Offlog
Your tasks. Your devices. Nobody else's.
Off the cloud, still logged.
A free, open-source, local-first task manager. No account, no telemetry,
no subscription, ever. Runs in the browser, as a native Android app, and
as a Windows desktop app — all three share the exact same codebase and
sync with each other over your own network.
Jump to: Screenshots · Why ·
What it does · Status · Install ·
Build from source · FAQ ·
Docs · Contributing
Screenshots
Real captures of the Windows app — no mockups, no Lorem Ipsum. On a phone
the same data gets its own layout, with Home, Today, Agenda and Search tabs.
Why this exists
Every task manager I tried wanted a subscription for things that should
be free — a due date, a reminder, more than three projects. The ones that
didn't were overloaded instead, buried under features built for a growth
chart rather than for me. And all of them wanted my data on their
servers.
That last one has no workaround. A task list is a fairly complete map of
a person's life, and I didn't want mine living on a company's
infrastructure, one business-model change away from becoming their asset.
Offlog is the opposite of all three: the basics are free because
everything is free, the feature list stays small on purpose, and your
data never leaves the machines you own. Your phone and your PC talk to
each other directly over your own Wi-Fi — no cloud in the middle, no
account, nothing held back behind a paywall. It works fully offline
either way.
It's a personal tool, given away as-is. The same model works for a small
trusted group on one network — a family, a couple of people in one office
— but it is not a multi-tenant product: no per-user permissions, no
accounts, and sync only ever happens on your own local network.
What it does
Organizing
- Spaces hold projects; each project has its own statuses
- Board and List views per project, with saved filters and
multi-column sort
- Agenda — deadlines across every project, as a grouped list or a
month calendar
- Focus (the Focus tile on the phone's Home tab) — pick up to 3 tasks for today.
A deliberate commitment, not an auto-generated list nobody trusts
Tasks that hold real detail
- Notes, priority, due date, a reminder independent of it, checklists,
tags, your own fields, and file attachments up to 10 MB
- Dependencies — mark a task as blocked by another. Circular chains
are refused
- Recurring tasks reset in place instead of spawning duplicates, and
handle month-end and DST correctly
- Every change to a task is recorded, so you can see its History
Finding things
- Ctrl+K searches titles, notes, tags, checklist text and attachment
filenames — and tells you where it matched
- Ctrl+N adds a task from anywhere, parsing dates,
#tags,
!priority and @project out of what you type
Not losing things
- Soft delete with undo everywhere, plus a Recycle bin
- Backup and restore including attachments, fields and tag colors — a
restore brings back the workspace, not just the text
- Automatic local backups, last 7 kept
- A database check-and-repair tool for orphaned tasks and invalid states
- An optional App Lock: a PIN, fingerprint or face unlock on Android,
and a recovery code shown once, to copy or (on the phone) share. Lose both PIN and code and there is no way
in — there is no server to prove who you are to
Sync — the actual point
Most local-first apps stop at "sync works if you run your own server."
That's a real barrier for anyone who doesn't want to. Offlog's Windows
app is the server: it bundles
NyxDB — a small
CouchDB-protocol server written for this project — configures itself on
first launch, and your phone finds it automatically over the network.
Pairing is a six-digit code shown on the PC. No typed IP addresses,
no credentials sent before pairing, and if your PC's address changes the
phone re-finds it instead of making you pair again.
Synced tasks are end-to-end encrypted (AES-256-GCM). The key is made
by your PC and handed over inside the pairing, so there is nothing to
remember. The sync server stores only scrambled data. The Wi-Fi
connection itself is plain HTTP; a server you run yourself gets readable
data. Details in docs/security.md §3.
Everywhere else
- Light, dark, high contrast, and a reduce-motion setting every animation
actually respects
- Keyboard-operable throughout; WCAG AA contrast
- Android: a layout made for the phone, portrait and landscape; a
home-screen widget with Focus, Quick Add and Home buttons; notification
actions; hardware back button
- Windows: lives in the tray,
Ctrl+Alt+O from anywhere, native
notifications and save dialogs, automatic updates
Status
In daily use since 1 August 2026, and actively maintained.
The plan it was built to is complete — that was the goal, not a stopping
point. Bugs found in real use get fixed, dependencies get updated,
security reports get answered.
Every release runs a zero-warning build, a clean type check and
1325 tests through CI. It has been
through 30 structured
maintenance audits against a written checklist of blind spots earned
from real shipped bugs — what each one found.
What's next: the phone layout gets a final check on a real phone
before it is released, and the Play Store listing is waiting on Google's
review. Peer-to-peer sync between phones was
investigated and closed — Android blocks every route to it, and the
reasoning is written down in docs/decisions.md so it
does not get reopened on a hunch. Sync still runs through a self-hosted
host on your own network.
New features aren't planned in advance, but they aren't refused either.
The bar is "does daily use actually demand this", which usually has to be
answered by living with the app rather than imagining it. Open an issue
before building one.
Install
Download the latest Windows installer and Android APK from
GitHub Releases.
Windows will warn you on first install because the installer isn't
code-signed. Paid certificates aren't a path this project will take;
desktop updates are verified by cryptographic signature instead, so a
tampered or corrupt download is rejected. Android shows its own
side-loading warning until the Play Store listing is live. Download from
this repo's own Releases page, not a mirror.
Windows is the intended app for daily use — it bundles its own sync
server, needs nothing else installed, and updates itself with an in-app
changelog and an explicit restart prompt. Android works the same way
via the APK today, Play Store once published. The web build is a
development surface, not the primary way to use the app.
Build from source
Everything runs from a terminal.
cd offlog-app
npm ci
npm run dev # http://localhost:5173
That's the whole setup — the app works fully offline with no sync
configured. To point it at a sync server, create offlog-app/.env.local:
VITE_SYNC_URL=http://192.168.x.x:5984/offlog
VITE_SYNC_USER=youruser
VITE_SYNC_PASS=yourpass
Build for web with npm run build, or for Android with
npx cap sync android followed by a build in Android Studio.
The Windows app is a sibling project that wraps the same web build and
embeds its own sync host — nothing separate to install, even in
development:
cd offlog-desktop
cargo tauri dev
Full architecture, including how discovery and pairing work, is in
docs/tech.md.
FAQ
Is any of my data sent anywhere?
No. There is no account, no telemetry, and no server this project runs.
The only network traffic is sync between your own devices on your own
network, and a desktop update check you can turn off.
Two phones and no PC — can they sync to each other?
No. Only the Windows app acts as the host that phones connect to. Android
blocks every route to a phone hosting sync itself; the reasoning is in
docs/decisions.md. Use Backup and Restore to move
data between phones.
Can I sync when I'm away from home?
No, by design. Sync only happens on the same local network. Remote sync
would mean either a hosted service or exposing a server to the internet,
and both are out of scope.
Why does Windows warn me when installing?
The installer isn't code-signed. Paid certificates aren't a path this
project will take. Updates are verified by signature instead.
I'm moving to a new computer — how do I bring everything?
Copy one folder, %APPDATA%\com.offlog.app\, to the new PC before opening
Offlog there. It holds the PC's sync identity and its sync server's full
copy of your data, and every phone that was already paired reconnects on
its own. You don't need this for a reinstall on the
same machine.
Do I have to use sync at all?
No. The app is fully usable on one device with sync off, and that needs
no setup whatsoever.
Support
- Bug or question — open an
issue. Bug reports
from real use are the most useful thing you can send, and now the main
way this project changes.
- Security — don't open a public issue. See
SECURITY.md for private reporting.
- Before a feature request — check
docs/decisions.md. Several "why doesn't it do X"
questions are already answered there, including choices that were tried
and reversed.
Documentation
| Document | What's in it |
|---|
| docs/decisions.md | Manifesto, and why non-obvious choices were made |
| docs/tech.md | Architecture, data model, sync internals, theme tokens |
| docs/roadmap.md | Open work, and what is waiting on someone else |
| docs/changelog.md | Version history, maintainer-level detail |
| docs/release-notes.md | The same releases in plain language |
| docs/maintenance.md | The audit checklist, including blind spots earned from real bugs |
| docs/security.md | What is protected, how, and what is not |
| docs/privacy.md | Privacy policy — short, because the app collects nothing |
| docs/motion.md | How animation works here — which motion an element gets, and why |
| docs/brand.md | Voice, visual identity, and trademark/fork terms |
| docs/archive/history.md |
Contributing
This was built solo in about a month, with an AI doing most of the
hands-on engineering while every idea, UI decision and round of testing
came from one person acting as product manager and QA. The codebase is
documented (CLAUDE.md plus docs/) specifically so an assistant — or a
human — can pick it up the same way for a fork.
The most valuable contributions, in order:
- Bug reports from real use. The main way this project changes.
- Fixes, simplifications and code review. If something could be
simpler, safer or better structured, that's genuinely wanted.
- An iOS build. There's no bandwidth to open that front solo, so it's
entirely open to someone who wants it. See
docs/decisions.md for why it isn't planned work.
See CONTRIBUTING.md for setup and PR mechanics, and
open an issue before writing a feature — you'll get a straight yes or no
before spending real time on it.
License
MIT — see LICENSE.
The code is MIT. The name, icon and tagline are not — a fork is
welcome, under its own name. See docs/brand.md's
trademark section.
