How to Manage Your Microsoft To-Do Tasks in Linux with AO

Do you use Microsoft’s To-Do to manage your tasks on your smartphone and Windows laptop. Would you like to do the same on your primary Linux desktop? With Ao, you can! Let’s see how you can manage your Microsoft To-Do from your Linux desktop.

Installation

Ao is available on multiple platforms. If you are on Linux, the easiest way to get the latest version is by using snap:

sudo snap install ao

It’s worth noting that in Ubuntu comes with snap support baked-in by default, and you can find Ao’s snap in Ubuntu Software among the other “Productivity” apps.

If you aren’t fond of Snapcraft and are using an Arch, Red Hat, or Debian compatible distribution or prefer AppImage, you can find packages of Ao at GitHub. After downloading the package for your distribution, install it like you would any other package. For example, on Debian, you would have to enter in a terminal something like:

sudo dpkg -i /path/to/file/filename.deb

At Ao’s Github page you will also find versions for Mac and Windows. We don’t know how many people would prefer it over Microsoft’s official app that is natively available on both platforms, especially since Ao doesn’t radically change or upgrade its features.

Sign in

Ao is a wrapper for Microsoft’s online version of To-Do. To use it, you have to be online and have an Outlook or Skype account. The first thing Ao will do after running is to ask for those login credentials. We won’t go through registering for Microsoft’s services and will skip to the app itself.

Like the Real Thing

Microsoft’s To-Do works in Ao in precisely the same way you’d expect from the web application simply because it is the web application.

On the left, you have a sidebar with all your task categories. At the top, you can see some predefined categories that help to better manage your tasks.

In Important, you will find all the tasks you have assigned a star to.
In Planned, all tasks with a date.
Assigned to you contains all tasks someone else has assigned to you, allowing you to share task lists.
In Flagged email, you will find all emails from your Outlook inbox that you marked with a flag.
Tasks acts as the home for all entries that you haven’t assigned elsewhere.

Managing Tasks and Lists

To enter a new task in a list, select it and then click the top of its page, right under the list’s title. Type the contents of your task and either hit Enter on your keyboard or click “ADD” on the right. Note that the entry field remains active after adding a task, allowing you to keep adding more tasks to the same list.

To add tasks to another list, select it and repeat the process.

By selecting a task with a left-click, a panel appears on the right, offering more control.

The first option, “Add step,” allows you to add subtasks to your task, turning it into a mini-project. The second one, “Add to My Day,” adds the task to To-Do’s special “My Day” list that contains all active tasks of the day.

The rest of the options allow you to add a reminder, due date, select if (and when) the selected task will repeat, assign it a color/tag/category, add a file, or a note.

To move tasks from one list to another, you can “drag and drop” them with your mouse.

To mark a task as completed, click in the empty circle on its left, and to prioritize it over the others, click on the star on its right.

Finally, to create new lists, note the option with precisely that name at the bottom of the left category panel.

Desktop Power

With Ao, you can use shortcuts to create new lists, move between them, add, edit, mark as complete, or delete tasks. The predefined important categories have their own shortcuts, allowing you to jump directly to them.

The following is a list of the shortcuts we found most useful while using Ao:

Jump To: My Day – Ctrl + M
Jump To: Important – Ctrl + I
Jump To: Planned – Ctrl + P
Jump To: Tasks – Ctrl + J
New List – Ctrl + L
Delete List – Ctrl + Shift + D
Rename List – Ctrl + Y
New Task – Ctrl + N
Delete Task – Ctrl + D
Rename Task – Ctrl + T
Add Task to My Day – Ctrl + K
Mark Task as Completed – Ctrl + Shift + N
Add Reminder to Task – Ctrl + Shift + E
Add Due Date to Task – Ctrl + Shift + T.
Hide Completed To-dos – Ctrl + Shift + H

As you can see, it is easy to manage your Microsoft To-Do in Linux, but if you are looking for a similar to-do app for macOS/iOS, the default Reminders app is a very useful to-do app. Here is how you can make good use of the Reminders app in Mac.