How to save a perspective vs how to change view without saving?

I have searched the forum trying to find out how to save a perspective after editing and also read the help file on perspectives. There is a forum post showing a save button but I’m not seeing that button.

It seems like there have been times when I edited the perspective and the changes “stuck” and other times they have not.

If it’s supposed to save automatically, how do I change sorts and groupings without saving?

Use the View > Show View Options menu and there is a save button.

It doesn’t seem to save much though.

It doesn’t save:

  • sidebar view status
  • inspector view status
  • toolbar view status
    or any column/pane widths
    or window position

That’s really interesting because a few times I’ve thought to myself: ‘Why did this perspective change?? I don’t remember changing it and saving it!!’ and other times: ‘Why didn’t this perspective change?? I thought I changed and saved this perspective!!’ But I just blamed it on my carelessness. Maybe there is some sort of bug involved?

When you edit a perspective in the Perspectives window, you’re editing the default state that applies to that perspective in every window. Those changes are always saved immediately.

When you change the current perspective’s View Options (which the exception of the Forecast perspective), you will only affecting the current state of that perspective in the current window. Leaving a perspective and returning to it in the same window will preserve and restore that temporary state, but if you close the window or reset the perspective you’ll go back to its default state.

If you decide you’d like to make your current View Options the default for a perspective, you can use the Save button in the View Options pane. If you’d like to go back to the current saved settings, use the Revert button or just click on the perspective a second time in the sidebar.

The saved default state for a perspective is the only state which is synced to other devices. Your current transient View Options only affect the current window (and are preserved by the window itself).

Hope this helps!

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But to be clear, OF2 does not save these parameters with a Perspective regardless of when/how you do it, correct?

It doesn’t save:

  • sidebar view status
  • inspector view status
  • toolbar view status
    or any column/pane widths
    or window position

Support for restoring those settings with a perspective is on our planned roadmap, but not in the current release (v2.0.1).

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@kcase Is the functionality to restore sidebar view status, inspector view status, and toolbar view status with your perpective restored yet?

My use case is a small window without any of those for focusing on Today’s actions and the rest of my planning, review, etc would have them would show those.

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Bump? Any plans for this?

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What would be the best way to deal with window state vs. iOS/OS X shared perspective? My goal is to have a agenda list of topics to discuss with a contact as a simple window without any tool- and sidebars on OS X with a selected context and the same list on iOS, where window management is rather irrelevant…

Is this still not a replaced feature?

Hi Ken,
That is not what I am experiencing in OmniFocus 2.8.3. When you open a perspective and change something it constantly updates and saves over what you did so you can’t really tweak or change anything quickly without going back to what you had, very frustrating. In the last version of OmniFocus 1(.10.6) and before it would let you run the key command for that perspective and even if it was already the last perspective you opened it would update to be what it was previously saved as, and not update constantly, which is very much the behavior I want (what you described is what I want with the addition of “save as” back again).

I spent a lot of time setting up perspectives and then saving them when I have them as I want. If I need to just change something quickly to see something else I am smart enough to do a “save as” and save over the project or just press the save button again if I need to. Seems more like an oversight than something that would have been purposefully implemented into later releases of OmniFocus 2. The nice thing is that if I close OmniFocus 2 and then go back to that perspective I get the old text from the saved search on a perspective back but the bad thing is it retains the changed “Group Actions By” and “Sort Actions By” that I changed even though I never once saved that perspective again. To me this clearly shows an oversight since it is not even consistent on what it updates with the perspective. I have completely closed the window and all windows and run the key command for the perspective and again closed the application and updates are inconsistent.

I would really like it not to auto save my perspectives and for OmniGroup to also add back the "Save As… choice with showing a check mark on the current perspective so if you do want to update it or overwrite another perspective with the current view options you can quickly. So much more time consuming/wasting in OmniFocus 2.8.3 (which is the last OmniFocus 2 I can have without losing compatibility with OmniFocus 1 for macOS and iOS OmniFocus 1 though I do have version 2 on iOS as well). Hopefully, I am just missing a preference to not autosave perspectives but I don’t see it in the preferences or in the Perspectives menu.