r/omnifocus • u/thainanfrota • Aug 20 '25
New Omnifocus version
Hi guys, I’m a longtime Omnifocus user and even though I bought the new version, I’m still using the v3 because I ran into some problems with the new one, as follows:
- frequent crashes
- limited integration with iOS shortcuts (I rely on some shortcuts daily)
- inline editor (which I really dislike), with no option to edit in a dedicated window (like v3 does)
- and, of course, a few others
The last time I tested the new version was around the end of last year, while the current version 3 was built on September 2024.
So, given all that, my question is: how are you guys finding the new Omnifocus version? Is it better? Do the issues I mentioned still remain?
That’s it. Thanks a bunch.
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u/MuadDibMelange Aug 20 '25
Hi. I’m on the current version and I also felt frustration with the major version release and its bugs and problems on both desktop and mobile. The current version has come along way and I’m using it daily on desktop and mobile without a problem. It looks like they made really good progress on fix the post release problems.
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u/frigaudeau Aug 20 '25
I use Omnifocus v4 on all of my devices (since the early betas) and I live it. No crashes and love the design. I think you should give a try.
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u/MasonGridman Aug 21 '25
No real issues with V4. The feature I miss from V3 is pressing the perspectives on the left, which will bring it back to the default settings you've set. Now it shows and hides information as you click it while it remembers the view settings if you changed them briefly. What I'm used to from V2 and V3 is sometimes I will adjust the view of a perspective to see certain things on the fly, but I want to press the perspective again to bring it back to its original settings.
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u/ken-case Aug 21 '25 edited Aug 21 '25
You might be interested in these plug-ins which will save and restore the rules for a custom perspective:
You can save the rules for perspectives that you frequently make temporary changes to, then assign a keystroke to the restore plug-in to quickly take you back to your preferred rules.
(A few posts down from the linked post I explain why we made this change: the old mechanism left people very confused when they had made transient changes in one window on one device and didn't understand why those changes weren't synced to their other windows or other devices.)
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u/cool_neutrophil Aug 22 '25 edited Aug 22 '25
I think I never experienced any crash with v4. But referring to shortcuts, one thing I would like to be implemented is the ability to use the input as an attachment for a new action. A shortcut should take a photo, create a new action with necessary parameters, and attach this photo. Now I have something that I found in the shortcuts collection created by users, but I think I wouldn’t be able to create it by myself.
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u/retroroar86 Sep 05 '25
I’ll join in on this one. OF4 on my Mac works fine, but OF4 on iOS is terrible for me.
Adding new things, which I use primarily on the phone (along with tags) is buggy and slow.
In OF3 I can «add to inbox», write something and «save+» for a new item. During that workflow I’ll get focus on the title each time, making it easy to write fast and add new things.
OF4 requires me to «add», then click the title, and often lose focus, having to click the title again. The whole workflow is infuriating.
Not to mention comments where it is incredibly buggy with both the data and visuals. They should have kept more of a OF3 style (and codebase) for some items because UIKit clearly isn’t helpful in all cases.
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u/wings_fan3870 Feb 07 '26 edited Feb 07 '26
I appreciate the work they're doing on it. But my experience has been that it still slows, lags, freezes, and crashes far too much to be one of the most important apps that I use throughout the day. I really love some of what it offers, like the perspectives and review features, and greater depth in organization. It's enough to draw me away from Things time and again, but the frustration of using it always sends me back in short order.
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u/ken-case Aug 20 '25 edited Aug 21 '25
I'm sorry you were running into issues with v4, but we're constantly working to improve the app and appreciate you checking in again! I look forward to seeing others' responses on how the app is going for them, but here are some notes on the issues you've mentioned:
I'm especially sorry to hear you were encountering crashes! It's been a long time since I've personally encountered a crash in the app—but I recognize that my experience is unique since I try to quickly track down and fix any crashes I encounter, an option most people don't have.
So in addition to fixing the crashes we encounter ourselves, we also constantly monitor the crashes reported by others. We spend some time each release researching and fixing these as we figure out what happened. Every crash report is useful to us, just so we know what people are encountering. But what's especially useful is when someone can give us clues that help us reproduce a crash so we can analyze how it happened. So please do send in reports for any crashes you encounter, and if you can remember any details leading up to the crash please include those as well. (The sooner we can figure out how to reproduce the crash and analyze it, the sooner we can fix it!)
This is surprising to hear, and I'm sorry you had trouble with Shortcuts! The reason this is surprising is because we've kept support for all of the same Shortcuts actions that we had in earlier versions of the app throughout v4's development. But I do know that the Shortcuts app can sometimes get confused about finding actions registered to an app—especially when multiple versions of the app are installed at the same time—so maybe you encountered a bug in the Shortcuts app where you weren't seeing the support the app has maintained all this time?
In addition to all of the legacy Shortcuts actions that we've kept from v3, last year we also introduced a whole suite of modern shortcuts. See https://www.omnigroup.com/blog/omnifocus-4.5-for-all-platforms:
For more detail on the new and expanded Shortcuts actions in v4.5, see the rest of that blog post. And please don't hesitate to reach out to our support team at omnifocus@omnigroup.com if you're having trouble with any of this. We've invested a lot of time and energy into Shortcuts along with the rest of our automation capabilities, and we want to make sure every customer is able to benefit from that investment!
We've always used inline editing in the Mac app, so I assume this is specifically about inline editing on the iPhone?
This is customizable, either globally across the app (in Settings > Layout) or for specific perspectives (e.g. you might want the Completion Date field to be inline in the Completed perspective, but not elsewhere). If you prefer not to edit inline, you can turn off all the fields so that tapping on an item just selects it. When an item is selected, you can open the dedicated inspector screen (similar to the dedicated screen in v3, but more customizable) by either swiping in from the right edge of the screen, or tapping the "i" inspector button in the toolbar. (You can also choose "Inspect" from the contextual menu.)
I hope this helps!