iOS App redesign?

Totally agree on this. I quit OF on iPad and moved to Thingsapp. Way superior experience. Keep using OF for business only on Mac.
And sorry to disagree with others. I do not see a limitation on IOS by itself I rather see a poor design on OF IOS version, to the point to be useless for me.

1 Like

I’ve moved to Things because the iPad experience was horrible.

2 Likes

I’ve been juggling between tick tick, Todoist, things 3 and OmniFocus and finally settling on things 3. Support for OmniFocus is outstanding but I’m way more productive with a more straightforward app that works fast and seamlessly. I don’t like tapping on a lot of icons to get to places and OmniFocus really needs to show all folders and projects on the main page without needing to create a perspective for them. I see everything I need to see when I load up things and everything just feels so intuitive which makes it such a joy to use. OmniFocus 2 gave me a headache when I tried to use it and 3 is better but still annoying and tedious to use IMO.

1 Like

I still like my iPad home screen showing perspectives. But I’d like to tap on a perspective in home screen and then the left sidebar switches to show a Projects list or a Tags list. That’s what I’m able to do on my Mac but unable to do it on my iPad.

Hopefully the much discussed UI update for 2019 will remedy this.

3 Likes

I share the frustration on iOS and hope everyone has been mailing the support team. In terms of UI/UX, Things 3 is miles ahead (not so much regarding features). Creating tasks and organising actions in OF3 takes too much time and effort, it hardly earns the term ‘flow’ in workflow.

2 Likes

5 posts were split to a new topic: Omni and Marzipan

The problem is that we don’t give amnesia a chance – all the subtle processes of selective neural pruning that go on at night are wasted in the morning by the mindlessly obdurate memory of the software.

Perhaps it’s analogous to the problem identified in the Edward Luttwak article on war (https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/1999-07-01/give-war-chance) – that imposed ceasefires are very well intentioned, but also have the unintended side-effect of allowing both sides to recover and rearm before the fire has really burned out, and when the cease-fire breaks down, the war is thereby intensified and prolonged.

Similarly, imposed reminders of things that would naturally have been forgotten actually make it much harder to cope with long-run overload.

A radical redesign might well look not unlike a pencil and paper bullet journal, but even that won’t function properly if we’re artificially prevented from forgetting, fail to lose the journal occasionally, or don’t gradually build the muscle-tone required to simply draw a line through a lot of things.

Give forgetfulness a chance – it’s a delicate and sophisticated natural system.

4 Likes

The problem is that we don’t give amnesia a chance – all the subtle processes of selective neural pruning that go on at night are wasted in the morning by the mindlessly obdurate memory of the software.

I wholeheardetly agree with you on this. This is what I personally use the Review section for: it’s an opportunity to go through every open loop I have and close it by either doing something, or by just deleting it. I still prefer putting everything in OF, and be reminded about it every now and then during the review phase, than keep everything inside my brain, with the risk that stuff pops up randomly when I cannot act on it (which is typicaly when things do pop up in your brain).

The bigger problem with the current design is that, I feel, it makes it difficult to do things that you have to do. Forgetfulness is a great natural way to get rid of stuff you might want to do, but which is not really fundamental. But when you have items that you must do, it’s currently a bit too easy to end up inside the big blog of undoability I mentioned in my comment above.

2 Likes

(Indeed – software can do many interesting things, but it’s not a route out from the constraints and tensions embedded in human relationships like employment).

Still waiting for ability to hide tags on iOS. Just too much clutter.

1 Like

You might consider signing up for the 3.3 TestFlight. It adds a tag hiding option:
https://www.omnigroup.com/test/omnifocus-dropped-actions

2 Likes

Dude. You just made my day.

1 Like

Oh, mine, too!

EDIT: I thought you meant excluding tags from being included in custom perspectives, not just not showing them. Oh, well.

I advise it. It’s very good!

Glad I found this thread — it’s good to know that I’m far from the only one who finds the current state of iOS OmniFocus to be awful in terms of UX. Since the advent of the latest generation of iPad Pro, I’ve been using that device significantly more than my laptop, especially when it comes to single-focus efforts like, say, task management. The iPad version of OF is so bad for this that I find myself entirely skipping my daily review regularly, to the point that I had to create a Streaks task just for tracking whether I’ve updated my OF daily (and I often don’t any more).

The primary difference between good software and bad software is very rarely in the feature set, it’s in how accessible and usable those features are. On my iPhone, I’m finding myself using a Shortcuts widget to navigate within OF because the native options for moving between perspectives and views is so bad.

1 Like

I agree totally. I like OF3 on iOS much much better than on Mac.

1 Like

Things 3 on iPad has the best keyboard shortcuts of any iPad app out there.

1 Like

Hello!

This is my first post here as I have just started using OF and absolutely love it. I have tried Todoist and Things 3 and Tick Tick etc. and I am very curious as to why people don’t seem to like the UI of OF in comparison? I hear people talk a lot about Things 3 design and have often wondered why… What is better about their design? The floating plus button…?

Personally, I LOVE the design of OF! And it’s so incredibly customisable that I am surprised by the negative comments.

Very best,

J

1 Like

This sounds like you either have, or have taken too much on. No one person can cope with 1000s of tasks.

You need to really be able to understand what’s Live\Available and what needs doing today so when it’s time to work you can identify a few tasks to choose from.

What I’d be tempted to do is have a Someday \ Maybe list for “Nice to have” tasks. Pause the list and put any such tasks on there. Then check this list once a month to see if anything needs putting live.

Agree with the comment about 1,000’s of tasks, I run my entire business in OF and it copes admirably but no way do I have 1,000’s of tasks.

My take is iOS works pretty well on an iPad but I can not understand how anybody can use OF on a phone for anything more than quick entry or completion of tasks, phone screens are tiny, compared to a lap/desktop so getting a system that is the same as a desktop is a pipe dream.

As for the UI, is it really that bad that you can’t use it? To me that is a pretty ridiculous statement, don’t want to use it maybe, that’s a big difference and just a personal thing

The oft quoted things app which I tried for a day before it fell apart may be fine for simple usage but try creating SAL’s they show pie charts which bear no reality to the number of tasks in them, so maybe the interface is not that good.

I would challenge anyone here who complains about iOS being so bad to come up with anything better that will hold up to the rigours of numerous custom perspectives, multi tagging, very complex workflows in some cases and not fall apart, especially when having to cope with 12.9 iPads and the iPhone SE small screen, which it currently manages.

I am not saying it can not be done but it a lot easier to complain than to do that’s all. Personally I would rather have something build by programmers and works than something built by UI designers which likely will not.

2 Likes