Help shape Memos' roadmap: how do you use it?

[johnnyjoygh]

We've recently received many suggestions for collaboration features and improvements to comments. It seems the ways people use Memos may be changing.

We'd like to understand these use cases better as we plan our roadmap. Please vote below and share how you use Memos in the comments — especially who you use it with and what you'd like to do together.

[fmaida]

I keep both personal notes and work notes in it, and I use it to organize my work and my to-dos with a client I wrote (in Python, with Textual) that displays notes with different tags as a kanban board. Inside each note I add automatic comments to keep a history of the work I do on each task.

Another small app that runs as a cron job helps me turn each note with a start/end time and an alarm into a proper event on a CalDAV server, so I rarely miss anything important.

At this point I’m basically abusing Memos as a CMS, and it’s holding up surprisingly well.

Someday, I’d love to have a built-in kanban board in Memos to help me manage my notes, with different columns based on different tags.

[avinal]

I am using Memos as an all-in-one Notes + Todo application for both work and personal purposes. I have been using Memos since version 0.16 (2023 IG), but recently I started using it daily and extensively. One of the gaps for me using Memos is the lack of proper to-do/task handling. I can write tasks, but there is no way I can get notified on my phone or set reminders. My workflow was scattered across Memos, Joplin, and Tasks.org.

So few months ago, with help from LLMs, I created an Android app that can parse todos (taking advantage of has_task_list property) from a memo and take care of calendars and notifications. The task can be written in Todoist-alike format. Regardless of where I write my notes, my tasks always end up in my calendar and notify me on my phone or anywhere my calendar is synced. Now I exclusively use Memos and have already migrated from Joplin and Tasks. The app got added to FDroid a few days ago: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/space.avinal.nikki/. The app also adds an offline queue so that I don't miss adding anything due to connection issues.

The core idea has always been that notes and todos are not separate. Memos already implements that but lacks customization on the to-do side.

P.S.: I also opened a discussion, but I cannot find it now 😢

[boojack]

@avinal thanks for the detailed write-up, and for building the Android app. The point that notes and to-dos should not be separate matches what we see in the poll, and we want to get this right rather than bolt on a task manager.

I'd like to understand your workflow in more detail. Some questions:

Getting notified

• How do you get notice about a task today? Push from your app, calendar alert, something else?
• Where does the notice need to land: phone, desktop browser, email, a chat app?
• If Memos fired a reminder itself, what channel would you actually use: ntfy or Gotify, a webhook into your app, email, browser push?

Task status

• Right now a task is either unchecked or checked. Do you need more states, for example "in progress" or "cancelled"?
• Do you ever need to hide a task that has not started yet, or is "unchecked" enough?

What's broken or missing

• What is the most annoying thing about using Memos for to-dos today?
• Is there anything your app has to work around because the API or the Markdown does not give it enough structure?
• Which features from Joplin and Tasks.org do you miss, and which ones were you glad to leave behind?

If it's easier, a screenshot of how a typical task memo looks on your side would help a lot.

[avinal]

How do you get notice about a task today? Push from your app, calendar alert, something else?

Most of the notice is from the calendar application. And some of them are pushed from the app. A tiny fraction of these alerts are also received using NTFY.

My app adds a reminder to the local Calander store so that it can be picked by any application. And the app itself can also notify at a configured time.

Where does the notice need to land: phone, desktop browser, email, a chat app?

Phone is a must-have, either through a dedicated app or NTFY (and similar); this is the whole reason Nikki exists. Desktop notification is good to have.

I do not see much value in email notifications. At the end, you are receiving them on your phone or PC. And people who really need emails for everything may already have dedicated scheduling applications. Similarly for the messaging apps.

If Memos fired a reminder itself, what channel would you actually use: ntfy or Gotify, a webhook into your app, email, browser push?

If Memos takes care of task processing and scheduling on the server itself, ntfy/gotify is a great option. It would help with device-agnostic notifications. Webhook in my app won't be very useful because the tasks are fetched using API and stored locally and also work offline. But yes, it would be a lot better than having nothing. And rather than processing in the app, I can just fetch parsed tasks.

Right now a task is either unchecked or checked. Do you need more states, for example "in progress" or "cancelled"?

I think check/uncheck is more than enough. We really don't want to make Memos a full Kanban app.

Do you ever need to hide a task that has not started yet, or is "unchecked" enough?

I just archive those memos. Or clear them up from notes. Tags also help with grouping and filtering. So I would keep it as it is today.

What is the most annoying thing about using Memos for to-dos today?

If I have to make the smallest improvement to improve to-dos on Memos, I would ask for a dedicated view for tasks. One page where I can just check my tasks parsed from all the memos and filter them by tag/memo/date. Reminders, processing, and management are a big ask and need good planning. But views can be added today.

Is there anything your app has to work around because the API or the Markdown does not give it enough structure?

There are many workarounds, but the major one is that tasks aren't first-class in API. Everything related to tasks happens on the client side.

The second one is that tasks do not have a unique ID, so any update in the memo means parsing the whole memo again. And if I happen to ask a task in between, the local cache becomes useless and has to be rebuilt again. Currently, my app uses memoid+uid and tries to match the lines.

Which features from Joplin and Tasks.org do you miss, and which ones were you glad to leave behind?

Honestly speaking, I do not miss much after I created the app. The todos/reminders were the biggest gap.

• Joplin is great as a note-taking app. It is more comparable to Obsidian than Memos. But I am someone who doesn't write big notes or create knowledge graphs. My notes are quick and short. And Joplin is totally overkill for that.
• As for Tasks.org, I will probably miss its sync features. There are like tons of options and connects to numerous services as well as works offline. But again, it is a dedicated todo app; it can take small notes but is not pretty.

If it's easier, a screenshot of how a typical task memo looks on your side would help a lot.

Yes, definitely. Here you go.

You write notes and tasks as you normally do. The only thing different here is that you can use quick-add format from Todoist.	They are parsed and aggregated in a view. You can also edit your tasks from here, like change due, add reminder, etc. You can also filter them based on list, memo, priority, or due.	The calander picks them up from the local calander storage and shows them up as events. Deleting memos or tasks deletes them. This part doesn't work reliably, but I am working on improving it.

[fubero88]

Personally, I use Memos for all kinds of notes. Except for longer guides—for those, I still have to use Nextcloud Notes, because when you open a slightly longer note, it gets kind of chaotic. But what’s absolutely essential for me is offline mode. Even via the PWA, the point is that in my line of work, I occasionally find myself out of cell range, and I’d like to have my notes available offline as well. That’s why I have to keep the most important notes—the ones I absolutely need to have in offline mode—in a different app.

Translated with DeepL.com (free version)

[Roy416]

Similar to other people, I use it as my personal notes and whatever is on my mind on there. Which is mainly journaling (random thoughts, reflections). But also for random information i need later and links i want to view later. I also use it for series of posts regarding a topic such as coffee tasting.

i use it mostly on my PC. I don't use it on my phone partly because I'm not used to whipping out my phone to jot something down. But also on the iPhone, I saved the site as a web app with Safari, and it sometimes show a black screen for 5-10 seconds before opening or never opens at all until close and opening it a few times. Also the lack of an actual app does create some subconscious hesitancy to use it, as it's just not as nice to use/look at versus an actual app. I would love to use it as a todo list for grocery shopping for example, but again these reasons stop me. also the ability to be like "share to memos" via a note, or link, or photo, etc on a phone would be sick.

i've still yet to explore all the new features. i just find out while writing this about the views section and the custom filters with the emojis. the way i'm thinking of using it now is, basically recreating the hashtags of my most used tags. since it puts it in a distinct category with a fun emoji. i can see myself later using it as separating notes for a year, like "Thoughts 2026".

the idea of spaces is cool. i personally dont write so much about something where i need to break down a hashtag into more hastags. i do write ideas, so it could be used in that. however I'm more likely to use documents for that. Mainly because it's easier to view of all the ideas but also I'm more trusting of a word document that i know i backed up and know how to restore it, versus on Memos, where there is no automatic backup/export, and i haven't restored anything before.

the idea of it being a self hosted social media for your friends sounds sick, but most of the people I know aren't so protective of their data where they'd ditch the main social media to connect with their friends, and have to download/setup tailscale on their phone. plus the lack of an app hurts.

this turned a bit into a ramble, hopefully this helps.