We’ve made some dramatic improvements in how we handle dates in Workflowy. This makes Workflowy a much better home for all your tasks – from tracking your individual work activities to managing an entire team’s projects. You can now effortlessly tag items using your preferred date format, set date ranges, quickly and visually adjust dates, and much more. We believe these upgrades drastically improve how Workflowy handles dates in general and provides a much smoother experience when used for task management and tracking.
So whether you’ve used date tags in the past or not, this upgrade makes it super easy to get started tagging items and make use of date tags in combination with searches to turn Workflowy into your main task management hub.
This bundle of date upgrades also lays the foundation for some really useful upcoming features, in particular those that will further improve how we handle tasks in Workflowy. We’ll have more to say about this in an upcoming update so without further ado, let’s get right into what’s new and improved.
Date picker
We’ve added a comprehensive date picker that makes it super easy to set a date. We added some common options like “tomorrow” and “next week” to help new users discover and explore our natural language input. Next, we added a calendar widget that takes the guesswork out of setting a date, especially when it comes to dates far into the future. And finally, we added a range option that lets you create date tags that cover a range of dates.
‘!!’ date input shortcut
A new date picker’s great but we need an easy way to access it. The ‘!!’ shortcut lets us do just that. Just type the exclamation sign on an empty item or after an empty space if there’s already text to display the date picker. You can then click the date you want or start typing a natural language date like “in three weeks” and the calendar widget will update to show the appropriate date.
Custom date format
International users with sensible date formats rejoice. You can now choose from the most common date formats and even modify them if they’re not quite to your liking. You can also change the time format from 12 hours to 24 hours. Whenever you change the date or time formats, any date tags you already have will automatically update to reflect the change.
Exploding dates
Sometimes you really just need to quickly remove a date tag with some satisfying flair. Now you can, by holding the Alt key on Windows or CMD key on Mac and clicking the date tag to send it to the shadow realm. That’s it, that’s the feature, but man is it satisfying.
Range support in date tags
Previously, you could search for date ranges but there was no way to tag an item with one. Now you can, either from the date picker by toggling “range” and picking a start and end date or by simply adding a dash “-” between two dates when typing them directly in Workflowy.
Add date slash command
For those that prefer to use the slash command for everything, we also have a new command to display the date picker. Using the “/date” command will let you set a date.
New date format – pill
Along with the technical upgrades, we’ve also decided to update the appearance of date tags to help them stand out and to make it clear you can click to modify them. Clicking these new tags will display the date picker where you can set a new date or remove the tag altogether.
Click a date to change it
You can now easily modify any date tag just by clicking it. Doing so will display the new date picker which you can then use to choose another date.
Just write “today”, “tomorrow” or anything else to add a date
You can use all kinds of natural language inputs to easily create date tags. Everything from “tomorrow“, “next thursday“, “oct 7” or even “in three days” will prompt a date suggestion that you can confirm and turn into a date tag. This is one of the quickest ways to create a date tag.
Changes we made based on your feedback 🫶
Thanks to everyone that shared their thoughts with us in the comments section while the update was in labs. Your feedback was invaluable and gave us a list of things we should keep in mind as we move forward with features that build on dates. Below are some of the specific pieces of feedback we’ve addressed before releasing the dates improvements to all our users.
Changes
- Alex, Luke
“DD.MM.YYYY should be a default date format option”
Added DD.MM.YYYY and YYYY-MM-DD as a default options in date formats picker
- Julie Hammers, Mark Simpson
“Complete dates should have strikethroughs”
Strikethroughs also apply to new date tags
- Matthieu, alienlebarge, Julien, Remko
“The keyboard shortcut is interfering with the French use of exclamation points”
Changed keyboard shortcut from ! to !!
Bugs fixed
- Arthur Zey, olaf, Otto, others
Formatting bug that caused date tags to display errors when a user set their own custom date format.
- Mark Simpson, Vaughn, others
Date picker used incorrect styling in certain Workflowy themes, causing parts of the interface to appear hidden.
- Christopher Allen, Mike McGee, 8080, others
Custom date formats were polluting the date format dropdown each time an edit was made.
Until the next one, peace out.
Shouldn’t there be a time picker as a part of the date picker? Or am I missing something? One day we’ll get notifications too. But not this day.
I agree. If I have a date with a time right now, and the meeting day/time changes, there is no easy way to change the time and the date picker loses the time when you select a new date (and you can’t add the time back in easily – you have to re-create the entire “pill”)
Great work. Its really awesome. I like the pill form but also miss the simplicity of the old format. One thing I liked before is that I could colour the dates. Currently, that doesn’t seem possible so I’d be interested in that option. Possibly a toggle for old format?!
These are great. Would really like a way of showing the date created or date modified of items, either manually or by default, and sorting by them.
Hey Andrew, you can already check for that in an item’s bullet menu. Or did you mean some other way of checking for that information?
Loving it!
Please consider changing the ‘Tomorrow’ icon.
Today = 🌞 and Tomorrow = 🌚 makes it feel like daytime vs nighttime.
For Tomorrow, a rising sun icon could indicate the next day.
For Today, could be a clock icon to indicate immediacy.
LOVE IT!!!
Did I mention that I LOVE IT!
I just wanted to say, “I LOVE IT!”
My date format…
Thank you, I too have been waiting for DD.MM.YYYY elegant and useful.
Notification?
Hey Marcel, not in this update unfortunately.
Hey folks – there’s already so much feedback here so I’m not sure if this will be seen, but I wanted to share how I have used dates in Workflowy for the last 4 years, and how these changes impacted my use case.
I use Workflowy mainly as a BuJo, so under a node “all the things”, I have years, then under each year, months, and under months, a monthly and a daily log. The daily log has a node like “Wed, Nov 15, 2023” for each day. I’ll attach a screenshot for reference.
After the date changes, you can see that it’s a lot more visual noise with the pill background on the dates. I agree with the feedback that the font size is probably too small as well. Finally, as I cross off days in the list, the “done” state for dates looks a bug, but probably isn’t. I would prefer that the line go thru the whole date, the little hyphen at the end just isn’t quite working to indicate it’s a complete task. Overall, I want to stress that I love Workflowy because it is design-less, freeing your users, like me, to create a system that works for every workflow. Thanks!
Hey Julie, we definitely see and discuss all feedback so rest assured we hear you.
Thanks so much!
There’s a strikethrough change going out in the next update.
I use it exactly the same way Julie, but I found that the pills make it easier to find the days when I have the bigger messier bits open! Agreed on the completed dates though, they just don’t look completed without the strikethrough. Hopefully that’s something Workflowy can update for us.
Nice to hear I’m not alone out here! Thanks Mark!
Perfect
Great improvement, but why isn’t there support for the best date format of all which is the ISO standard YYYY-MM-DD ? Please, this is the the default date format international companies work. It is really needed. thanks!
Hey Jona, you could actually set this yourself by adjusting an existing format using the box on the right side of the date format picker.
I tried it and now all my dates are corrupted 🙁 Please check the screenshot.
Hey Otto, sorry about that. Rest assured it’s only an issue with how the dates are displayed, the actual dates are safe. While we fix it, you can pick one of the default date formats and that will fix the issue.
Phew, I am glad that my data is intact 🙂 Thanks for the quick reply!
It is supported. You might just have to type it in manually. Shame we can’t do YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM though.
You can. type this in the Date format rectangle box to the left of the rounded corner box . I prefer no dashes.
here is your format
You can specify your own date format in the Settings dialog. Just try it:
YYYY-MM-DD.amazing! date ranges and the fact that searching for any time within a range finds it will change how I use workflowy for task management
Awesome!
My date format:
This small piece of code, when added to Stylus, allows you to customize the style of date elements. By targeting specific date-related tags or classes within the HTML structure, you can apply your own CSS rules to alter their appearance. This can include changes to font style, color, background, and other visual aspects, providing a way to personalize how dates are displayed in your web interface.
/* DATE */
time.explosive.monolith-pill span.content-wrapper {
text-decoration: none !important;
background-color: transparent !important;
font-size: 16px !important;
color: #000 important;
}
Hi
Love the new pill format for dates, can these also be applied to tags to make them more distinguished?
Two requests:
The ability to edit the “completed” date recorded for an item.
The ability to search filter on a range of completed dates.
This allows me to make an automatic report of “accomplishments last month”. Right now if I’m making this report on, say, the 3rd of the new month I have to do something like “completed:34d -completed:3d”. That still doesn’t help me if I didn’t promptly mark an item complete last month.
One more:
The built in dates are getting great, it would allow me to tag everything with a due date and then filter on “objectives for next month” for instance, but what if all dates don’t represent due dates? Can we tag dates with the type of date?
I tried “#target Wed, Nov 15 #dropdead Wed, Nov 22” but a search for “#dropdead 11/15” finds this node.
Hey Tom, apologies, I’m not quite sure what you’re trying to. Could you describe what you expect to be able to filter? Do you want to see completed items that also have date tags within a certain range, or do you want to filter items by their actual completion date regardless of their date tag?
Thanks for the reply.
First, I’m asking for a way to filter items by their actual completion date range. For instance, say I want to show someone what I tasks completed during a particular week. Currently I can work around this by calculating the number of days ago for the start and end date and searching something like “completed:14d -completed:7d”
Second, for that to work, I really need to be able to manually edit the completion date of an item. If I didn’t mark the item complete on the actual day it happened, there is no way to correct it later. Come to think of it, I can’t even find a way to see the completion date other than filtering by trial and error.
Finally, it would be good to have a way to filter on a type of date tag. For instance, to be able to distinguish between start dates and due dates, etc.
Fantastic!!!
It broke my whole calendar’s dates into something unreadable, Be careful.
It makes that with any date past Dec. 31, 2023
Thanks for the report! We’ll look into it.
And also any date before Jan 1, 2023
I have the same future date issue, but also with all my dates prior to November 2022
Hey olaf, could you share your date settings?
YYMMDD
It is doing the same with mine, with date settings ‘ddd DD/MM/YY’
I had the same thing happen to me. I had set up the format “ddd, MMM D, Y” and started seeing exactly what you have. I changed it to “ddd, MMM D, YYYY” and all the dates started appearing as I wished. No data lost, as far as I can tell.
I have found that if you use any one of Workflowy’s pre-defined date formats, the date displays correctly. If you customise it in any way, it doesn’t.
you simply blew my mind! I am in tears.
I use dates in Workflowy everyday! This is very helpful and will save me a lot of time! Thank you.
Yeah!!! Love it!!
This is just ASKING for a new calendar layout view. Seriously. Just a way to show all nodes by date on a calendar view. Heck, the date range thing lends itself beautifully to project planning. Almost like a Gannt chart view.
Would be awesome.
On the iOS app (yes, I updated today to latest version) the ! command brings up a pop-up as expected, but choosing anything does not add a date. Please fix.
Also: ARE YOU EVER GOING TO HAVE A SORT FUNCTION? this is the one thing that stops Workflowy being the best app ever. Website post from years ago says you’re working on it. Are you?
Also I would like to work with dates in JumpTo and MoveTo commands somehow. A date picker and natural language, please.
Hey Olaf, could you provide an example of how this might work or what you would be able to do with that?
I have a calendar for the year like this:
Date (today)
—task1
—task2
Date (tomorrow)
…
Let’s say I want to move task1 at first Monday in December. I press Ctrl+Alt+M and then what? I’d like to be able to search for the date here somehow.
Custom date format doesn’t apply at the left panel
Extraordinario !!!
This is a great improvement, but I would like more control over how combination date and times are displayed. For instance, I would always like “YYYY-MM-DD HH:mm”, but I’m instead seeing “HH:mm on YYYY-MM-DD”.
I’m also getting a weird “un22fin22” value in a textbox when I click on an an existing pill.
Here’s my config.
Thanks for the report Arthur, we’re looking into it.
I’m also getting these mangled un00fin00 – un66fin66 dates after changing to the same ISO format (YYYY-MM-DD)
1) after entering and tab completing
2) after using the new calendar widget
3) worst of all, existing dates in my workflowy were replaced by these strings
Thank you and congratulations, I’ve been waiting for this for a long time 🙂 It would be really great if we could choose the language of the days of the week (in French for me :))
This is a great step forward. Thanks.
In testing it, I accidentally hit a potential bug. I had a November bullet with items inside that bullet. I added a new item inside the November bullet. I typed “today” to see the new look. I then backspaced to remove the date. This all worked, but when I backspaced to remove the new bullet it wouldn’t go away. I quit and came back to the same place. Backspace then worked to remove the bullet. An odd case, but one to check out.
I’m not sure this bug is related to the date feature. I’ve previously noticed that I frequently have trouble backspacing to delete the first child bullet of an item (but not always… couldn’t reproduce just now)
This is awesome. Thanks for continuing to improve WorkFlowy. I know it’s not easy to keep us all happy.
On that note…haha…one additional feature that would be nice for dates that is slightly clunky is when you type a task like:
Go to the storethen realize it has a date that you want to put at the start, so you type:
todayGo to the storeBut the date doesn’t pop up, so you have to type a space after today
today Go to the storeAnd it still doesn’t pop up, so you have to delete the y
toda Go to the StoreAnd the add the y back in
today God to the storeAnd then it will add the date. Not a big deal, but I usually put dates that something is due by at the start, and the date that I finished it at the end. Just slightly clunky.
(I suppose I could type “space bar, then left arrow, then today”. That would probably be the fastest solution without recoding. But since you’re asking for comments 🙂 Thanks again.)
Oh !!! So happy to see those improvement and DD/MM/YYYY format officially supported !!
Thanks
This is an absolutely brilliant update to dates in WorkFlowy. Thanks to the WorkFlowy team for this! I add my hope/vote/request to eventually have recurring dates if at all possible
Thanks. These are amazing options.
Dates have always been one of the more powerful features. Perfect for reminders (pull, not push), deadlines or daily logging.
These features build on top of that elegance without removing anything. Design, features and flow in perfect harmony!
Functionality of the new dates is awesome! But the design is worse IMO. The date font is smaller and I don’t like keeping the dates in badge like a tag. I preferred the previous look. Simple and coherent.
Totally agree. It looks great when a date is used inside a note (shift+enter), it may also look okay if comes after some text. But I often use daily notes with just a date (+ tag) but no text and then it looks weird with this smaller font size and is less readable IMHO.
This is great, but can you also please make it possible to change the starting day of the week to make this more international friendly? When I search for “this week”, I end up with results from last sunday to upcoming saturday and not monday-sunday.
Edit: or even better – make it respect the region/internationalization settings of the OS/browser
Yes, fantastic update. And agree, I also need to set monday as the first day of the week
Wow – this looks like a rich heaping portion of thoughtfulness. Thanks and congratulations!
(Reminders and search nodes are coming I believe, and it would be churlish to bang that drum already).
Sure, here are five short jokes about Workflowy introducing the “DATE” feature:
1. **Workflowy’s new DATE feature is so accurate, it can even predict when your next procrastination session will start.**
2. **I’m so excited about Workflowy’s new DATE feature that I’ve already started scheduling my naps for next week.**
3. **With Workflowy’s new DATE feature, I can finally stop pretending that I’m going to finish my to-do list by the end of the day.**
4. **I’m not sure what’s more exciting, Workflowy’s new DATE feature or the fact that I finally have a reason to use dates again.**
5. **Workflowy’s new DATE feature is the best thing since sliced bread… except for maybe sliced bread itself.**
Please add a configurable setting to start the week on Monday for the date picker.
I second this request!
Superbes ces mises à jour des dates avec la possibilité de personnaliser le format.
Merci beaucoup !!!
Manque juste une alarme 😉
OH Yes ! Finally !
Thanks a lot for this feature ! Highly appreciated 😃
This. Is. Awesome.
Exploding dates – they explode on ALT+Click, like exploding tags (Windows). CTRL+Click does nothing for me, in desktop app.
Yes, please add to desktop app like exploding tags.
Super, wygląda ekstra
Amazing!
Awesome!. Can there be a recurring feature. Where the task can reset even after checked. i.e daily or at regular intervals?
I love that the date formats are user-customizable. Slash command and single-character shortcuts are great. Exploding the date is great (though it’s Alt on Windows). You could input date ranges in a node previously, but now there are more options for doing it. Clicking to change the date is smart.
As usual, this is a well-thought-out, coordinated set of features that can be useful to anyone. Thank you!
Yeah! Thank you for more options with dates. And special for thanks for ability to change date format to more convenient European type)
Amazing update! I can see how this can be expanded to add notifications for dates. Is this feature on the horizon, it would really help solidify WorkFlowy as a task management tool. It’s one of the biggest features that I feel is missing alongside a built in calendar.
This is SO awesome! Yet another epic update 🙂
Perhaps one question: is there a way to create a “smart” list based on a date? So I would have a list of todos, each having a certain date, and then somewhere else I’ll create a list of “Nov 15” which automatically shows all the items that are listed on Nov 15. And yes, I know I can also filter on that with search, but I’d like the list to be constantly visible (so a list for today, a list for tomorrow, etc).
Hey Wilco, that sounds a bit like a live search node, or maybe some sort of calendar view. Unfortunately that’s currently not possible.
Seconded
This is great. I love the updates you’ve been pushing out. I use dates often, so this will make things a ton easier. Appreciate it!
Is there a consolidated date view? To see all of the nodes by date? On some type of a single list or calendar?
Not currently Samson. What sort of thing did you have in mind and what would that help you do?
It would be amazing if there was some sort of in built calendar where we could click on a date and it would show all bullets that are tagged with it.