Kern 0.2.0

What's new

Linux builds are back

• Kern ships for Linux again, for the first time since 0.1.5: a .deb, an .rpm and an AppImage, built against an older glibc so they run on current Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch and their derivatives.
• The AppImage keeps itself up to date the way the Windows build does. .deb and .rpm installs update through your package manager.

Plan your week, and your day

• Day planner — lay your day out beside your calendar, drag tasks into the time you'll actually do them, and have Kern fill the gaps with what's left over.
• Weekly review — a once-a-week look at what you finished, what slipped and what's coming, with a reminder you can set to any day and time.

Habits

• Track habits daily (on the weekdays you choose) or a number of times a week, with streaks, a 30-day completion rate and a dashboard widget.

Calendar subscriptions

• Subscribe to a Google, Outlook, Apple or any other ICS calendar. Subscriptions are read-only, refreshed in the background, and never write back to the calendar.
• Events sit alongside your tasks in the calendar and the day planner.
• Your own tasks can be exported as an ICS file, once or on every change.

Comments, mentions and sharing

• Comment on tasks, and @mention a workspace member to notify them.
• Share a project or a task as a read-only link for people who don't use Kern.

Templates

• Save a project, task or note as a template and start from it again later, from the command palette or the create dialog.

Import from another app

• Bring projects and tasks across from Todoist, Trello, Linear, Notion or any CSV, in Settings → Data. Board columns, subtasks, labels, priorities, due dates and checklists come over where the export includes them.

Capture from anywhere

• Send notes straight to your Inbox from your phone, through a private page you add to the home screen, or by emailing a private address. Both are one click to set up under Kern Cloud.

AI actions

• Break a task into steps, pull tasks out of a note, draft a weekly review, or ask a question about a project and get an answer from its own data. As with catch-up, nothing leaves your computer unless you've turned on network and AI content access, you can preview exactly what would be sent, key-shaped strings are redacted, and answers have to cite what they were given.

Smaller things

• Estimates vs. actual in the sessions report: how long finished tasks really took against what you estimated, and which were furthest off.
• Kern Lite can have its own system-wide shortcut, so it opens from any app.
• Today's tasks in the tray menu, to tick off without opening Kern.
• Notes show backlinks — the notes and tasks that link to them.

Fixed

• Update checks read latest.json instead of the rate-limited GitHub API, so Kern no longer sometimes reported no update when one was out.

Install

• Windows x64: Kern_0.2.0_x64-setup.exe (installs for the current user) or the .msi (for every user on the computer).
• Linux x64: the .deb or .rpm for your distribution, or Kern_0.2.0_amd64.AppImage (chmod +x it, then run it).
• Coming from 0.1.9 or earlier? Install this version by hand once. From there on, Kern updates itself.