Cockpit is a single Joplin panel that gathers every to-do, every note, and the checkboxes inside them into one view, grouped by due date. I wrote it to replace the notes and notebooks sidebars: instead of two lists that tell you where things are stored, one panel that tells you what is due and when.
I kept losing work that was spread across notebooks — a to-do in one place, a checklist buried inside a note somewhere else. Cockpit puts all of it in front of you at once, so the panel is your plan and your whole archive at the same time. You switch it between an Overdue / Today / This Week rundown, a flat date list, a month calendar, or a week planner, depending on how you want to look at the day.
Install: in Joplin open Settings (Configuration on Android) → Plugins, search for Cockpit, and Install. It is the same on desktop and Android. To install by hand instead, grab the .jpl from the GitHub releases page and use Install from file.
Cockpit started as a fork of Agenda by BeatLink and TheScriptingGuy; the profile system and overview notes trace back to their work. The idea of pulling all your scattered work into one live view came from alondmnt's Inline Tag Navigator, though Cockpit builds it on Joplin's core to-do dates rather than inline tag syntax.
It is early, so if something is off or missing on your setup — desktop or Android — say so here and I will take a look.
Long-time Joplin user here. I have loved Joplin since day one — encryption, open source, a choice of sync targets, every platform. And thanks to the AI era, I can finally give a little of that love back.
All these years, a few things kept bothering me:
Notebooks and notes are two separate sidebars, and together they eat a lot of space. There is no way to collapse the notebook list down to the one line that matters — the notebook you are working in — even though I usually work in one notebook at a time.
Joplin has to-dos and notes, but to see the to-dos as an agenda you need a separate plugin (my thanks to the Agenda authors credited above) — which then duplicates what the notes panel already shows.
There is a tag list, but when I want to search across several tags, nothing suggests which tags I actually have.
There was no way to set up view profiles for the to-do/note list — save them and switch between them quickly.
Cockpit is my attempt to fix all four at once: one panel that is the plan and the archive at the same time, as described above.
And to be honest about how it was built: this plugin is AI-written, under my direction. I know how contentious AI code is, I genuinely respect the work of real engineers, and I feel slightly awkward publishing this. But it seemed wrong to pass up the chance to build something new and convenient just because of how the tool feels. I hope I got it right — and that Cockpit becomes a daily driver for someone besides me. If you find things done wrong, I will take the criticism constructively and fix what needs fixing.
Everyone interested is welcome to test it and use it. Write your thoughts and comments — I will read them all with interest.
You can filter notes by tags. To do this, enter tag:yourtag in the Search field. The field will also suggest which tags you have. Otherwise, it works like Joplin search.
The main news is speed. Ticking a to-do is instant and no longer flickers, profile switching paints immediately, new notes and notebooks show up right away, and background refresh work was cut to a fraction. Along the way this fixed todo_completed being written as a boolean instead of a timestamp.
Search
If nothing matches your current profile, the panel shows Results outside current filters so you can still jump to the note.
New Excluded notebooks setting: excluded content is skipped by the search engine itself, not just hidden. An explicit name search still finds it, under its own labelled section.
Multi-select alarms can shift each to-do from its own date and time, or set one value for all — your choice.
Desktop: drag to-dos into the gap between two rows to schedule them in between; dropping several spreads them evenly. A Day start time setting controls the default hour.
Fixes
Clicking anywhere on a row opens it.
Text selection from the editor keeps extending across the panel.
Standalone to-do circles are visible in every theme.
The headline: pick several tags at once in search - the Evernote-style multi-selection.
Type tag: and the suggestion list opens as before, but now Ctrl+click entries (desktop) or press and hold (Android) to mark several, then press Enter (or the apply button) to insert them all: tag:work tag:urgent tag:home in three taps instead of three rounds of typing. Works for notebook: and title: too. The list is taller and scrollable, with its own filter box. Everything else in your search box stays untouched.
Search fixes
Clearing the search box instantly shows all notes - no Enter needed.
Android: searches now apply the moment you commit them. (The keyboard closing at that moment is the search taking effect)
The cursor returns to the search box after committing, so you can keep editing.
Interface
New New note / New to-do icons; the buttons shorten their labels instead of wrapping when the panel is narrow.
The row highlight follows the note open in the editor, however you opened it.
With several rows selected, Escape collapses the selection to the last row you clicked.
Recent releases also brought bulk actions on multi-selected rows (Delete / Move / Tags / Duplicate, with counts in the labels), a filterable notebook picker, an optional toolbar button, and drag-and-drop scheduling between rows.
Update via Settings › Plugins once the registry refreshes (usually within a day).
I successfully updated to version 2. Great update overall!
Regarding the multi-tag selection feature, I'm having a slight snag on Windows. Although Ctrl+Click works fine everywhere else on my desktop, it doesn't seem to allow for simultaneous tag selection when using the plugin interface itself.Update! It turned out the fix was simple: I manually added the.jpl *file, but I had to confirm an update afterward. Everything is working great now. Thanks.
Hold a to-do for half a second and its menu opens as before. Keep holding and move it up or down, and the row lifts instead. Drop it between two to-dos to land between their times, or onto a heading, a calendar day or a week-planner column to move it to that date. The list scrolls when you drag near its edge. A sideways move is left to Joplin, so the side-menu swipe still works.
Scheduling
Next Week, Next Month, Next Year. When the rest of a period is already covered by the groups above it, the next period takes its place: on a Saturday you see Next Week instead of This Week, late in the month Next Month, in December Next Year. They turn back into This Week, This Month and This Year on Monday, on the 1st and on January 1st.
Dropping a to-do onto This Week, This Month, This Year or any Next group now makes it due on the first day of that group rather than the last, so a plan lands as early as possible instead of on a Sunday evening. The time of day is kept.
Desktop: dragging near the top or bottom edge of the list scrolls it, faster the closer you get, so a distant heading is reachable in one drag.
Fixed: a to-do due on December 31st landed under Future instead of This Year, and one due on the last day of a month under This Year instead of This Month. Thanks to Marxsal for the report.
Works with Whereabouts
If you run my Whereabouts plugin (0.3.0 or later), its notebook chip now drives Cockpit: a left click points the panel at that notebook, a double click reveals the note in the panel, switching to its notebook and flashing the row, or showing it in a read-only "Revealed" section when your current profile would hide it. Other plugin authors get the same two commands, cockpit.filterByNotebook(folderId) and cockpit.revealNote(noteId).
Note title bar (desktop, two new settings, off by default)
Hide the due date next to the bell and show it on hover, for a less crowded title row.
Open Cockpit's date picker instead of Joplin's when the alarm bell is clicked: quick buttons, calendar, Clear. Markdown editor only; the Set alarm menu item keeps Joplin's picker.
Both take effect after a restart.
Multi-select and notes (2.1)
Ctrl/Shift selection includes regular notes, mixed sets too. Delete, Move, Tags, Duplicate and Switch type act on the whole selection; scheduling applies to the to-dos in it.
Switching an item between note and to-do moves its row immediately, and it is never shown twice.
The suggestion list's filter box and your typed search survive background refreshes and Android reloads.
Fixes
"Copy Markdown link" and "Copy note ID" copy again; a failed copy shows a toast instead of a dialog that blocks the app.
Trashing a ticked to-do no longer leaves a stale tick behind.
Update via Settings › Plugins once the registry refreshes (usually within a day).
Profiles sync between devices. Opt-in: in Settings › Plugins › Cockpit, type Joplin Cockpit Plugin Settings into the new Settings note field. Cockpit keeps your profiles, panel CSS, theme colors, day start time and excluded notebooks in that one note, carried by your normal sync. On another device, sync first, then type the same title. Empty field, nothing changes.
The notebook picker takes typing. New note / New to-do on "All notebooks", "Move to notebook" and "Move notebook under…" now open a themed list with a filter box: type part of a path, arrows walk it, Enter picks. Same filter on Android.
Also fixed: an excluded notebook could still become the panel's filter, so New to-do created there without asking.
