Python script to delete completed tasks from your Todoist Inbox

todoist-cleaner.py

import todoist

api = todoist.TodoistAPI(token='<your_token_here')

# Initial sync of your account
api.sync()

# Find Inbox in project - can be adapted to delete completed tasks for other projects as well
projects = api.projects.all()
inbox = next(p for p in projects if 'inbox_project' in p)

# Process tasks until explicitly aborted
while True:
    # Get completed tasks for project, a maximum of 100 tasks is supported per batch
    completed = api.items.get_completed(project_id=inbox['id'], limit=100)
    if not completed:
        break  # No completed tasks left, abort

    # Delete the completed tasks
    for c in completed:
        api.items.delete(c['id'])

    # Commit deletion requests
    api.commit()

You can use the python requests library to make a request to the sync api and then delete them like before (...)

Thanks for sharing the code, @dmbeta!

I played with it for a while but eventually gave up for the following reasons:

• Todoist API throttles requests. It does it to the degree, where use of batch commands of Sync API is required. I tried that too, but it was still hindering cleanup of thousands of items.
• Deleting a task doesn't really remove it from the database. It might disappear from the archive, but the delete operation with details is added to the Activity Log and stays there forever. So the operation brings no protection against e.g. leak of historical data from the company, which was my main motivator :(

Thanks again.

Maybe we can change the content before deleting, but I imagine that is also stored in the activity log. At this point then, we need a different more private to-do app, perhaps one with end-to-end encryption on the content of tasks. Only end-to-end encrypted to-do app I know of is Lunatask https://lunatask.app/ and note-taking apps like Joplin, but Lunatask isn't fully supported on mobile yet.