The UI “overhaul” was mostly to bring many of the Mac-only features to the iPad and iPhone. That included “Focus”, the sidebar panel showing projects or tags in any perspective.
The only UI interface overhaul would be to try to bring inline editing of tasks without going into the inspector. Muscle memory from OF3 sends me to the inspector to change metadata. Now, I’m trying to relearn to set metadata in the outline only. It takes some getting used to.
I can’t carry my Mac Mini around everywhere so I’m grateful that my iPad and iPhone have the Mac-only capabilities. Otherwise, I’d have to wait until I return to the office to do some intense OmniFocus work.
I don´t understand you :(
Today, I’ve received a test Omnifocus 4 for iPad. Obviously it is a beta and it crashes, but I honestly liked it, I see a clean, comfortable and easy to understand interface.
I like it better than Omnifocus 3 and it is still a beta !!
So I’m sorry but I don’t understand you, because in the graphical interface I like it better :)
There are so many improvements in Omnifocus 4 that I could never go back! Among my favourites on the Iphone are one-tap access to the perspectives list from anywhere, full hierarchy – including foldable single-action lists – shown in outline, notes shown in outline, one-tap access to list of all projects (depending on chosen perspective, though), and button for going to last perspective.
I have to admit that I don’t know what you are talking about. Desire to be different? Absolute mess? Cluttered? Not intuitive? Weird? Badly created? It seems like you are talking about the Ipad version, as you mention missing keyboard shortcuts, and I have mostly used the Iphone version, but to me, the layout in OF 4 looks familiar from OF 3, with the improvement that I can have the perspectives list always shown. In my opinion, The Omni Group have made a great job in giving more convenient access to different features than before, not by making things different but by making more features accessible when you need them. If I should guess, you might dislike the dedicated row of metadata icons added in one of the latest updates. So do I. I can understand the idea to create larger tap targets, but if I see a flag on a task, it is certainly not intuitive to tap on the task to show a row of icons, and there tap on another flag than the one that is coloured to unflag the task… I hope we will get a better solution for such things. I was satisfied with the earlier solution – tapping on the icons that actually showed the information I intended to change.
You could also tap on name of the shown perspective to go back to the dashboard. That might be more convenient. The swipe gestures have not yet been fully implemented in OF 4, and The Omni Group are interested to hear if there are specific gestures we would like to see re-implemented. Just like you, I miss the possibility to go back to the dashboard and have suggested that. That would be even more convenient than in OF 3, as you only could go back step by step there (I had to swipe three times when I just tried it from the project I was working in).
I think it’s possibly heading in the right direction, personally I think the mass (mess) of icons in the outline view on a smaller device needs work and certainly the ability to turn them off in favour of the inspector if you prefer. There are a lot of improvements over OF3 but at present the “inline inspector” concept on PhoneOS needs a lot of work and revisions.
What the beta has done is push me to investigate alternatives in case OmniGroup do not end up with a phone app I feel happy using. The problem is most other personal task managers do not come close except for 2Do which if it was more actively developed would for me be a serious contender and probable first choice.
I don’t miss the main dashboard screen. I only pop in there when I want to switch perspectives. Most of the time, I’ll just hide it. Having Quick Open and the Focus panel has made OF4 a worthwhile jump.
I have been trying to get used to the OmniFocus 4 beta and I had to reframe in my mind that it is more like an alpha. I hope I am right that there are a lot of improvements that need to be made and that it is a long way away from release. It really feels that Omni’s desire to create a general outliner library that can be shared across applications is getting in the way of creating the next generation todo app. Dragging items around in the outline view doesn’t even work like I thought it would. Have really been trying to force myself to use it but tend to go back to OF3 a lot. Really have been trying to find alternatives as I am pretty scared in the direction I see.
Visit the Help screen inside the Settings to become familiar with the new UI changes. The Help screen is still changing because the Testflight is still in progress. It is helpful enough to get you comfortable.
I did offer a suggestion to the feedback email to start introducing Help screens that would pop up the first time you tap on a button.
I redownloaded OF3 back on to my phone just to check back on it and forgot that first time users would get those help screens when I tapped on a button or a perspective for the first time.
No need to worry. The Omni Group have deliberately made the test versions accessible earlier than usual to get feedback confirming that they are going in the right direction. I was also concerned about how dragging (not) worked until I read a post by Ken Case in Slack from 18th July starting ”Yes, sorry, we don’t consider our current level of drag and drop support to be anywhere near feature complete.” He further explained why it hasn’t been better implemented yet: ”The reason we have support in the app at all right now is because we wanted to make sure that it would be possible to implement on top of our new tech stack: we didn’t want to spend all our time rebuilding on SwiftUI just to discover at the last second that there was some critical bug blocking us from being able to complete the intended experience.”
Janov, I’m with you, big time. Haven’t deleted it yet but am about to. Notes from other users about the ‘improvements’ are well articulated but to me, my reason for deletion is the exact same as you: the interface is a giant step backwards. I live in the Forecast module and the old one is light years better; not even debatable to me. OF 4 is so bad in my eyes, if they keep the interface the same as the Beta, I’m going back to Things; it’s that bad to me. The bane of developers everywhere is touching an interface that has stood the test of time.
I’ve been using OF 4 beta on my iPad. The experience was stressing me out too much so I deleted it, dropped out of the beta program, and went back to OF 3. Much better. I found the new interface overwhelming and not to my liking. The colors are jarring. I was confused between dates and the number of tasks due on the forecast calendar. I found the forecast listing overwhelming.
I understand this is a beta and things are still being nailed down and finalized. I’m good with that. But I’ll wait to see what the finished product looks like and may make a change to something else if this is what they decide to stick with this approach. I’ve been using OF since 2010 and OF 4 on the iPad is probably the first time I’ve seriously looked into other Task Management tools. I love OF 3 on iOS, iPadOS, and MacOS and as it is right now it works great for me. I understand that everyone has their own use case, but OF 4 in its current state is just too jarring and visually unappealing for my tastes.
The bane of developers everywhere is touching an interface that has stood the test of time.
It very much comes down to subjectives. Because I feel the opposite very strongly.
Years ago when I started using OF, I loved the powerful features but the UX and UI on iOS is not good at all in my experience. It has been so full of friction that I’ve always considered switching to this day, because it is so bad on mobile. I for my part hope Omni will be bold enough to bring fresh UX researchers on board and evolve OF in new ways.
It does come down to subjectives, certainly personal taste, use and workflow. I live in the Mac version and specifically the Forecast perspective so that drives a whole lot of my commentary. For me, the single most valuable thing of OF period is the combining of your calendar and your tasks in a comprehensively factual display. My biggest push would, if I lived in the iOS versions, certainly be pushing the UX along; it does look mid 90’s. My parallel push that garners my biggest push wish is reporting development. I’d love to see good reporting and not a ‘you can develop it yourself in AppleScript’ or others. But still a fan, I’ll have to say that.
I just asked about the implications of running iOS / iPad OS betas in the Slack channel. I’m keen to carry on the beta’ing process as this has been one of active discussion with OmniGroup - as betas should be.
I use the iOS versions of Omnifocus mainly as a companion to the MacOS version. I see many advantages in the new OF 4 on iOS, but I do agree with @Janov that the interface is getting cluttered, especially on the iPhone. It is very difficult to create a great UI/ UX that has all the features of a full blown desktop application available in an iOS app (especially iPhone).
Personally I would be happy with a simplified view of my tasks when I’m on the go. This might be something that can be achieved (in the future) by having a choice on which options to have available in the outline by default.
To me this is reminiscent of the first v2 of OmniFocus they pushed out then scrapped completely, albeit only the Mac version. The design was so bad they couldn’t continue with it and to some extent I see that happening here as well particularly on the iPhone version.
I started beta testing yesterday and frankly probably won’t be for long. Whilst it works better on the iPad, it is unusable on the iPhone in its current form. From a UI/UX perspective it is a major step backwards. I appreciate that it is in beta but it just doesn’t feel me with confidence that the end product will be much different.
To list some…
The UI is just a blast of icons, too many, many far too small, indiscernible, not intuitive. An action on the iPhone has a very long list of icons to set the various elements, so many that they drop off the right hand side of the screen and have to wrap around to a second row. Little meaning as to what they are, you have to guess. And a very obvious omission of one to set the project, please tell me I don’t have to set it via the (I) button off on a separate part of the UI?
The new Forecast is now just taking up valuable real estate without providing justification for it. This has now taken a big step back from v3.
Any view which lists actions and projects has little visual distinction between the 2.
The project related status icons are now so small you can’t read them.
I had hoped that v4 was going to remove some of the complex UI manoeuvrability and simplify action and project management, but it appears you still need to work your way through 4 columns of UI to do this, probably at least the same as v3.
Some elements which I am hoping are just beta snags, like the spinning update wheel nearly on every view change, and the awful large grey block which describes the current view filtering.
To me the iPhone version is pretty much just a shrunk down version of the iPad one and which doesn’t work on that form factor from UI/UX perspective.
To me this doesn’t indicate a move forward for these 2 versions, rather the opposite. I can see a lot of work has gone into them, and hats off to the developers, but I hope this evolves much further than what it currently is.
