Why aren't deferred items automatically hidden in the Inbox?

Something that always left me puzzled of Omni Focus is that - when using the Inbox in “Available” view - deferring a task does not automatically hide it but just greys it out, so it still clutters my view.

This means that every time I defer a task I also need to switch to some other perspective - say Projects - and then to Inbox again. That’s mouse activity - or a CMD-something + CMD-1 combination - that should not be necessary.

I’ve searched for others talking about the same issue on the forum but could not find anything. Is it just me? Am I missing something? Thanks!

G.

I don’t have a definitive answer, but I suspect this is a GTD thing - you’re not supposed to leave anything in the Inbox once it’s been processed. Either you do it straight away and mark it complete, or triage it into the appropriate project/context. The Inbox is supposed to be nothing more than the place to dump things into OF before processing.

That, of course, does absolutely nothing for your issue - and may be wrong too!

There is a preference setting to move tasks out of the inbox here:

01 PM

I think the OmniFocus philosophy is that we don’t work out of the inbox. It’s a temporary collection of tasks that haven’t been processed yet. We can assign a task a project and/or context to move it out of the inbox.

There have been a few users who posted that they like to work out of the inbox. But I think it’s not the original intent of the inbox. If I get the mail from the post office, I’m going to take the mail to the office and sort it out. I send my mail to my desk inbox. I put my mom’s mail in my briefcase and will deliver it to her when I visit her next week. I dump all the advertisements in the trash can. My bank statements get scanned and go into my notebook app.

I am not going to go the post office and leave some of the mail there. I am not working out of my post office mailbox. I don’t sit at the post office attempting to do my own office work if i’m not employed at the post office.

In the same fashion, I don’t work out of the inbox.

The documentation for using the inbox is here:

https://support.omnigroup.com/documentation/omnifocus/mac/2.4/en/inbox-items-and-actions/#inboxitemsandactions

If you really want to work out of the inbox (not recommended), you can go to the inbox perspective and change the view settings to show available.
12 PM

Enter a defer date then hit Command-K to clean up. Your deferred task will now be hidden.

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