Ellane

What if your calendar was just a text file?

This week I show you how to build a todo.txt-format calendar — which is of practical use all on its own — and optionally view today's events in your Obsidian daily note.

It is inspired by calendar.txt, but it's not that. Yes, I know Emacs can do it all. It's not that, either, by design.

Medium (includes blog post link) https://miscellaneplans.medium.com/how-to-create-a-plain-text-calendar-with-the-todo-txt-format-41f0ce6f093d
Blog https://ellanew.com/2026/05/11/plain-text-calendar-todo-txt

#ptpl #PlainText #calendar #obsidian

How to Create a Plain Text Calendar With the todo.txt Format

With Obsidian instructions for seeing today’s schedule in your daily note

Medium
May 11 at 6:59amWeb
Show threadWill Ranjan-Churchill3d ago

@ellane Thanks for sharing this. I might give this a go (always a fan of low-tech solutions to every day problems).

What I *definitely* will be doing though, is putting all the metadata for my current organisation system at the front of the item moving forward - it does look so much cleaner!

Show threadEllane3d ago
@willrc Yes, that metadata does look spiffy when all lined up!
Show threadMatchaMakes3d ago
@ellane Another great article! Thank you for taking the time to write it!
Show threadTim Chase3d ago

@ellane while not todo.txt format, I've used remind(1) for quite a while. It also uses a #plaintext DSL for creating calendar events that is more powerful than any other calendar application I've ever used. And being just a CLI application, it plays well with other Unixy tools, allowing for incoming events to be scripted, and output to feed other scripts.

https://dianne.skoll.ca/projects/remind/

Dianne Skoll's Web Site - Remind - Software Projects

Show threadBlake Watson 3d ago
@ellane Very cool! Do you think you would still use this system if you didn't have Obsidian?