OmniFocus 4.2 ships with improved performance and new custom perspective rules

OmniFocus
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Today we’ve shipped some great new OmniFocus features for macOS, iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, visionOS, and web:

For more details, see today’s blog post: OmniFocus Updates for Everyone.

We’ve improved performance across the board, and introduced new custom perspective rules that support filtering based on dates, repeats, and more.

We’ve also made it easier than ever to install OmniFocus plug-ins, with "Look, Tap, and Approve!” install links.

Enjoy!

7 Likes
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Thank you for the perspective rules on repeating actions! This considerably simplifies my reviews.

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I’m interested in test-driving these improvements. I have to say, my overall view of OmniFocus 4 is pure disappointment, so I hope this improves the user experience.

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Could you share how did you do it?

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@martinewski What do you need?

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I’d like to know how @taglia simplified reviews using the rules on repeating actions. I’d like to have it simplified also, if it applies to my use.

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In most attention areas, which I model using folders in OF, I have two action lists: “Single actions”, and “Recurring”. Grouping recurring actions makes my review easier, but occasionally I create the action and forget to set the repeating rule, or I misplace a recurring action and put it in the wrong project.

The new perspective rules let me create two perspectives:

  1. Repeating actions not stored in a “Recurring” list;
  2. Non-repeating actions in a “Recurring” list.

I check these perspectives during my weekly review: if they are not empty, I made a mistake, and I can fix it straight away. Before this release, I had created a script to do find these mistakes, but perspectives are much better since I can address the problems directly from the perspective (my script only found the items, but then I had to search for them).

I still miss some perspective rules, since I like to use repeating action groups, containing non-repeating actions (since the entire group repeats). What would make my life even easier would be rules operating on an action’s parent (example: actions whose parent is a group and is repeating). Now I use tags to solve this, but again this approach is not perfect since tagging mistakes are possible.

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OK, there I must pass. Just have few repeating actions.

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Thanks for the Repeat filter. It will help me clean my system and do changes faster.

As for dates ¿will it support a date or a range of dates? ¿Can you input past dates (not archived) or only looks forward?

Good update!

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Yes, the new “Has date in range” rules support dates in the past or future or even combinations of the two—such as “between this Monday and this Friday” to show all the dates assigned to weekdays of the current week, whether you’re currently at the beginning of the week, middle of the week, or end of the week.

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That’s great news!