How do you snooze a task?

[chmac]

I've finally ported all my tasks from my own home rolled do.md file into obsidian. The one thing I can't quite figure out is how to snooze a task. I had used the "scheduled" date. I used that to bump tasks forward so they I could filter them out until they were scheduled again. I use a "either scheduled before tomorrow or has no schedule" filter to do that.

However, I hit a snag when I closed a repeating task. The scheduled date also got copied forward. That broke my system. Now my task gets copied forward, but it also gets snoozed, which I definitely don't want.

Maybe there's a option somewhere that I've missed? Some ideas I had that might be possible:

• A config option to not copy scheduled dates when copying repeating tasks
• An explicit snooze function
• Some sort of hooks or plugin system where I could write a little javascript that gets run when a repeating task gets copied

Is there anything like that? Or can I use the postpone feature somehow to achieve snoozing?

For clarity, my goal is to be able to defer a task so it's not visible yet, but shows up again in the future. My best example is a quarterly accounting task. It's only possible from the 1st of Jan, and it must be done by the 7th of Feb. But I know I'll be on vacation 1-7 Jan, so I snooze it until 8 Jan. Then I come back from vacation and realise I don't have time for it this week, so I snooze it again until 14 Jan. But when I actually close it, I want the copied task to start 1 Apr and be due 7 May with either no start date, or a start date of 1 Apr. But definitely not a start date of 14 Apr.

[claremacrae]

Hi, I'm happy to try and help.

To help me help you, I would appreciate anything you can do to also express your question in terms that I can paste in to Obsidian and experiment with.

Like:

• a representative example task line in Markdown
  • What the original line is
  • What you want it to look like after the snoozing
• a representative example Tasks query code block

[chmac]

@claremacrae Surely, thanks for having a look.

Transparency: Headings added by @claremacrae to try and make the flow visible...

Evolution of the initial task

The initial task looks like this:

- [ ] VAT return 🛫 2025-01-01 📅 2025-02-07 🔁 every 3 months 

Then at some point it gets converted to this:

- [ ] VAT return 🛫 2025-01-01 📅 2025-02-07 ⏳ 2025-01-08 🔁 every 3 months 

Then the next step in my story was (which is a bit redundant from the previous step!):

- [ ] VAT return 🛫 2025-01-01 📅 2025-02-07 ⏳ 2025-01-14 🔁 every 3 months

Desired next step after completion

Finally once the task gets closed, I would like the next task to look like:

- [ ] VAT return 🛫 2025-04-01 📅 2025-05-07 🔁 every 3 months 

Or instead, this would also work:

- [ ] VAT return 🛫 2025-04-01 📅 2025-05-07 ⏳ 2025-04-01 🔁 every 3 months 

What it currently looks like after completion

But it actually looks like this:

- [ ] VAT return 🛫 2025-04-01 📅 2025-05-07 ⏳ 2025-04-14 🔁 every 3 months

Example query

Then an example query I'm using to show tasks which are available to work on today is something like:

has due date
not done
starts before tomorrow
(scheduled before tomorrow) OR (no scheduled date)

I distinguish between dated and undated tasks, so maybe the first line isn't relevant here.

Hopefully that gives you a better sense of what I mean, but if I've made some mistakes, or anything is not clear, I'm happy to expand on it.

[chmac]

@claremacrae That would most definitely satisfy my desire. I wondered if there was another way that I could "snooze" tasks with the current plugin architecture. Or I also wondered about suggesting to add a "snooze" date field. That field might interact with the "happens" date, but I haven't understood that concept well enough to say.

[claremacrae]

The thing is, "Snooze" in the discussion above seems to have a very personal interpretation to you.

I tend to think of "Snoozing" as related to editing the dates - but you seem to be talking about it removing a date field during recurrence , which seems rather non-obvious.

Anyway, there is a good range of features now for modifying dates in Tasks, which I have written up here:

https://publish.obsidian.md/tasks/Editing/Editing+Dates

[chmac]

I think the confusion lies with my example. When I say snoozing I mean "remove from tasks which are actionable today, and place back into that set in the future". So in my own do.md tooling I had an explicit date called snooze which doesn't get copied to the new task when a task repeats. I was floating the idea of adding a snooze date to this plugin, but it sounds like that's not a good fit.

The workflow I described above was my workaround to use the "scheduled" date to achieve snooze like functionality.

But the option to have scheduled dates removed when a task is repeated would also fit my use case. Is that currently possible?

[claremacrae]

The best I can do is tell you in a bit more detail what already exists....

Postponing

The Postpone feature in Tasks was originally called Snooze, IIRC.
https://publish.obsidian.md/tasks/Editing/Postponing

The problem is that if there is more than one type of date on the task line, Postpone is very opinionated about which date to edit, so does not please anyone everyone.

Using a Date Picker

Have you tried out the Date Picker that works in Reading Mode and in Tasks Search results?
https://publish.obsidian.md/tasks/Editing/Editing+Dates#Date-picker+on+task+dates

Its Left-Click and Right-Click features are game-changers so far as I am concerned - and render Postponing and the Edit Task modal redundant much of the time.

Related feature requests

• Option to disable assignment of scheduled date for recurring tasks #2751

[chmac]

That's great, #2751 looks like it would cover my use case.

The date pickers are a handy way to clear the scheduled dates when the task gets repeated. In the case of my quarterly accounting, the start and due dates are immovable. They're defined by the government. So having an extra date, scheduled date, that I can set is great, allows me to use that as my "snoozing" date.

Thanks for the info, and for pointing me to #2751, I hadn't found it in my searches. I'll follow that issue to see if this feature gets added, and in the meantime, I'll remove the dates manually.