I’ve been a user since OmniFocus 2, and I’ve consistently struggled with a challenge I keep hoping will be addressed in each new version. Now on OmniFocus 4, the issue persists.
My Main Challenges
1. Managing a Laundry List of Perspectives
I often find myself redundantly recreating perspectives because it’s difficult to keep them organized.
I wish perspectives could be organized into folders for better categorization.
A search or filter function (similar to Siri Shortcuts’ UI) would greatly improve usability.
2. Difficulties with Perspective List Management
Reordering Perspectives:
Dragging perspectives to rearrange them is cumbersome, especially when duplicating one. For example, a duplicate appears at the bottom of the list, and moving it to position 10 is unnecessarily frustrating.
Deleting Perspectives:
Deleting a single perspective requires multiple clicks. A keyboard shortcut for deleting a selected perspective would streamline this process.
Bulk deletion is even more frustrating. Cleaning up 10 perspectives currently involves 30 steps: selecting each perspective, clicking the three-dot menu, and confirming deletion. I wish I could simply select multiple perspectives and delete them all at once with a single keyboard shortcut.
As a long-time user, I love OmniFocus and always return to it after trying alternatives. However, perspective management remains a significant pain point that impacts the overall experience. Addressing this would make a great product even better.
This is great feedback. I recommend emailing these requests to Omni if you haven’t already done so.
I extensively use custom perspectives. I use empty perspectives as headings to visually divide them into four groups: Today, Planning, Reviews and System Checks. I also have actions that link to specific perspectives (e.g., “Check for Stalled projects” links to the Projects: Stalled perspective).
@wilsonng How do these pop up buttons work? How have you been able to integrate something into the perspectives bar? I have no Mac and no Keyboard Maestro, but am curious how you can add such functionality inside OF?
Sorry, Keyboard Maestro only works on the Mac. There is no iPhone/iPad equivalent. The OP had tagged this post with “OmniFocus for Mac” and that was what I was answering.
You can follow Tim Stringer’s advice and create dummy perspectives. These acts as dividers between the various groups.
When I went to search for a perspective, I can hit Command-O to trigger the “Quick Open…” search dialog. From here, I can type a project name, tag, or a perspective name to quickly go where I want to go.
It is a floating tools palette that is created using keyboard maestro. When I move my cursor over the floating icon, it expands to show a list of macros. Each macro opens up a different perspective.
You can create floating tools palette for any Mac app you have open.
There is a free trial period for it.
The key to keyboard maestro is that you can use just the features you want. Later you can try out other macros to do other things.
I did a guided daily review using keyboard maestro here
I actually came across this years ago and have been looking for it ever since!
While this helps, the problem I am trying to solve for is slightly different. I really need to clean up my ever growing list of perspectives, of which I am sure some of them are redundant and duplicates because I forget one exists and end up recreating it.
Also, for feature requests, should I just send to their support team or is there another address?
You can send requests to the support address. You can choose Contact Omni from the Help menu (Mac) or Help > Contact Omni (iPhone, iPad) to create an email addressed to omnifocus@omnigroup.com that includes the version of OmniFocus you’re using in the subject field.
I make it a quarterly review to look at all my custom perspectives and see which ones I use often or rarely at all.i used to collect a bunch of custom perspectives from different blogs. They sounded useful but I never really incorporated it into my daily life.i would screenshot the perspective rules and write a little story about why I liked it. Then I just deleted it.
For example, I used to have a custom perspectives for quick tasks that listed all available tasks that had an estimated duration of 5 minutes. I never really used it. I replaced it with a time block where I would do a whole bunch of context related tasks (i.e. any computer tasks or any housekeeping tasks). I didn’t need the custom perspective anymore,
I also got into a daily review habit. I created a keyboard maestro macro that would go from one perspective to the next. I always visited these perspectives daily. I also have a weekly review macro that visited some perspectives that i needed to visit on a weekly basis.
If i encounter a new perspective, i try to see if i can fit it into my daily review or weekly review. If it doesn’t fit in any review, i see if i can use it when i am in worker mode and i news to see this list while I’m working. If I can’t find a use for a new custom perspective in either my review workflow or my worker workflow,up i would just eliminate it.
TLDR review your custom perspectives monthly or quarterly to see if you still need it. Some perspectives are useful for anywhere from 1 day to 1 month. Delete it when i am finished with a situation…
