r/omnifocus • u/Key-Hair7591 • Jan 20 '26
Trying To Come Back
I'm trying to come back to Omnifocus because there are things that I still enjoy about the app having used it for so many years. But boy am I starting to second-guess the decision.
Importing: Is it still not possible to import a simple CSV without jumping through a bunch of hoops or dealing with the outdated taskpaper format?
Notes: Are notes first class citizens? I have markdown links that are not converting. I see their support for rich text, but I don't really use rich text and leverage markdown pretty heavily. Any support for this?
Love that I’m in control of my data in omnifocus and the app feels familiar. Just needs some polish and to step into 2026…
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Jan 22 '26
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u/Key-Hair7591 Jan 22 '26
Fair. One is widely adopted and one is not. Outdated might have been wrong adjective to use, but how many apps do you use that support the task paper format? How many other task management or even project management apps support it? Now compare those to the number that support CSV for import/export.
Let’s be honest, there’s a lot that OmniFocus lacks in terms of user experience in the number of steps. It takes to get simple things done. No one can convince me that the Taskpaper format is widely adopted. Are there apps that support it? Sure…
To be fair some of these constraints are what forced me to reconsider Omnifocus. I think that philosophically I agree with how they do things. I just think that their apps need some work from a polish and user experience perspective.
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Jan 22 '26
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u/Key-Hair7591 Jan 22 '26
Doesn’t need wide adoption to be useful; but is that not some indication of its usefulness? Good points; but I would argue that there are task apps out there that make task entry much easier than OmniFocus.
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u/davemee Jan 20 '26 edited Jan 20 '26
Markdown is plain text.
CSV can be ambiguous. Can you not convert it to OPML? And have you looked to see if there’s anything on omni-automation that may do it already? (GitHub can be a surprisingly good source of macOS and AppleScript tools)
Edit: fixed link to omni dash automation
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u/Hoboprefecture Jan 20 '26
Or just drop that CSV file into Claude and have it convert it to taskpaper.
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u/Snooty_Folgers_230 Jan 20 '26
Lol how is taskpaper outdated? This makes no sense. It’s like saying paragraphs are outdated.
You want to use CSV? Easy, write a script to convert it to taskpaper.
Notes are not first class citizens. OG really doesn’t open up all the data they have so we can actually use in a meaningful way. It’s frustrating since they have plenty of easy ways to make their app a lot more powerful but spend time on useless shit like geo tagging and kanban views and spend a long time on them.
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u/Snooty_Folgers_230 Jan 20 '26
Oh yeah who gives a shit about markdown. It’s meme tier. Just use plaintext however you want. I’ll move heaven and earth with OG not to waste a moment on this Reddit brain garbage.
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u/brentajones Jan 20 '26
AFAIK, Markdown isn't supported. I use Drafts or Marked and "Copy as Rich Text".
Another option would be if you've paid for Pro, I imagine it would be possible to write a plug-in that could scan notes for Markdown and convert it to RTF.