Todoist CLI on the Pinebook Pro with Docker

Feb. 4, 2022

I have switched back to Todoist after an extended period with Nextcloud Tasks. There’s nothing wrong with Nextcloud Tasks and worked perfectly over the last year. However, I am now working as a marketing freelancer and separately a partner in a landscaping business. I wasn’t able to work with Nextcloud Tasks both personally and as a project management tracker and I didn’t want to use two different productivity services. It just makes way more sense for all my work and personal tasks to be one place. I tested several self-hosted solutions and none of them matched my workflows. So, back to Todoist, which I reluctantly left to begin with.

Of course this means I really want a CLI interface for Todoist so I can use it on my Pinebook Pro. There are several projects that do this, but none of them are for arm64. Yet, I was able to get one setup using Docker and this Todoist CLI client.

I set this up on Armbian.

First, install Docker. I used the built-in utility to get Docker up and going.

$ sudo armbian-config

Then navigate to Software and Softy. Select Docker and let it do its thing.

Next we need do some configuration updates for Docker. We don’t want to run containers as root and to do so:

$ sudo groupadd docker  
$ sudo usermod -aG docker $USER

Log out and verify the configuration is working.

$ docker run hello-world

Now it is time to setup the Todoist container. This Github repo as all of the info to get up and running.

sachaos/todoist

Here is how I set it up on my Pinebook Pro.

1. Clone the repo and build the container. I keep all these types of files and executables in my home directory in a folder labeled bin.

   $ cd ~/bin $ git clone https://github.com/sachaos/todoist.git $ cd todoist $ make docker-build token=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

To find your API token, log into Todoist in the browser and go to Settings then Integrations.

1. In order to run it you need to cd into the cloned repo and run make docker-run. I’m never going to remember all of that. Instead I created a bash script that will do that for me. As always I’m using micro as my text editor.

   $ cd ~/bin
   $ micro todoist_app.sh

Here is my super basic script:

#! /bin/bash

cd ~/bin/todoist &&
make docker-run

Mark it as executable:

$ chmod +x ~/bin/todoist_app.sh

1. Last I created an alias in my shell so all I have to remember is a single command. I am using fish as my shell.

   $ alias todoist_app=’sh /home/dominic/bin/todoist_app.sh’

And that is it. Now running todoist_app will exec into the container and I can access, edit, and manage my Todoist in the terminal.