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TaskPaper

Plain-text to-do lists in a real Mac app

Price: $24.99 once

This versionThe next major is a new purchase

Buy on the App Store Website

Price read on apps.apple.com, the page Buy on the App Store opens.

The catch

No iPhone or iPad app — on mobile you edit the file in someone else's text editor

The full picture

Mac only. There is no official iOS app, so using your lists on a phone means opening the .taskpaper file in a third-party editor such as Editorial or Taskmator. You are buying TaskPaper 3, and Hog Bay sold TaskPaper 2 and TaskPaper 3 as separate paid apps with no published upgrade policy either way, so a future version 4 is best treated as another purchase rather than a free update. Development is one person doing maintenance rather than new features — 3.9.4 in November 2025 fixed a macOS 26.1 crash. Sync is whatever file service you already use, with no first-party service and no conflict resolution beyond what that service provides.

Pays back in
5 months
Seats
Not stated
Developer account
None needed
Buy once$24.99Rent 5 years$300

$275 kept over five years, and you still have the app.
Against Todoist Pro at $60 a year, $5 per month, $60 billed yearly. Also replaces TickTick Premium at $50 a year and Any.do Premium.

What it looks like

TaskPaper: The TaskPaper window over a desktop, with the pink-tinted sidebar (Home, Projects, Searches: Today / Not Done, Tags: @done / @today) and the document pane showing the welcome outline with projects, indented tasks, struck-through @done items and inline tags. The canonical view of the app.
The TaskPaper window over a desktop, with the pink-tinted sidebar (Home, Projects, Searches. Mac App Store (id 1090940630, via itunes.apple.com/lookup)
TaskPaper: The same window with a tag query active in the toolbar search field — `not @done except @done//*` — the "Not Done" saved search selected and highlighted in the sidebar, and the outline filtered and folded to match. Shows the feature the app is actually bought for.
The same window with a tag query active in the toolbar search field — `not @done except @done//*` — the "Not Done" saved search selected and highlighted in the sidebar, and the outline filtered and folded to match. Mac App Store (id 1090940630)
TaskPaper: The window in tabbed mode (Welcome / Not Done / To Fold, Focus, and Filter I… tabs) with the "Go to Anything" quick-open palette open over the document, listing Home, Projects, Searches and Tags.
The window in tabbed mode (Welcome / Not Done / To Fold, Focus, and Filter I… tabs) with the "Go to Anything" quick-open palette open over the document, listing Home, Projects, Searches and Tags. Mac App Store (id 1090940630)
TaskPaper App Store screenshot 1 of 3
TaskPaper App Store screenshot 2 of 3
TaskPaper App Store screenshot 3 of 3

3 screenshots published by the developer on the Mac App Store.

Images belong to their developers.

What you’re buying

A .taskpaper file is a text file. Projects are lines ending in a colon, tasks are lines starting with a dash, tags are @words. The app renders that file cleanly, folds sections you are not working on, and filters it with queries like @due and not @done. Underneath, the file stays readable in TextEdit, in vim, in whatever text editor exists in 2040.

That is the whole argument, and it is the right one if you have ever watched a task app shut down and take your lists with it. Sync is your file service's problem: iCloud Drive, Dropbox, a Git repo if you are that sort of person. There is no account and nothing to cancel.

What $24.99 does not buy is a promise about the future. Hog Bay sold TaskPaper 2 and TaskPaper 3 as separate paid apps and publishes no upgrade policy, so assume a version 4 would be another purchase. Present-day development is maintenance: the November 2025 release fixed a crash on macOS 26.1 rather than adding anything.

Do not buy it if you need a phone app you enjoy using. There is no official iOS version, and editing the raw file in a third-party editor works but is not pleasant. Do not buy it for shared lists, reminders you can rely on, or a calendar view either — it does none of that, deliberately.

What owners report

Points that recur across the discussions below. A report of what users say, not our verdict: we don’t review software.

Praised

  • Owners credit the plain-text format rather than the app itself: when the Mac app does not reach a device, the same file opens in Editorial, 1Writer, Taskmator or a newly written community client.

Criticised

  • Users on the developer's own forum keep asking where TaskPaper stands now that his attention is on Bike, and the answer each time is that Bike is not TaskPaper 4.

Details

The price in full

$24.99 one-time on the Mac App Store, with no in-app purchases and no subscription products on the listing. taskpaper.com shows only a "Buy Now" button with no price, no stated trial length and no published upgrade policy, so the App Store listing is the page to check.

The TaskPaper page at taskpaper.com
The developer’s own page. taskpaper.com, captured 22 Sep 2026
Free trial
Yes
Works offline
Yes
Apple Silicon
Native
On Setapp
No
Minimum macOS
not stated
Developer
Hog Bay Software (Jesse Grosjean)

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