OMNIFOCUS FANTASTICAL MAC

With the new look, though, come concerns about information density and the way lists of actions are presented, and I wonder whether The Omni Group will eventually offer settings for this. Icons in the sidebar are large, easily tappable, and highlighted with color when they’re selected or contain due items the layout for Projects, Actions, and Folders isn’t dramatically different from before, but the sidebar organization, new Inspector, and little tweaks (such as understandable View options and simpler Perspective creation process) make the app easier to navigate and less intimidating. I like the new design: OmniFocus was feeling outdated, but personal taste aside I do believe the sidebar-Inspector combo makes for a faster, more intuitive way of navigating OmniFocus. OmniFocus 2 sports a modern and cleaner design with a new sidebar on the left, an integrated Inspector as a panel on the right (reminiscent of Apple’s latest iWork suite), lots of popovers, retooled layouts, and “checkcircles” in lieu of checkboxes. Hence, this is not a review of OmniFocus 2: rather, take it as a collection of notes and points from someone who hasn’t played with OmniFocus in a while but who used to really, really like it.Ĭlean new look and fast navigation. To some people like my friend Stephen and thousands of others who manage teams, work on multiple projects, or generally have different requirements than mine, OmniFocus is an absolutely invaluable tool with its start dates, notes, attachments, contexts, quick entry, and more. That doesn’t mean, however, that I can’t be curious about OmniFocus 2 or ponder, from a user interface and experience standpoint, the decisions taken by The Omni Group for their desktop follow-up to the complete iOS 7 redesign launched last September. Last year, I came to the conclusion that OmniFocus was too complex for my needs, and I’m okay with it. Apple’s built-in sharing feature for Reminders has been a nice plus, and I like the fact that I can rely on Siri to quickly save todos when I’m driving and can’t type. Thanks to Fantastical’s frictionless experience with natural language input, I’ve found myself dictating reminders and events on a more frequent basis so I never forget what’s coming up. Since switching to Reminders, I’ve spent time writing, reading, and playing videogames rather than tweaking my todo systems, which feels good. 1 But I loved tweaking and playing with OmniFocus, even though I knew that my life was simpler than the app.

I manage my team’s assignements in a plain text note and chat with them on a messaging service I “track” my articles with research material in Evernote and I publish them when they’re ready for my personal life, I go grocery shopping with my girlfriend because it’s one of those moments when I can take my mind off work. I don’t need to create ten projects for MacStories and organize them in folders with contexts and start dates because, in reality, what I do for this website doesn’t have many ramifications or strict deadlines.

OMNIFOCUS FANTASTICAL MAC

I was a heavy OmniFocus user: I set up my own syncing system on a dedicated Mac mini server, used scripts to visualize my task library as a mind map, and tweaked the iOS app to sync more often.

Perhaps it’s the fact that I’m fortunate enough to have a straightforward work life, or that when I was using OmniFocus on my Mac and iOS devices, I spent more time organizing tasks and fiddling than actually doing stuff. But as an old OmniFocus user who switched over to Apple’s less flexible Reminders and stayed with it in spite of its (sometimes disarming) simplicity, I thought it’d be interesting to evaluate OmniFocus 2 with a fresh pair of eyes and a genuine curiosity for the work put into this new version. It’s with this mindset that I approached OmniFocus 2 for Mac, released today as a new version of The Omni Group’s popular GTD software: fundamentally, I don’t need the app. I’ve been using Apple’s Reminders and Calendar with iCloud as my primary todo systems for over a year now, and my schedule hasn’t been disrupted by a cataclysm of missed appointments and overflowing todo lists. Over the years, I’ve come to realize that all I need, really, is just a list of things to remember and some calendar events. There was a time when I thought that I needed a powerful GTD app to be productive.

Omnifocus fantastical