The Task Editor

The task editor is where every detail of a task lives. This page is a field-by-field reference.

Opening the Editor

• Double-click a task in the Task List.
• Select a task and press Return.

The editor is always available inline — it's not a modal window — so you can keep navigating the list while editing.

Title

The headline of the task. Keep it short and clear, then use the editor fields below it for dates, tags, priority, Alerts, and the rest of the task details. The title appears wherever the task is shown — list rows, alarms, alerts, and the menu bar Helper.

Titles hold up to 1,000 characters. Paste or drag in something longer and 2Do keeps the first 1,000 characters as the title and moves the rest into the notes — nothing is lost. Typing past the limit is simply refused, with no overflow into the notes. Sync services with tighter title limits are handled automatically during sync.

tip

Use the Start Date and Due Date fields for dates. The title stays as the task title.

Notes

A free-form text field for context, links, snippets, or whatever helps. Notes support:

• Live Markdown styling — emphasis, strong, code, headings, lists, links, and more, styled as you type, with a read-only Markdown Preview chip.
• Insert Date & Time — stamp in a formatted date or time from the notes toolbar chip or Edit > Insert Time Stamp — perfect for journaling progress.
• Links to other tasks — type @{ to drop a live @{Task Title} link that jumps to another task.
• Link Discovery — URLs, email addresses, local file paths, and task links become clickable as you type or paste. When a long note buries them between paragraphs, the Open Links in Notes chip gathers every detected link into one menu, so nothing needs hunting down.

Notes hold up to 500 KB of text — about 100 pages. Most sync services won't store longer notes, so pasting more than that shortens the note to fit, and 2Do lets you know when it does.

Full details are on Notes, Markdown, and Links.

Start Date and Due Date

Two distinct concepts:

• Start Date — when the task should begin. Tasks with a future start date are scheduled and hidden from regular views by Smart Scheduling until that date arrives.
• Due Date — when the task must be finished. A task with a due date appears in Today for the whole day, then becomes overdue until you complete it.

Either or both can be empty. A task with neither is undated and lives in its list with no time pressure.

Learn more about how Start Date, Due Date, and Duration interact in Dates and Durations.

Entering a Date

The Start and Due fields are typeable. Each field is split into a date segment and a time segment, and as you type, a short list of autocomplete suggestions drops down. You can type a natural date or time, or pick a suggestion.

You can even type the time right along with the date in the same field: enter something like tomorrow 3pm or in 3w 3pm and 2Do automatically assigns the time to the time segment for you. Relative entries such as in 3 days or in 4 hours work too, so you can defer a task quickly even when you don't know the exact date.

There are three ways to confirm a suggestion:

• Click it to apply it immediately.
• Arrow keys and Return — highlight a suggestion with Up/Down, then press Return.
• Tab out — if your input matches exactly one suggestion, it's applied as focus moves on. With several matches, a structured numeric entry such as 14 or 22 2p applies the top suggestion, while an ambiguous word prefix such as t leaves the field unchanged so you can go back and pick the one you meant.

Prefer picking visually? Clicking the date field also reveals a mini calendar, with quick picks above it: Today (⌥1), Tomorrow (⌥2), the day after tomorrow under its short weekday name such as Sat (⌥3), and Week (⌥4). ⌥0 clears the date. Press the Down Arrow to open the picker; in the calendar, Up and Down move a week at a time, and Left and Right step a day once you've started navigating.

What You Can Type

The picker understands far more than plain dates. Some examples from each family:

• Relative days — today, tomorrow, day after tomorrow, in 3 days, in 2w, next month.
• Times of day — morning (9:00 AM), afternoon (2:00 PM), evening (7:00 PM), night (9:00 PM), noon, midnight. Combine with a day: tom mor suggests tomorrow at 9:00 AM.
• Day names — sun lists the next few Sundays; this thur and next fri do what they say.
• Month and day — april 19 (this year and beyond), jan19, or compact shortcuts like 18d (December 18) and d25 (December 25), optionally with a year: 18d 2028.
• Weekday in a month — dec fri lists every Friday in December; sun jun every Sunday in June.
• Plain numbers — 18 offers 6:00 PM, the 18th of the month, and "in 18 days"; pick the one you meant.
• Week numbers — w19 jumps to the Monday of week 19 (localized prefixes such as KW work too).
• Exact dates — 12/25/2026, 2026/12/25, following your system's date format.
• Times — 742 (7:42 AM or PM), 2pm, 9p45 (9:45 PM), 14:30, 1630.
• Date and time together — wed 8:30a, next fri 14:30, april 19 2pm, tomorrow 1630, in 3 days 9am.
• Period intents — weekend, eod (end of day), eow (end of week), eom (end of month), and now.

tip

You don't need to type full words. Partial input matches as you go: t shows Today, Tomorrow, Tuesday, and Thursday, and tom narrows it to Tomorrow.

Clearing and Presets

Two surfaces offer presets, and they don't carry the same set.

The inline date field's dropdown holds the quick picks described above — Today, Tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, and Week — plus two clearing items:

• Choose None to clear the date.
• Choose No Time to clear just the time, keeping the date.

The standalone date popup — opened with ⌘/ (Edit Dates), or D (Defer…) / K (Schedule…) on a selection — has its own preset chips: ⌥1 Today, ⌥2 Tomorrow, ⌥3 2 Days, ⌥4 Week.

Every change is a single undoable step, "Change Start Date" or "Change Due Date".

Due Time

Add a specific time to a due date when a deadline matters down to the hour. Tasks without a due time remain date-only tasks.

Duration

Tells 2Do how long a task will take. When set together with a due date and due time, a duration also creates an effective start time before the deadline — so a task due at 3:00 PM with a 30-minute duration becomes active around 2:30 PM. The duration picker (X on a selection) offers ⌥1 30 mins, ⌥2 1 hour, ⌥3 2 hours, ⌥4 None. Learn more in Dates and Durations.

Priority

Four levels:

• None — default.
• Low / Medium / High — color-coded badges. Adjust priority via the editor, the right-click menu, Task > Priority > Increase Priority / Decrease Priority, or by hovering over a task and clicking the priority dot directly in the Task List.

While you're editing a task, set priority without leaving the keyboard: ⌥⌘0 None, ⌥⌘1 Low, ⌥⌘2 Medium, ⌥⌘3 High, and ⌥⌘S to toggle the star. These use Option-Command so they don't collide with typing in the editor.

See Stars and Priorities for when to use priority instead of a star.

Tags

Tags are used everywhere in 2Do — Smart Lists, the Focus Filter, the Tag panel.

The Tags row is a tokenized entry field with auto-completion. As you type, 2Do suggests matching existing tags; press Return or click to accept a suggestion, or Tab to tokenize what you've typed. Accepted tags become chips shown in the order you added them. See Tags for the full reference, including Tag Groups.

Location

Attach a location to the task. 2Do uses Apple Maps for search and geocoding.

Tasks with locations can appear in the Nearby panel, show a location indicator in the task list, and sync their location to your other 2Do devices.

Action

Turn the task itself into something you can do. Pick an action type and 2Do does the heavy lifting:

• Call — opens the Mac's call handler for the saved number or contact.
• Message — opens Messages with the contact pre-filled.
• Mail — opens a new email pre-addressed.
• Visit — opens an address or saved map location in Apple Maps.
• URL — opens a link in your default browser.
• Google — runs a web search using the saved search text.

With the action picker open and no action assigned yet, pick a type with Option and a number: ⌥1 Call, ⌥2 Message, ⌥3 Mail, ⌥4 Visit, ⌥5 URL, ⌥6 Google. The chips are icon-only — a colored icon with its ⌥N hint, no text label. Once an action is set the preset chips collapse.

See Actions for the full reference.

Alerts

Add as many alerts as you need. Each alert row is set from two popups:

• Alert style — the popup lists None (removes the row), Message, and Message with Sound, followed by a Presets section of ready-made offsets: 0, 5, 15, and 30 minutes before, 1, 2, 6, and 12 hours before, and 1 and 2 days before.
• When it fires — relative to the task's date (the same day, the day before, the day after, a number of days before / days after, or at an exact time), or pinned to an absolute date and time of your choosing.

New rows take effect as soon as you set them — there's no separate confirm step.

With the alarm picker open, add a preset reminder with Option and a number, each a Message-with-Sound alarm at an offset relative to the due date: ⌥1 0 minutes (at due), ⌥2 5 minutes, ⌥3 15 minutes, ⌥4 30 minutes, ⌥5 1 hour, ⌥6 1 day. The chips stay visible so you can add several; re-pressing a preset that already exists does nothing.

See Alarms and Nagging.

Recurrence

Make the task repeat. Choose from preset rules or build a custom rule with intervals, days-of-week, and end conditions.

While the rule is still "Never," pick a preset with Option and a number: ⌥1 Daily, ⌥2 Weekly, ⌥3 Every 2 weeks, ⌥4 Monthly, ⌥5 Quarterly, ⌥6 Yearly. The preset chips hide once a rule is set.

See Repeating Tasks. If the repeating task also has start dates, due dates, or a duration, see Repeating Tasks and Dates.

Attachment

Each task can carry a picture and an audio note. Attachments show up as inline previews in the editor and can be opened in their default app with one click.

note

Your task's picture and audio note sync on Dropbox, WebDAV, and CalDAV (including iCloud CalDAV). Toodledo, Todoist, and Apple Reminders don't sync attachments.

The Copy Menu

The editor's top bar has a Copy button (the doc-on-doc icon). Click it for a menu of copy options:

• Copy — the full task, the same as ⌘C.
• Copy Title — just the task's title text.
• Copy Notes — just the notes text (disabled when the task has no note).
• Copy Embeddable Link — an @{Title} token you can paste into another task's notes for a live inline link. See Linking to Another Task.
• Copy Shareable Link — a twodo://x-callback-url/showTask?uid=… deep link that opens this task in 2Do.
• Copy Links from Notes — every link found in the notes, one per line (disabled when the notes contain no links).

note

Copy and share options stay available even on read-only lists.

Sub-Tasks

A regular task can carry a quick checklist of sub-tasks. Sub-tasks live entirely inside the parent — they don't surface in All or Today — and act as a lightweight inline checklist. If you want children with their own properties, convert the task to a Project (see Projects and Checklists).

Hiding via Paused Tags

Tasks aren't paused individually. Instead, any tag can be paused — and when a tag is paused, every task carrying that tag is hidden from view. Add a tag like @on-hold or @waiting, pause that tag from the Tags panel, and a whole context steps out of your way without you editing each task. To pause a tag, Control-click it in the Tags panel and choose Pause…. For a tag that's already paused the same item reads Resume…, which brings its tasks back. To peek at paused tasks without resuming, use Task > Show Paused. For more, see Tags.

Quick Look — Preview Without Opening

A task row only shows a single line of title and notes. To get a full preview of everything a task carries, press the Spacebar with the task selected (or use Task > Quick Look). Quick Look opens a floating preview panel over the window.

The panel shows, top to bottom:

• The list name in its list color, with a parent breadcrumb for sub-tasks and a matching accent rail.
• The title row — task type glyph, sub-task count, repeating or scheduled state, and priority or star.
• A cover photo banner if the task has a picture attachment.
• A completion bar for projects and checklists (done in green, overdue in red).
• Notes, rendered as Markdown — links are detected and the text is selectable.
• A prominent action card when the task has an action (Call, Message, Email, Visit, Browse, or Web Search) — click it to perform the action without leaving the preview. (The editor's action picker labels the Browse action URL.)
• An audio note, with auto-play.
• Metadata rows — start date, due date (with an overdue note), repeat summary, next alarm, and tags shown as read-only tokens. Rows are hidden when their value is unset.

The panel also has a Copy button with the same menu as the editor's Copy menu, minus Copy Links from Notes.

While Quick Look is showing:

• Up / Down arrow keys — keep navigating the task list, with the panel updating live for each new selection.
• Spacebar again, or ⌘W — close.

Keeping the Editor Manageable

You do not need to fill every field. Start with the title, then add only the details that matter: dates, tags, alerts, location, recurrence, attachments, or an action. The editor stays inline with the selected task, so you can move through your list without losing context.

Keyboard Shortcuts

In the Task List

Shortcut	Action
Return	Edit selected task
⌘.	Mark as Completed — Task > Mark > As Completed
⌥⌘.	Mark as Not Completed — Task > Mark > As Not Completed
S / ⌃S	Star / Unstar
Esc	End editing
0–3	Set priority None / Low / Medium / High
D	Open Defer menu
K	Open Schedule menu
Spacebar	Quick Look the selected task

While Editing a Task

Set priority or the star without reaching for the mouse. These use Option-Command so they don't get in the way of typing:

Shortcut	Action
⌥⌘0	Priority None
⌥⌘1	Priority Low
⌥⌘2	Priority Medium
⌥⌘3	Priority High
⌥⌘S	Toggle Starred

Jump to a Field

While editing, jump straight to a field or open its picker. These are also listed under the editor top bar's Shortcuts button (the ⌘-glyph menu), which leads with an Edit Priority submenu — None, Low, Medium, High, and Toggle Starred — before the jump-to-field items:

Shortcut	Field
⌘/	Edit Dates
⌘E	Edit Note
⌘R	Edit Tags
⌘G	Edit Location
⌘;	Edit Recurrence
⌘'	Edit Alerts
⌘B	Edit Action
⌘L	Edit List

tip

Open a picker with its jump shortcut, then use ⌥1–⌥6 to drop in a preset — an alert offset, a recurrence rule, or an action type — all without leaving the keyboard.