OmniGraffle 3 Reviews

Spent $79 for OmniGraffle3, that’s a lot for an iPad app. Now they’ve “updated” and I’m back to a free version that won’t let me do anything. Have tried to get the upgrade price, it fails. Have tried to restore purchases, it fails.

Basically, if you want to pay for OmniGraffle3, decide if it’d be more fun to burn that money in your back yard, or give it to the OmniGroup. It’s basically the same thing, but you don’t get to watch it actually burn if you give it to them.

Note: this review comes from someone that’s been an OmniGroup customer for 15ish years. I’ve advocated for them, bought countless licenses for my business and have been a loyal customer...until today.

I’ve grumbled through Omnigroup’s bait-and-switch “upgrades” for years now, but have stuck with them because OmniGraffle was the best alternative I’d found for my needs—“was” being the key word here. This version is barely usable on my 2020 iPad Pro. The user interface is infuriating—drawing connecting lines resizes shapes instead, deleting selected objects requires some twisted secret series of gestures, gestures to pan/move/select are confounded, tools that are supposed to stay selected randomly revert, and it isn’t uncommon for the undo button to mysteriously stop working when trying to resolve one of the aforementioned snafus. The company has obviously been hearing about these problems for months or longer and is doing nothing to resolve them. This would be frustrating even if OmniGraffle3 weren’t so exorbitantly priced. Not sure what is going on in the company, but whatever it is, we can only hope they get it together soon.

I purchased OmniGraffle for the iPad when it first came out. I used it off and on. Version 3 comes out as an update. It is not an update. It replaces the full version you paid for with a trial version. Pay more money or give up. Other companies make a new app when they want to charge again (I have GoodNotes 4 and 5 on my iPad at the same time), but OmniGroup just causes the one you paid for to be removed and replaced by a non-functional trial.

I have used Omni products for years. I bought OmniGraffle for the iPad when it first game out. Removing a customer’s ability to use a previously purchased app is simply unacceptable.

I sure am glad they can’t do the same thing on a Mac (at least I hope they can’t). It’s a pity, I used to respect this company.

I’m a happy customer if Omnigraffle for macOS and I still use it to this day for UX/UI wire framing.

Although the desktop app is becoming really ‘legacy’ now, e.g no way to collaborate in real-time, no objects I can create or import to scale elements ‘9-slice’, it is still for me the most effective way to wireframe, as I never got used to Adobe’s offering and greatly disliking a subscription model to come with that.

The mobile version though to me is useless. Pretty much every file I import from the desktop app is ‘converted’ because it apparently is powered by an entirely different interpreter, rather than shared by the same code-base. Lots of errors and inconsistencies when the file is finally imported. The feature-set is different, which I understand to a certain degree, but is not feasible for a professional workflow.
Lastly the mobile app does not provide any added value either, such a real-time collaboration. Therefore it feels more like a subset app with flaws that doesn’t really know what it’s oughta be.

As an existing customer I therefore recommend leaving this one alone in its current state and instead just the desktop version.

They don't even give you a single sample document to play around with... such a weird pointless mode to OmniGraffle3 . Why let you download it without paying in the first place? I would love to be able to assess this without getting trapped in a trial that converts to a $60 annualized charge but nope, I'll assess something else. From the reviews, seems like the user-hostility for trials is protecting me from a frustratingly buggy & undersupported application...

I have been using OmniGraffle for many, many years on Mac. I really want to use and like OmniGraffle3. But it is an exercise in frustration with a gesture-based UI that is too fiddly, too complex, and too multi-modal.

Want simply to move a shape? I end up re-sizing it. Want to deselect a entry in the left-side nav bar, it will not, even after tapping Deselect All. Likewise, tapping to rename a label causes the entire list to scroll to the bottom, pushing the item being edited out of site.

Plus, there are some serious data-losing bugs (I am using iCloud for storage and sync).

My suggestion:

1. Have option to invoke isolated, distinct edit modes that do only ONE thing, like moving an item, like resizing an item, like editing labels and text, like changing a color.

2. Fix your bugs. I just lost an hour of work when I went back to the top-level document chooser and then re-opened the same document on the same device to find my last round of edits were gone!

3. Have a non-Edit mode that allows for viewing a document without fear of changing something

been a loyal customer for years, upgraded twice. then they pull the bait and switch. sorry app you paid for gone...? unfair business practice. i’d stay away until they can make this right. heard it’s glitchy anyway.

Update: Developer contacts me and states that both apps are availible for download... Yeah, but one I bought doesn’t work anymore with a newer device and the other one I bought 2 is not on the store anymore. Extra frustrated now since I was reminded that these devs took our money and claim it’s our mistake... There’s better apps out there. Some of the best are free. My review is now negative 1 star... 👎🏼

I’d been a long time user of OmniGroup tools on my laptop for years, and wanted to be able to transition over to using it on iPad. OmniGraffle3 is just way too clunky to consider it for my workflow. All the tools you need to work are hidden behind so many clicks and settings. It has a lot of features, but they aren’t organized in a way that help you focus. Instead your jumping around between panels and pop-ups to do even the simplest things. I can’t recommend it until OmniGroup makes a serious overhaul to the UI — especially when there are so many better alternatives that aren’t as expensive.

Same application, same frustrations, same bugs as the other versions going back to 1.0. Clearly this application has never been rewritten, as identical bugs and frustrations have been carried forward. Objects are difficult to select, hard to move around, occasionally it’s unresponsive to taps and drags, and performance is laggy as the number of objects grows, even on an iPad Pro with M1. Sometimes your changes are saved, sometimes they’re not – I just now returned to my documents to find that my saved drawing was a much earlier version, and all of my work since that point was lost. Well, Omni Group, I’ve lost my work with your application for the last time. It doesn’t help that it is published by the greediest company on OmniGraffle3 Store except maybe Apple themselves. There’s absolutely no way that this application is worth the extreme price! Stay away from OmniGraffle3, and while you’re at it, the rest of the software from this developer isn’t so great either.

Looks good but not ready for me. I hope OmniGraffle3 is top of their list to fix so it’s usable as a serious creation tool.

I downloaded the UML General stencil set. Dragged out a class with properties and methods and immediately the shape collapsed on itself. Managed to enter a couple properties anyway but they are overlapping the class name. I can’t even enter methods as that box doesn’t look selectable. This sort of thing should Just Work.

The file selector is harder to use than I’ve seen in other apps, particularly Apple’s. While it does handle live updates from cloud-based documents, it resets your zoom and scroll position.

The desktop app is very spiffy and based on that I took the plunge for the pro iPad app. I know Omni is a good company so I expect top flight products. I’ll keep my eye on the updates and revise this review.

I’m running the latest iOS 11.1 on an iPad Pro 9.7 creating a simple process flow diagram, and OmniGraffle has crashed on me at least 20 times. Restarting iPad did not improve the instability issues. It’s a nice, highly polished app, but I’m hoping they can improve stability. It’s just too aggravating at this point to try to use it with the constant crashing.

Why no pen/bezier tool? For $100 there’s no excuse not to add this. There are $10 apps available with this functionality. Why have a free form tool and Bézier curve editing functionality but then not include a pen tool. I know I know some people say Omnigraffle isn’t a drawing tool. That being said, the thing holding me back from purchasing this tool is the lack of a pen tool. Please make me give you my money by adding a pen tool.

The UI updates are very good and intuitive (especially if you are familiar with previous versions). But this latest version has huge problems with the gestures I’ve used from earlier versions. For example I use “Duplicate” very often. I touch and hold the object and then two-finger tap where I want the duplicate to be. Instead of duplicating the object, the original object displays it is selected. The older versions would have selected the original object as soon as it was touched. If I two-finger tap a second time the object will be duplicated. This is very awkward.

Another problem is that if I tap and hold an object and then two-finger tap (which selects the first object) and then remove my finger from the original object and tap-off to unselect the first object a selection circle is displayed randomly on the screen. If I tap-off again then a selection bubble is displayed. It takes 3 tap-offs to fully clear the selection.

I use an iPad Pro with the Apple Pencil and this issue displays regardless of the proximity of the Apple Pencil. I use this tool professionally and this is costing me time. Please fix the gesture issues and I will bump this back up to 5 stars because the new UI is great.

I must say that every detail of the UI is pretty. And the team has managed to stuff an absolutely incredible array of capability into this iPhone app.

That said, trying to actually do any meaningful diagramming is painful. Horridly so. Honesty, the ability to edit OmniGraffle files on iPhone should be free, since I could genuinely argue that investing the effort required to produce any meaningful diagram in the handheld UX is payment enough. Perhaps more.

While I can accept the subscription fee as reasonable for Mac and even iPad, the value proposition simply isn’t there for the iPhone app.

I love the OmniGroup. My first purchase from them was at their MacWorld booth in the Javitz Center in NYC, in the late 90s. So it low-key breaks my heat to write that if you need some ability to create diagrams on a handheld device, I’ve gotta advise you to look elsewhere 💔

It is hard to put in to words how I feel about the iOS version of OmniGraffle. While not a power user, I have used the desktop version going back to OG3.

Something just feels “off” with the iOS version. I’m almost at the end of my free trial version and I think for the first time I’m going to pass on purchasing OmniGraffle3 .

In the short trial period I find it frustrating to use. There seems to be some sort of delay selecting objects and it makes it difficult to use. Maybe it’s the limits of iOS, maybe it’s the way OmniGraffle3 is written. Whatever it is, it just doesn’t work for me.

Personally I feel it is no where near as polished as other OmniGroup products. If it were a $20 app I would accept it, but not at the price OmniGroup is asking.

I have a much better experience using Jump Desktop to connect to my Mac and working that way than I do with this native iOS app.

Interface is mediocre. Implementation is sketch. They need to divide the options for what you want to do and single them out. Every time I go to move an object 9 times out of 10 it resizes the object. Stupid annoying. To the point I feel the need to write this review. Moving an object is a basic function that doesn’t need to be attached to scaling.

Rest of OmniGraffle3 is fine. Gonna ask for a refund and go back to open office. Fix your interface and I might come back. Right now I’m sitting at the airport and have made almost zero progress in doing my signal map. As a matter of fact I’m now wasting my time complaining about your app. Thanks for the inspiration.

I want to like OmniGraffle3. I want to USE OmniGraffle3. But it’s very clunky. I try to position shapes but they snap to weird positions that aren’t even on the grid. Creating custom stencils was brutally non-intuitive (apparently they don’t show up if you save them in the cloud?) Sometimes it gets into a mode where I can’t even add text boxes. That was the tipping point for me, leading me to write this review. I know there’s a powerful tool underneath here, it’s just HARD to use, especially compared with the desktop version. Not what I would expect from an app for which I’ve paid so much, nor from a company with so much experience. I don’t want to have to carry my laptop with me just to make some basic diagrams—that’s why I though the iPad app would be useful. I’m sorry, but OmniGraffle3 is just really not quite there.

I’m a big fan of Omni and have all their products on both platforms, but this version of ‘graffle is buggy as heck. Crashes frequently and the last caused me to lose a bunch of work, which is inexcusable in this era of autosave etc. Also put in a darn bezier tool so I don’t have to use a stencil to do one of the central functions of this type of product.

Sometimes I have to quit OmniGraffle3 completely and restart it to enter text inside shapes. This used to be a great application. Now it’s kind of a letdown. What happened?

Developer replied and fixed the issue! We all make mistakes! It’s back to being great again!

I really like on the software. It is expensive, but it’s good. On the gravel is amazing and definitely worth the cost. Or use it for teaching and find it immensely helpful.

But I would love to see simpler and less Italy sinking solutions. Getting things working and running consistently is a pain. iCloud would be awesome.

Thankfully, this doesn’t affect user experience in the long term because Once it’s set up it works well.