Omnifocus 3 sidebar (on the far left, Inbox icon, perspectives, etc) width

[DugB]

I’m pretty sure this has been brought up before. Given that there was no change in OF3, does anybody know what the thinking is among the developers (hoping they are reading) about why the sidebar is a fixed width that cannot be dragged right?

My issue is that the name of my perspectives is often more than 10 characters or so and so they always get cut off. Now you can mouse over them and get their names, but a little more space would be nice so I could use two or 3 more words and actually see them on the left.

Seems like a small insignificant feature change, but given the sidebar width has been fixed for a LONG time I’m wondering if there is some fundamental reason (either conceptually) or maybe the code is written where it would make that really hard to accomplish?

thanks!

[ryanjamurphy]

I have the same issue with the length of perspective names. Descriptive, definitive titles are better according to GTD lore, but it’s hard to use that level of declaration with OF sometimes. So I, too, am hoping for some improvements here as part of Omni’s focus on UX/UI this year.

[kcase]

@DugB

Given that there was no change in OF3, does anybody know what the thinking is among the developers (hoping they are reading) about why the sidebar is a fixed width that cannot be dragged right?

I’m sorry, I don’t understand. OmniFocus most certainly does let you resize the sidebar by dragging its divider to the right. Here’s the default width:

And here’s what happens when I drag right:

The only time it doesn’t allow you to resize the sidebar is if you’ve made the window as narrow as it can be given your current sidebars (navigation sidebar and inspector). If you can’t make the content area any smaller than it already is, then yes, OmniFocus will refuse to let you make the sidebar larger. The solution in this case is to resize the window itself to be larger, at which point you can resize the sidebar to fill the extra space.

Hope this helps!

[patmaddox]

I think DugB is referring to the list of perspectives on the far left.

I end up using acronyms / shorthand for perspective names, because long perspective names get cut off.

[DugB]

Apologies, what do you call the far left with the inbox, etc in it?

That’s the bar I’d like to resize left or right. My Custom perspectives are simply longer than the text that is allowed width wise.

[kcase]

Oh, sorry, that makes sense—sorry I didn’t read the original problem description more carefully! Yes, the current design for those perspectives isn’t a good match for long perspective names.

There are three other ways to open a perspective which do handle long names well: the simplest is the Perspectives menu, but some people like using the Perspectives window (with the perspective details hidden). My personal favorite is the Quick Open command (Command-O), because you can keep your hands on the keyboard and typically find your target perspective with just a few relevant letters from its name and possibly a few presses of the arrow keys.

Thanks for your patience with my misunderstanding!