Reorganize Sidebar

Unless I’m missing something, there’s no way to reorganize the sidebar is there? For instance, let’s say I want a custom perspective near the top, currently there’s no way to do that. Any plans? Not a huge deal, but would be helpful for me. I know keyboard shortcuts are an option, but I’m a weirdo.

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Agreed, a needed feature. You can reorganise by starring perspectives in order you want them, but surely not the long term solution.

We’re thinking about how best to provide this interface in the app, but if you’re feeling adventurous, you can actually do this now:

First, make sure you’ve “starred” a perspective to give it a permanent home in your sidebar.

Next, we’re going to reset your sidebar so that you can find your perspective’s permanent id by opening this URL:

omnifocus:///change-preference?SidebarTabs

All your tabs will be reset to their basic settings, and you’ll see a dialog that looks something like this:

In that screenshot, my perspective’s id is “hdDT8UyDkVe”, and I’m going to move it to the top of my sidebar and drop everything else except for Forecast and the Inbox by changing that preference setting:

omnifocus:///change-preference?SidebarTabs=(hdDT8UyDkVe,ForecastTab,InboxTab)

Voila! My sidebar now includes just the items I want, in the order I want them:

If something goes wrong, I can reset the sidebar using that original link.


But, again, we’re thinking about how best to provide an interface to this in the app—we don’t expect every user to go through this adventure!

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Thanks Ken!

CMD click + hold on the tab, and then drag to reorder. That would be the most intuative way.

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Sorry, for being a bit dense Ken. But how do you use the link ? Where do I enter that link within Omnifocus ?

You just enter the URLs in Safari! That’ll do the trick.

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How about an ios appletv like interface? Long mouse down, rearrange while wiggling, then click away to set. Maybe instead of wiggle use rounded relief rectangles to make the items look like buttons temporarily and keep with the minimal-rectangle-border look.

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How about just click and drag in sidebar? That’s what I tried first to see if the feature was available.

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I think there needs to be a little barrier or someone is bound to inadvertently move a tile around or off while moving a finger over the trackpad and not realize what they’ve done. This is along the same lines as no longer being able to just drag an icon out of the dock, although you can try, with just a simple click/drag. Press and hold might be enough, but I’d still like a visual indication that movement is possible which the dock does not do.

Another subtle cue idea; temporarily turn the lines between the tiles into dashed lines.

I was thinking mostly about a simple drag to reorder. It’s a good point about accidentally removing something, though I just tested this out on my dock, and it is still drag to reorder, and drag off to delete - no extra key combo needed. An app won’t get removed from the dock until you drag it far enough to get the little puff of smoke icon. I think using the same design for moving tabs would help keep the interface consistent with what mac users already know.

For the time being, you can reorganize perspectives by changing the order from Show Perspectives. They will be under the default list though.

The adventure is over! Coming in the next build:

Built-in perspectives are now treated much more like other perspectives: they’re available from the Perspectives menu and as customizable toolbar items, and they’re also included in the Perspectives List. This means you can reorder them and choose whether they should appear in the sidebar just like any other perspective. In the future, you will also be able to edit their keyboard shortcuts and default settings using the Perspectives List, but that part is not yet finished.

(Since you can access them from the menu and toolbar and keyboard shortcuts, it’s perfectly reasonable to hide them from your sidebar if you wish and access them using one of the other methods.)

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This is a great feature! Thank you.