Request: OmniFocus Team Request - useless Inbox and 3D Touch is useless too

Dear Omnigroup Team!

You never listen to feedback and when I face that I want to give up on OmniFocus. This moment is now (I’m kind of using it for 5 years now or something like that).

I must say that I personally and my team stopped using Inbox part of OmniFocus. You would say that we’re “not GTD-compliant” or something like “use another software” or “OmniFocus follows the rules that you will never understand”… But I need to say that. We stopped using Inbox because it never displays the number of items in it. You know Inbox supposed to remind what I have to process but when you have like 5,000 tasks and there’s no indication that Inbox has at least 5 items - it’s useless.

For the same reason 3D Touch is totally useless for me - it creates an item in the Inbox that never gets processed.

So we ended up creating an Inbox inside Projects view and put our tasks in there.

So I have a request (even if you don’t listen the US is a free speech country so at least somebody will listen). Make 3D touch create an item anywhere else but not in Inbox (last used view)? Or make Inbox display the number of items in it - in the UI of the software (that will be much more useful than anything else).

Thank you.

This month will show if I finally give up on you software. I’m so tired of you guys fixing everything except something that hardcore users ask to.

But have you found anything that can adequately replace OmniFocus?

At this moment, I think it is still early for 3D Touch. Developers are still trying to figure out how to utilize 3D Touch in their UI design. Beyond Apple’s own apps, the third party developers are still trying to figure out how 3D Touch can enhance their apps.

I think there is a long list on the OmniGroup wall that probably has higher priority for development or has received more votes/feedback. Feature requests such as tags and multiple contexts probably has higher priority than 3D Touch.

I have no idea why you can’t see the number of items in the Inbox. It always has a number here. Some setting you changed or actually a bug? I assume you have contacted omnigroup about that by mail, and if not, you really should. They are very helpful.

But actually, I don’t care for a number on the inbox.Cleaning my inbox is part of my daily morning-routine. So items can’t hang around any longer than a single day (or sometimes perhaps a whole weekend) in my inbox before I process them.

I have no opinion about 3D Touch as I don’t have the hardware to use it and I don’t plan to update my hardware anytime soon.

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Sorry, I didn’t make it clear - I mean number of items in the Inbox on a Mac. Is there a way to see it in the interface without entering the Inbox?

We have 5 macs and this problem becomes quite annoying - our folks add items (with 3D Touch) to the Inbox and they never get processed.

For me it is not clear what benefit do you have if you know the exact number of items in the inbox?
There is an indicator that something is in there and has to be processed.
However, when the exact number is so important for you, you can automatically run an Applescript each morning which adds an important/due task e.g. “Proces 5 tasks in the inbox”. You would just need a few lines of code for doing this.

If you haven’t done so, you need to raise this as a request via the support email address. There isn’t a way of doing what you want on the Mac. I expect it’s because of OF’s origins as a GTD utility - as someone else said, you’re supposed to process your inbox frequently and assign stuff to wherever.

However, there are plenty of people using OF who don’t follow GTD, and if, for example, you have users who use their Inbox as a kind of handy to-do list, I can see why the item could would be useful.

If that is how they operate, I’m not sure that OF is the best choice, but you’ll know the answer to that

I don’t think that OF’s origins has anything to do with the lack of item count in the inbox, as there was such a count in OF1. But it might have something to do with the cleaner look in OF2. To me, it’s fine with the grey ribbon indicating that there are items in the inbox waiting for processing, and I really like the changes The Omni Group have made in OF2 to make the app easier to understand and use.

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