How to use Taskbook to manage tasks in the Linux terminal
Do you want to track your daily tasks via the Linux terminal? With Taskbook, you can! It’s an excellent little terminal-based application that can be used to track tasks. In this guide, we’ll go over how to install the app and how to use it too.
Installing Taskbook on Linux
The Taskbook is an excellent terminal-based application. However, it does not come pre-installed on any modern Linux operating systems. To get the app installed, launch a terminal window by pressing Ctrl + Alt + T or Ctrl + Shift + T on the keyboard. Then, once the terminal window is open, follow the command-line installation instructions outlined below to get Taskbook working on your Linux PC.
NodeJS NPM
The primary way of installing Taskbook on Linux is through NodeJS’s package manager NPM. To start, get NodeJS/NPM working on your system.
Ubuntu
sudo apt install npm
Debian
su - apt-get install curl curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_11.x | bash - apt-get install -y nodejs
Arch Linux
sudo pacman -S npm
Fedora
sudo dnf install npm
OpenSUSE
sudo zypper install npm
After you’ve gotten NPM working, use the NPM commands to install the Taskbook application on your Linux PC.
sudo npm install --global taskbook
Snap package
If you’re not a fan of installing Taskbook the old fashion way via NodeJS/NPM, there’s another way to get the program working: using the Snap package tool. To start the installation process, you must enable the Snap package runtime. To enable the runtime, install the “snapd” package on your computer, and use the systemctl enable command to enable snapd.socket. Are you having trouble setting up the Snap package runtime on your computer? Follow our in-depth guide on how to set up Snaps on Linux.
Once the Snap runtime is set up on your Linux PC, the installation of Taskbook can begin. Using the snap install command below, get the latest release of Taskbook on your computer.
sudo snap install taskbook
Arch Linux
For most Linux distributions, Taskbook needs to be installed either via NPM and NodeJS or the Snap package system. On Arch Linux, you can do it through the AUR in addition to those other methods.
Going the AUR route is a good idea if you use Arch Linux for one huge reason: automatic updates. To start the installation, use the Pacman command to install the “Git” and “Base-devel” packages.
sudo pacman -S git base-devel
After setting up the two packages on your computer, use the git clone command to grab the latest release of Trizen, the AUR helper. Trizen will make it much easier to get Taskbook working, as it takes care of all the heavy lifting.
git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/trizen.git
Install the Trizen app with the commands below.
cd trizen
makepkg -sri
Finally, install the latest release of Taskbook on Arch Linux.
trizen -S taskbook
Use Taskbook to manage tasks in the Linux terminal
To use the Taskbook tool, start out by launching a terminal window. When the app is open, run the tb -h command. This command will print out the entire help entry for Taskbook. Look through the help entry to familiarize yourself with the app.
Once you’ve finished looking at the Taskbook help entry, use the tb -t command to add a new task to your new task board. Note that you can create multiple boards using this command, just change what’s written after @.
tb -t @MyTaskBoard my new task
After writing out your new task in the Taskbook, you can view it by executing the tb command.
tb
To complete the task in your task list, run the tb -c command with the task ID. The task ID is the number next to the task item when you run the tb command. So, for example, if your task is #1 on the list, you’d run:
tb -c 1
To delete a task, run the tb –delete command, along with the task’s ID. So, if you wish to delete task 1, rather than complete it, you’d do:
tb --delete 1
Adding notes to Taskbook
The Taskbook application can be used for more than just tracking tasks. You can also add notes to it. Here’s how to add a note to your Taskbook. Using the tb –n command, type out your note. Keep in mind that the note doesn’t have any character limits. However, longer notes may be harder to render in the Taskbook view in the terminal.
tb -n This is a note for Taskbook.
If you want to add your note to a specific board, specify it in the command, and Taskbook will automatically add your note to the individual board.
tb -n @MyTaskboard This is a note for my MyTaskboard task list.
To delete a note from the list, use the tb –delete command and add the ID of the note. For example, if your note is ID 2, you’d delete it with:
tb --delete 2
