Repeating tasks

A repeat is a property of a task, set from the Repeat row in the task detail panel. Open it and you get a short menu of presets plus a way into a custom rule.

The presets

• Does not repeat, the default
• Every day
• Every weekday, Monday to Friday
• Every week
• Every 2 weeks
• Every month, on the same day number
• Every month, on the same weekday position, for example the third Tuesday
• Every year

Picking one is a single click and covers almost everything people actually need.

Custom rules

Custom opens a dialog where you build the rule yourself:

• a unit: day, week, month or year
• an interval, so every 3 days or every 6 weeks
• for weekly rules, which weekdays it lands on
• for monthly rules, either a day of the month or a weekday position within the month

When it ends

Every repeat, preset or custom, can end in one of three ways:

• Never, the default
• On a specific date
• After a number of occurrences

Choosing “after” is the honest option for something like a course or a course of medication, because it stops on its own instead of needing you to remember to turn it off.

Repeats stored as a standard rule

Under the hood the repeat is written as an RFC 5545 recurrence rule, the same format calendars use, for example FREQ=WEEKLY;BYDAY=MO. That matters for two reasons: the calendar and the task list read the same rule so they can never disagree, and the rule is portable rather than locked into a private format.

Moving one occurrence

If a repeating item lives on the calendar and you drag one occurrence to a different time, Todowl asks what you meant:

• Only this event, moving that occurrence alone
• This and weekly repeats, changing the time for that weekday across the series
• All events, moving the series from that date onward

If the series already has different times on particular weekdays, the “all events” option warns you before resetting them.

Skipping a single date

Individual occurrences can be skipped without breaking the series, which is the right tool for a holiday week. The rest of the repeat carries on unchanged.