Mark an item as NOT done

Custom CSS & Theme Design
1

Use case or problem

  • When a day is done, I keep that day’s “Daily Note” as a diary (of sorts) of what I have done.
  • The problem is that the checkboxes of the past remain togglable and can be checked after the fact by mistake without noticing (especially on mobile) and appear in search and tasks queries.

Proposed solution

  • Recognize [-] as “Canceled” in the UI (e.g. gray fade), preferably also in the toggle cycle.
  • Optionally ask for confirmation to “un-cancel” to avoid accidents. Better yet, an option to set all past Daily Notes as read-only by default.

Current workaround (optional)

Write the - manually, but it shows as a done task.

2

I think your request could be achieved with a CSS snippet (at least, for the design side) :innocent: :

This is probably the reason’s why Obsidian recognise the - you input as a simple “done” :blush:…
Obsidian accepts any character in between the square brackets of task/todo but that alone isn’t sufficient :innocent: …
To indicate that a task marked with [-] has been canceled and displayed as such, you need a CSS snippet :blush: …

Here’s just an example of a “custom checkboxes” CSS snippet:
(I didn’t choose… Just took the link to the 1st one I found :smile: )

… But there are others within this fantastic GitHub repo (probably here on the forum, on Obsidian’s Discord server, etc…) :blush:

I think there are also plugins which can help to switch between checkboxes/tasks “status” (canceled, pending, etc…)

1 Like
3

Hi. By default Tasks community plugin encodes - [-] xxx as cancelled task. Then you can query your tasks using:

```tasks
folder includes <folder for daily notes>
(status.type is todo) OR (status.type is cancelled)
tags include my-tag1
hide backlink
# hide edit button (remove # to show)
```

In rendered tasks-queries you can change the task status by right clicking the checkbox. You have to use Tasks: Create or edit task command to change task status in editor mode (not in rendered view). You can also press arrow keys ←/→ to move cursor inside [ ] and then change the task status.

1 Like
4

Thanks for the help fellas. I am going to try it.

Is there a similar way I can do the read-only thing?

5 
.markdown-source-view .task-list-item-checkbox { /* rendered view, tasks-plugin */
  pointer-events: none;
}

.markdown-source-view .task-list-label { /* editor mode */
  pointer-events: none;
}

See CSS Editor obsidian://show-plugin?id=css-editor, GitHub - Zachatoo/obsidian-css-editor: Edit CSS snippets in Obsidian.

1 Like
6

It works! Thanks! But do you know how to make it only apply to past notes in a a moving way? (i.e. allow me to edit today’s tasks every day)?

7

Insert to notes where you want tasks to be locked:

---
cssclasses: lock-tasks
---

Then use this CSS:

.lock-tasks .task-list-item-checkbox {
  pointer-events: none;
}

.lock-tasks .task-list-label {
  pointer-events: none;
}

You can automate the insertion of YAML but I’m not covering that here.

1 Like
8

Thank you very much

9

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