tuxella / org-now

Conveniently show current Org tasks in a sidebar window

org-now

This package provides commands to conveniently show Org headings in a sidebar window while you’re working on them. A heading in one of your Org files is defined as the “now” heading, and other headings are refiled to it with one command, and back to their original location with another.

The sidebar window is an indirect buffer created with org-tree-to-indirect-buffer, so you can work in it as you would a normal buffer. Being a special Emacs side window, it’s persistent, resisting being closed by accident by window management commands.

Note that this package adds Org UUIDs to entries in property drawers when they are refiled, to ensure they are tracked properly while they’re being moved.

Screenshots

There’s nothing special about the appearance of this package’s functionality. But here are two example screenshots.

By default, the sidebar’s outline is shown at level 2, so the “now” heading should be a top-level heading:

The sidebar is just an Org buffer, so you can expand it, type into it, etc:

Installation

Install these required packages:

• dash.el

Then put org-now.el in your load-path, and put this in your init file:

(require 'org-now)

Usage

1. Run the command org-now to show the sidebar, or select its window if it’s already open. (On first run, you’ll be prompted to configure the org-now-location setting to point to a place in one of your Org files where you want to temporarily refile “now” tasks.)
2. Refile tasks to the “now” buffer with the command org-now-refile-to-now.
3. Move tasks back to their original location with the command org-now-refile-to-previous-location.

Here’s a configuration with mnemonic keybindings that you may find convenient, using use-package and general:

(use-package org-now
  :general (:keymaps 'org-mode-map
                     :prefix "M-SPC"
                     "rn" #'org-now-refile-to-now
                     "rp" #'org-now-refile-to-previous-location))

Hook examples

The org-now-hook option can be used to run user-defined functions after the org-now buffer is created. Here are two examples you might find useful.

Disable mode-line

If you don’t need or want the mode-line in the sidebar window, this function will disable it. In this case, it’s recommended to use something like real-auto-save-mode in Org buffers to ensure that refiled headings are automatically saved to disk.

(lambda ()
  (setq mode-line-format nil))

Set org-level-1 heading to 10 point size

This is helpful when your org-now-location is a file, in which case headings will be top-level headings. This function can be used to reduce the font size so the headings fit better in the sidebar window. It works especially well if your org-level- faces each inherit from their higher-level face (i.e. org-level-2 inherits from org-level-1, etc.).

(lambda ()
  (face-remap-add-relative 'org-level-1 '(:height 100)))

Development

Bug reports, feature requests, suggestions — oh my!

License

GPLv3