A new Smart To-Do List Plugin template is now available — it includes a user controlled smart refresh drop-down and a calendar view to help you control refresh and visualize your tasks!
🛒 Get the template here: 👉 https://ko-fi.com/s/5d3873c5de
Your purchase directly supports my work and helps me keep developing more features for you.
Since August 2022, I’ve been blessed to be able to create and publish Google Sheets add-ons — simple tools I first built to make my own and my communities’ workflows easier. I never imagined they would grow this much, but over time they’ve reached far more people and communities than I expected. I’m deeply grateful to everyone who has supported my vision. Your feedback and encouragement continue to inspire me to keep improving and creating.
Among them, the To-do List Plugin, One Link Sign-up and Comfort Attendance have become the most popular, with around 7K+, 2K+ and 1K+ downloads so far. It’s been amazing to see how something that started as a personal vision could help so many others. Thank you to users who spare the time that they have saved from using my add-ons to give back their encouraging reviews on the Googe Marketplace.
And most importantly, thank you to my nine supporters on Ko-fi who helped me reach 1% of my goal to keep Serving People and Communities moving forward. Every bit of financial support means a lot and keeps me motivated to continue building and sharing more tools that make everyday tasks a little easier.
The To-do List plugin uses the onEdit trigger to refresh your to-do list. This trigger takes a few seconds to reach Google’s server before the refresh starts. During this short delay, you can continue making multiple updates to your tasks. However, you’ll need to wait for the refresh to complete before making further edits. It is not user friendly for bulk updates, you have to unplug and plug in which is also not convenient.
Because data transmission depends on Google Sheets’ network speed, there is currently no way to improve this delay. Therefore, a new Smart Refresh mode has been developed and is undergoing a pilot testing.
A new refresh control dropdown has been added at the top of the task header which works for desktop browser and mobile app.
Informs the server to refresh.
Automatically refreshes whenever an edit is received from the server.
When an edit occurs, the task header will show:
Desktop: Refresh when idle for 20s. Select this cell to refresh now.
Mobile: Refresh when idle for 20s. Use the above dropdown to refresh now.
After 20 seconds of inactivity (idle):
Desktop: Idle detected – refresh in 10s! Select this cell to refresh or any cell to skip.
Mobile: Idle detected – refresh in 10s!
After 10 more seconds (30s total idle), the server will automatically start refreshing.
The server will not refresh automatically — only when 🎬 Refresh now is selected.
B. Flexible to-do list location
You can now put your to-do list anywhere with other information that you are working on.
Google Sheets mobile + offline mode + installable onEdit triggers is a known and tricky behavior. Here’s a breakdown of why offline to online sometimes get two triggers and sometimes none:
🔍 1. Why it happens
a. Offline edits don’t fire any triggers immediately
When offline, the app records the edits locally; installable triggers (like onEdit(e)) only run on the server.
So while offline → no trigger.
b. When reconnecting
When the mobile app resyncs:
This depends on:
🧪 2. Observed patterns (tested behavior)
Scenario Offline duration Action Result
Short offline (few seconds) Small edit (1 cell) Usually 1 onEdit
Long offline (many edits) Multiple cells Often no trigger or 2+ triggers
Reopen sheet after being Edits in different areas Sometimes fires all at once or none
🕒 3. When sync happens automatically
Offline edits made on the mobile app are synced when all of the following conditions are true:
1. Internet connection restored
⚙️5. Pivot Expense Split Enhancement
Use an onChange(e) installable trigger which fires when the structure or content of the sheet changes, even after sync. It will trigger once per batch sync instead of per cell. The following is scripted to post offline input at reconnection.
function onChange(e) {
if (e.changeType === 'EDIT') {
// handle sync edits here
}
}
⚠️ It doesn’t give e.range like onEdit — only that something changed.
Previously, Pivot Expense Split relied on a simple Google onEdit trigger, which only runs for up to 30 seconds. That wasn’t enough to handle offline input when device came back online.
The use of installable trigger requires new permission which has been reviewed and approved by Google today. When you run the add-on, Google will prompt you the new permission for your authorization.
Inside the TDL log, Google’s history records the date when a task was logged. For users who want to analyze trends, it is more useful to store this date in its own column. Therefore, the date when the user checks the box to mark a task as done is now added to the log.
Please update your TDL log header as follows:
Date – the original task date
Repeat On – the updated task date based on the frequency code
Completion – the date when the user checked the box to mark the task as done
You can configure custom statuses starting with the default Absent and Present. Additional statuses like Picked Up can be added to suit your needs.
Clicking a name will cycle through the statuses and loop back to the beginning. Alternatively, you can open a dropdown list to select a specific status.
Each status has the following attributes, listed in quotes and separated by commas:
Valid code on the sheet
Label, color, and icon, which are displayed on the web app page for that status code
