Feature request: keyboard shortcut change for Delete Object and addition of Trash

OmniFocus
1

I just sent this to Omni Support, but figured this would be useful here as well:

I’ve been using the trial of OmniFocus 2 for a number of days, and I really love it and want to buy it. However, there is one major issue that is keeping me from purchasing it. I keep running into the problem accidentally deleting a database object like actions, projects, folders, lists, and then not being able to fish it out of a “trash” section.

Today I accidentally deleted a folder with a number of projects and actions. I tried to undo with Cmd + Z, but somehow screwed up the process so that I could no longer undo properly. I reverted to a backup, but the backup wasn’t completely up to do date so I lost a bunch of stuff I had entered, some of which I could not remember afterwards.

It seems to me that the following are fairly standard features on similar apps that would be great on OmniFocus:
The ability to change the delete keyboard shortcut (Cmd + Del is fairly standard on Mac, I feel), so things aren’t deleted by mistake. In addition, changing the default shortcut to Cmd + Del would probably be useful.
A trash folder that holds all of the deleted objects (actions, projects, lists, etc.) until the user chooses to empty the trash, and the ability to allow the user to restore those objects from the trash back to the “active” projects section.
A confirmation message when deleting objects that asks the user something along the lines of: “Are you sure you want to delete ‘XXXX’ project?"

I really love your app, and want to buy it and tell all my friends and family to buy it, but this single issue is stopping me from purchasing it and making me stuck with Evernote, which is definitely an inferior solution for my needs. As an end user, I can’t risk the chance that I will accidentally delete a work folder with projects and tasks and maybe not even notice and then maybe just miss a deadline because it wasn’t in OmniFocus. To me, this issue make me not feel comfortable relying on Omnifocus, so it’s a big deal-breaker.

I also searched your forums for potential fixes and found I wasn’t the only one with this issue. See:
https://discourse-test.omnigroup.com/t/accidental-delete-context-change-to-command-delete/22396/11
https://discourse-test.omnigroup.com/t/delete-action-accidentally-deleting-entries/12103
https://discourse-test.omnigroup.com/t/where-does-a-deleted-item-go-ios-or-mac/37689
https://discourse-test.omnigroup.com/t/how-to-recover-accidental-deletion-of-folder-containing-multiple-projects/15725

The suggestions from staff and users have been:
Restore from backup - this is an unreliable kludge, and not the intended function for the purpose, and does not address the fact that accidental deletions can easily happen
Change the keyboard shortcut for delete with a 3rd-party program - this is a kludgy workaround
Hit Ctrl + Z immediately after you notice the object has disappeared - this is also an unreliable kludge, and does not address the fact that accidental deletions can easily happen

Please consider adding the features I and other users have suggested! I would be so happy to buy and be able to use your app if you were to put those features on the roadmap for this year.

Thanks for your consideration,
Andrew

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Dear Andrew thank you for summing up everything. I am demanding this feature also since a year. I just can hope that more people get aware of this huge problem and can send an E-Mail with a request to Omnigroup. Because that is the only thing what they look at while implementing new features: How many people requested the feature over which period of time. In hope that Omnifocus will get more secure in the future…

Konti

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And it happened again to me today. While I was working very intense I wanted to delete some tasks, which I did. Later I realized that they had some notes in the note view so I had to recover those tasks back. Going to the backup archive is so brudensome, why dear OF WHY are you torturing your users?! I mean the developers say themselves that they are using OF for their private life. How can it be that they are SO reckless with their tasks? Im getting frustated since 1.5 year!

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Completely agree, and I hope this gets shipped soon.

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Ken wrote something about this:

https://discourse-test.omnigroup.com/t/where-does-a-deleted-item-go-ios-or-mac/6679/15?u=kontikonsumi

6

Couldn’t we have just a simple trash can with an “automatically empty” time setting? That way we could retrieve our mistakes.

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Totally agree with you, Boatguy, that a trash can would be great to have. I ended up buying Omnifocus and am very happy with it except for this issue - I ended using workarounds to disable the delete command, which is a pain, but better than losing a project by accident.

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8

Unbelievable that there’s no trash.
I understand what coders think when create OF, but they should accept the needs of users.

Things has the trash.

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I come back to this forum once a while to see whether something happened regarding this request. It so so frustating, since many people are asking for it from time to time ad it so essential… I really dont understand why Omnigroup does this. Please evrybody write to the support to add this feature. I am highly cautiious everytime I open OF, because I dont want to delete sth. accidentially…

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10

I, too, would like a trash bin. It’s too easy to delete a task when you meant to press complete, or some other action, and then there’s no recovery.

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11

I wish more people were aware of how easy it is to unknowingly lose data with OmniFocus and would file requests for either a confirmation prompt when deleting items or a change of the Delete command to ⌘Delete (at omnifocus@omnigroup.com; posting here on the forums does not help!). The more requests they receive, the sooner they will implement this basic protection against data loss.

I’m actually really disappointed they haven’t done so already, because this would be a relatively minor task, and there is nothing worse than silent data loss, especially considering that the whole point of GTD is to have a trusted system. Plus, people don’t delete tasks frequently, so changing the hotkey from Delete to ⌘Delete, would not really cause any inconveniences.

If you are lucky, you accidentally delete a whole project (ideally an important one), because in that case, you’ll soon realize your mistake, so you can restore the project from your backups. It’s much worse, if you accidentally delete a single task that was scheduled for some point in the future. This happened to me (probably while thinking an app on the second screen was the active one), and I only realized that the task had gone missing when it was already 2 weeks overdue. Ouch.

I love OmniFocus to death, but I really hate how it has made me paranoid, wondering every time I cannot find a task whether I never actually created it or whether OmniFocus let me silently delete it with a single misplaced press of the Delete key.

So everyone, please send an email to omnifocus@omnigroup.com and ask for a confirmation prompt when deleting items or a change of the Delete command to ⌘Delete. Please.

1 Like
12

@parahippocampus I agree with you. I made similar comments in the past (Where does a deleted item go? Trash Bin in Omnifocus?)

I would prefer having a confirmation prompt, and a setting to turn it off for people that prefer the current behaviour. I realise that this has a development cost, but it might be worth it to reduce the risk and worry of accidental deletions of whole branches of your data.

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13

It’s also wild how powerful the spacebar is in OmniFocus.

If a top level object is selected - one accidental stroke of the spacebar and it’s marked a completed. In my system this has the same productivity repercussions as an accidental delete.

If this was offered as a preference option, I would completely disable this feature.

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14

Thank you @parahippocampus @MultiDim and @Minus.app for talking about this again and sharing your problems too. The biggest reason I alwas come to this forum is to check whether something changed regarding this issue. It is truly frustating an I also do not understand why Omnifocus does not move here. Ken Case wrote around 2018 in the forum, that he also thinks this is a useful feature once. since than nothing happened and the support told me that many people do not request this feature. The reason why many dont do is because they are not really aware of the problem…
I hope we can keep this issue alive until it can be solved.

I will E-Mail to the support again with a follow up email: omnifocus@omnigroup.com

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I want to keep this alive. I just realized I unknowingly deleted an important project 2 weeks ago because I went hunting for it. There really should be a way to protect at least a project (and maybe an action?) from deletion. I can see how this should probably be an opt-in thing, but it is way, way to easy for a large project to just evaporate.

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keeping this thread “alive” won’t do anything. Speaking to support is the best way to make them aware of your feelings (courteously) via email.

17

Thank you. I am chasing this huge issue with OF since 4 years. I hope more people get aware of it and cpmplain to the support about it. What they told me is: they will only act on this issue, if they have an enough amount of people…