Bug:
In OmniFocus 1, the +" (shift+"/’) keyboard shortcut both shows notes, and hides notes for the selected task, when the keyboard shortcut is pressed.
In OmniFocus 2, it is a one-way process – the keyboard shortcut only opens it, but fails to hide it.
Is this function intended, or perhaps an overlooked bug?
Thanks.
The current behavior is intentional, though understandably confusing for fans of OmniFocus 1.
Command-’ jumps between the note and title, expanding the note if necessary.
Command-Option-’ shows or hides the note.
Lizard this is very frustrating because you have to use a cognitive process of identifying if a note already contains any data – if you hit ⌥⌘+’ and there is nothing in the note, it doesn’t open, so you have to then do ⌘+’
But then if you do ⌘+’ to edit a note, you can’t do ⌘+’ to close it, you have to switch to ⌥⌘+’
At the very least, ⌥⌘+’ should always open a note, even if it is an empty note.
The single key in OF1 was so much better. What was the problem that needed a solution in this case? It wasn’t broken and in years of using it I never encountered an issue with the note being available immediately for editing, as opposed to view only.
Of all the functions since I switched to OF2, this one is driving my crazy the most.
It seems like you want to see all of the notes that are there. Have you tried using the function to show all notes?
Then you’ll know if there is or isn’t a note: it’s either there or isn’t.
If you have many tasks with Notes, Showing all notes is not the answer. You’ll get lost on what you were looking for.
I agree with the original poster. This modal “view notes” configuration is the worst of both worlds. Can we get back to the original OF1 design?
Can we at least get the latest release of OF2 to not make the menu entries “Hide All Notes” and “Show All Notes” to be non-modal, so that us Applescripters can easily HideAll or ShowAll (less likely) all the notes?
Currently, there’s no keyboard shortcut to clean up the list and show unexpanded entries. As @Rockyroad said, doing so involves a cognitive “scan and see if any entries are expanded” process.
There is a hack where you could write an applescript to “Show All Notes”, and then do a “Hide All Notes” but that is fairly stupid because of the CPU thrashing and kludginess.
I, too, find the new behavior unnecessarily awkward. Fortunately, it is very easy to fix with Keyboard Maestro.
The following simple macro hides the note if it is currently visible, and if it’s not visible or there is no note, it triggers Edit Note, which allows you to either just look at the note or edit it:
If I recall correctly, this is exactly how OF1 behaves.
By the way, Keyboard Maestro is really perfect for easily fixing little points of friction such as this one. For OmniFocus 2 alone, I currently have 19 Keyboard Maestro like the one above that make the app much more efficient for me to use, especially if you want to be able to keep both hands on the keyboard at all times.
