As some of you may know, I recently began my NAS and self-hosting journey by installing Proxmox and TrueNAS on a mini PC. TrueNAS has become a truly amazing part of my setup thanks to all the apps I can install on it with the ability to connect to them and sync data across my devices without relying on big third-party cloud servers.

One of my favorite apps is Nextcloud, but calling it an app is a bit of an understatement. Nextcloud is an ecosystem in and of itself, offering lots of apps within the platform to provide additional features, and one that I've come to rely on is Nextcloud Tasks. This official to-do list app is a great way to stay on top of your to-do items, and of course, since it's hosted on your NAS, you can sync it with all your devices.

It's a great, simple task management solution

All the basic features you'd expect are here

Nextcloud Tasks is a fairly simple app and it's quite easy to get started. Once you've deployed Nextcloud itself (which is very easy to do in TrueNAS), you can use Nextcloud's UI to install the Nextcloud Tasks app from the app platform. This, too, is fairly simple and straightforward, though Nextcloud could definitely use a better method for searching for apps.

Either way, once Nextcloud Tasks is set up, it's pretty much what you could hope for in a to-do list app. You can create and name multiple lists, and then create tasks within them. You can set due dates (and times), add notes, add completion progress, and more. It even supports sub-tasks, so you can have one task with multiple smaller tasks within it. Task lists can be shared with other users on your Nexctloud server, so you can have a joint shopping list, for example.

When you add a due date to a task in Nextcloud Tasks, that task also gets shown in the Nextcloud Calendar app, so you have a better overview of everything that's coming up on your schedule. My wife really wanted something with this kind of integration, so it's pretty great to have.

Syncing across devices

Have your tasks on your PC or phone

Using the official Nextcloud Tasks app works pretty well on a desktop PC, but it's not ideal for every situation. If you have a shopping list, you probably need to keep up with items using your phone. Thankfully, Nextcloud supports CalDAV integration for both tasks and the calendar, so you can sync your to-do list with compatible apps that also support the standard.

On my phone, I installed Tasks.org, the only to-do list app I was able to find that can integrate with CalDAV without requiring an online account with some other company. Syncing with CalDAV lists is not free in Tasks.org, but the app's pro version is very cheap. You can subscribe at just $1 per year and that's enough to unlock CalDAV support (and there's a free trial so you can test it out before committing). I actually recommend using DAVx5 instead, which is an app whose sole purpose is syncing CalDAV information and making it available to other apps on your phone. Both methods work, but DAVx5 offers a slightly faster and more reliable sync experience, in my experience. Plus, it will expose your Nextcloud calendar to calendar apps such as Google Calendar, so you may not need to hunt for dedicated apps that support CalDAV.

Tasks.org is only focused on the task management side of the experience, so getting calendar integration outside of the web experience is a bit more difficult, but that's true of every self-hosted to-do list. It depends on the client, and I haven't found any calendar client that can also sync and show tasks directly on the calendar.

On your PC, the Vivaldi web browser has a built-in calendar that does support integration with tasks, and it works just fine with Nextcloud Tasks, too. You can create a task on Vivaldi's calendar, and it will sync back to the server and then to Tasks.org on your phone. It's not as instantaneous as it might be on a typical cloud platform, but generally changes sync fairly quickly.

You'll need to set up a VPN

As if it needs to be said

It should probably go without saying, but if you want to sync your task lists across devices while you're on the go, you're going to need to set up something like Tailscale for it to work. Tailscale is what allows you to connect to your NAS at home as if you were connected to your home network. This allows you to manage your task lists from home, and yes, the connection even works with an app like Tasks.org, so you don't need to change any settings in the app to access your tasks.

I've had a few instances where I tried syncing my tasks and it didn't work, only to realize I had turned off my Tailscale connection, so I thought it would be good to mention. Make sure you have this set up and running if you need to use the to-do list while you're out and about.

👁 The Tailscale web UI
I use Tailscale to remotely access my self-hosted services - here's how

Tailscale provides an easy way to access your home server from external networks

I wish it was a bit easier

And cheaper

This isn't to throw any developers under the bus — I'm sure a lot of work goes into developing apps like Tasks.org, but I am somewhat surprised at the apparent lack of alternatives to this kind of app. Considering CalDAV is an open standard and there are so many to-do apps out there, I would have thought there would be more options aimed at self-hosting users. And considering I'm using my own PC as a server, I would hope that syncing my to-do list is free.

More importantly, I wish it was also easier to find an app that can integrate both the calendar and tasks aspects of Nextcloud into one interface, just as Nextcloud Calendar itself can show items form Nextcloud Tasks. I haven't been able to find any app like this on Android, though I do see this capability on desktop with Vivaldi. Maybe them team at Vivaldi ought to make its own calendar app for Android — I would appreciate that a lot.

That being said, I'm still relatively new to the self-hosting world, so it's also possible I'm missing some obvious app choice that would make all of this easier. I'd love to hear alternatives if that's the case.

Nextcloud is amazing

Suffice it to say, Nextcloud as a whole is one of the coolest services you can get for your NAS, and I love all the features it offers. I use it as a simple cloud backup for the most part, but having things like an Office editor, Tasks, and Calendar built-in is also incredibly useful. It's awesome that I can get all of these utilities hosted on my own computer and accessible everywhere.

If you haven't checked out Nextcloud yet, you can do it below, along with Tasks.org and DAVx5 if you want to get started using them on your Android phone.