Contact OmniFocus 3 Support

by Quark Gluon Plasma

Omnifocus has added share sheet functionality to the iPad. You can now add Taskpaper format and raw html wherever you find them useful. Words fail me.

As we all deal with the coronavirus pandemic, it is crucial to have effective tools. Life is at once simple and complicated. OF may or may not handle complicated for you, but it definitely doesn’t do simple. People are spending hundreds of dollars on third-party instruction.

Omnifocus and I never really clicked, even though I am well-versed in GTD, and have spent more time with it than any other task manager. In principle, it does what I want. In practice, I find it very hard to use. The user interface is needlessly complex, and pulls attention away from your tasks. There are dark corners where the way it works can only be determined by experiment. iOS and Mac versions do not always work the same way. For example, the built-in Flagged views sort completely differently on the two platforms. There is an entire cottage industry devoted to telling people how to use it, and there’s a reason. It is slow, and many features are clunky. Drag and drop is very awkward. I would make it a program of last resort for most people.

by TPB, Esq.

Omnifocus was the first real productivity app I used on iOS way back in 2011, and it doesn’t look like it has changed much since then. The app does not work well with gestures on iOS and seems to really want to be a Mac-only app (I have no idea how well the web app works), or at least is designed to work best on Mac, with iOS and iPadOS versions not working as well.

Creating smart perspectives seems buggy, in that sometimes the right tasks show up given perspective parameters, and sometimes no tasks show up. It struggles with ID’ing what tasks are “available” as opposed to “remaining,” and needs some updating as to perspectives and search.

Notes are hidden away when they should be front and center with a task.

Setting repeating tasks is confusing, not the least because sometimes repeating tasks don’t become available when they seem like they should. I think other productivity apps have passed Omnifocus by in terms of ease of use, design, and search, especially on mobile and tablet.

Improves and Sustains:
If I had a prioritized wish list of improvements to Omnifocus, I would recommend improving perspectives, particularly by making them work consistently in the same fashion; I would recommend improving the repeating task functionality; and I would update the design to better use space, as the app looks cluttered. I suppose scripting is something I would sustain, but I don’t really use scripting any more.

by Vogelmeister

OmniFocus design is starting to look long in the tooth, it hasn’t changed in over 4 years. Lately they have been very slow to update for new features in iOS. I love the app, but even after shelling out all of the cash for the iOS app and Mac app, I’m seriously considering switching to one of the many options with more frequent updates that are steadily increasing value. OmniFocus gets updates but only bug fixes. By the way, I get the feeling that they are on the verge of moving to a subscription model for all their apps. If it becomes mandatory for OmniFocus, that will definitely be the last straw. I don’t need another subscription service that adds no extra value. For those who haven’t bought into this app, I say start somewhere else first and wait to see what the next version of OmniFocus is (if you can wait that long)