in your macOS menu bar — click the icon to show or hide the panel
- Auto-hides when you click away — stays out of your way until you need it
- No Dock icon clutter
Calendar Navigation
- Calendar picker — click the date in the header to open a calendar overlay showing the current month
- Note highlights — days with existing daily notes are highlighted in purple and clickable; today has a ring border
- Browse past notes — click any highlighted day to navigate to that note; the date turns yellow to indicate you're viewing a past note
- Today with rollover — the "Today" button creates today's note from your Obsidian template (if configured) and rolls over incomplete todos from the most recent previous note; if today's note already exists, it simply navigates to it
Settings & Customization
- Override your daily notes folder and date format if you use a non-standard setup
- Choose which heading's todos to display, or show all todos in the file
- Configure how often the app checks for a new day's note (default: every 10 seconds)
- 38 languages supported with automatic detection
Privacy First
- 100% local — all data stays in your vault; no accounts, no cloud, no telemetry
- Reads and writes standard Obsidian markdown (
- [ ]/- [x]) — fully compatible with every Obsidian plugin
Rendering
- Markdown links rendered inline:
[[page|alias]]and[text](url)display with underlines so your task text stays readable
Installation
Download the latest release from GitHub Releases. After extracting the app, remove the macOS quarantine flag before launching:
xattr -d com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Vault\ Todo.app