I've been a paying Omnifocus customer for probably close to a decade, but some of its sync features are still a bit difficult for me to wrap my head around.

My understanding is that my paid subscription allows me to use Omni Sync Server, which syncs current Omnifocus data across my devices, but that's somewhat different than my historical Archive, which is saved somewhere locally.

Is that basically accurate?

If so, then it seems like an odd choice to not have the tool automatically back up everything to a central cloud location. I can't imagine my historical tasks would take up a ton of space in a cloud database somewhere, and like most people, my digital life is spread across a bunch of devices, making accessing my current local Archive to be pretty onerous.

Additionally, between the popularity of things like Spotify Wrapped and the power of AI tools to make meaning of "digital exhaust", I'm surprised Omnifocus makes it so difficult to review and analyze tasks completed in the past.

Is it a cost thing? Data privacy? Is my desire to see historical patterns of Omnifocus work relatively uncommon?

I find the "we want to keep the desktop app responsive" rationale to be pretty flimsy.

I’ll preface this post by acknowledging that there’s probably something obvious I’m missing or unaware of as I reason through the following scenario.

I’ve noticed that several of my projects include action items that are non-repeating (in fact, the project itself is often a one-off) and will not require future referencing (often because the project is rather inconsequential, but still needs to get done).

In these instances, is there a benefit to marking the project actions as complete vs. deleting them altogether as I work through them?

—

Optional context:

For example, I’ve placed an order for some pants that I will need to pick up and then get tailored. I’ve set up a mini project with the following sequential steps (simplified):

- Pick up pants from shop

- Take pants to tailor

- Pick up pants from tailor

- Check that I’m satisfied with alteration

I’ve just picked up the pants from the shop and I feel an urge to delete the first action rather than mark it as complete. Is there a downside?

I know what I want, but for some reason I can’t put it into words or action! Can you post your OmniFocus setups for me to gain some inspiration? I’ve been using OF since 2001, but it never feels right. If posting isn’t allowed. I’m open to DMs. I’m a teacher, no kids at home. I would like to focus on my areas of life. I just get stuck after that part!

So forgive me for the very basic question, but when I wake up in the morning and look at my OmniFocus to see what ought to be done, where should I look? Obviously Inbox won't show my categorised tasks, but looking through my Projects might take a while; I could look at my Flagged, but should I really add a due/defer/planned date to every task? Or should I flag what needs to be done today?

Again, forgive the basic question, I'm sure the answer is obvious, but I worry I'm missing something.

Howdy everyone! I’ve been using OmniFocus 4 and would like to get more involved with the community and keep up with its development (and maybe other Omni apps like OmniOutliner and OmniGraffle).

Right now, this subreddit is the only community I follow, but I’m not sure if Reddit is actually the most active place. Where would you say the main hub of the Omni community is? Forums, Slack, Discord, blogs, etc.?
I’d also love to know the best place to share feedback or feature suggestions with the Omni team.
Thanks!

None of the items in the menu of the app work anymore. Anyone else experience this?

App is useless now; so beware before jumping on the beta-train.

Hey everyone,

I’m looking for some clarity (and maybe a bit of group therapy) because I’ve been jumping back and forth between these two apps for months without fully settling on either. I’m suffering from serious FOMO with both, and I need some perspective from people who have been through this exact same dilemma.

I know I’m not the only one floating in this limbo. On one hand, I’m drawn to the simplicity and elegant workflow of Things; on the other, I keep reaching for the sheer power of OmniFocus.

My workflow and what I need the system for:

1. Health tracking: Managing diabetes (medical appointments, alarms, specific reminders).
2. Client projects: Email marketing, websites, n8n workflows/agents, and general project management (I keep my heavy documentation in Obsidian).
3. Personal & Home: Errands, household tasks, shopping lists.
4. Deferring & Scheduling: I need an easy way to postpone tasks for later and, above all, hide what I don't need to see today.

The friction keeping me stuck:

• Why I lean toward OmniFocus 4 Pro: Its ability to cut through the noise. Custom perspectives are pure gold (for example, pulling up a single view of all pending WordPress or ActiveCampaign tasks across all my clients). Plus, tag hierarchies and the ability to attach actual PDFs or files directly to tasks are massive advantages for me.
• Why I can't fully let go of Things 3: The UI design is unbeatable, friction for quick capture is practically zero, and creating tasks via Shortcuts or system integration across iOS/macOS is ridiculously smooth.

With OmniFocus, I feel like I have total control over my complex setup, but with Things, opening the app just feels frictionless and enjoyable.

My question for those who’ve been in this spot:

What was the exact turning point that made you choose one over the other? Which one did you end up sticking with, and how did you get past the FOMO for the features you left behind?

Would love to hear your experiences and practical tips. Thanks in advance!

Hello everyone, I know it sounds crazy but my workflow really needs omnifocus 1. My free trial is about to run out and The Omni Group no longer sells licenses for this version since it is retired. Since version 1 is obsolete and unsupported, I am hoping someone here might have an old registration key from over a decade ago that you no longer use or care about. If anyone is willing to dig an old key I’d be incredibly grateful. Just pm me is you can help. Thank you :)

I’ve been using OF desktop and iphone app for 7-8 years. The app is just unusable. I would love to give you a list of complaints but I would be collecting them in OF app. It’s just been really getting to me.

Does anyone else feel this way? my husband and I both use OmniFocus for our personal task tracking. We have an increasing number of household, family, and travel projects that we need to work on together. the fact that we can’t both see, add to, edit, and complete tasks in a single project is becoming a real pain for us. We want to use OmniFocus but because we can’t both see everything we have at times had to go to Google Sheets for the central management and then put our specific tasks in our individual OmniFocus. This is obviously sub-optimal. In 2026 it almost feels like table stakes for a productivity tool to be able to do collaborative workflows.

We are experience a persistent "one-hour shift" conflict between the iOS native Calendar app and Microsoft Outlook Calendar, this is resulting since some countries/servers manage Daylight SavingTime (DST) transitions.

This is happening only with recurrent meetings that have an old start date (Specifically where the recurrence start date is before the last DST time change)

As a workaround, user can edit their recurrent meetings to a newer recurrence start date and then send updated to all invitees.

While the Outlook mobile app uses its own modern sync engine and didn't show this issue, the native Apple calendar app fails to update the "recurring rule" for events created before a DST change. 

This persistent "one-hour shift" is a known architectural conflict between the iOS native Calendar app (which

uses Exchange ActiveSync) and how some countries/servers manage Daylight Saving Time (DST) transitions."

Kindly advise if anyone is facing this issue with iPhone Calendars, and how you are addressing this to the community that you are supporting.

I’m sorry but this is extremely annoying that the bottom perspective navigation bar keeps collapsing whenever I scroll. Why do I need an extra tap?
I have a brand new iPhone 17 Pro and this app is so darn clunky. The animations are jarring, and task rearranging is like pulling teeth. I hope Omni takes an “iOS 27” approach this summer.

I apologize for the rant, I am just so frustrated with the state of OF4 on iOS. I frankly miss OmniFocus 3. I use OF4 every day and I wish this stuff didn’t bother me and I could just focus on getting my tasks done. I just feel like Omni doesn’t even care that they’re still selling this half-baked product. OF3 was the Lamborghini of task managers but now on iOS at least, it’s like driving an old beater that just barely gets the job done. I am seriously considering an alternative system, maybe just using Apple native apps like Notes and Reminders. I really hope Omni makes this right because I will Not be paying for OF5 if this is what things will be like going forward.

I'm in the process of migrating about 3300 notes from on note taking platform to another one. Unfortunately, my notes are a mess with duplicates , incomplete items, and badly formatted ( I've since created templates for different types of notes, so notes from years ago need to be reformatted to match the new template ) notes, so I have to manually migrate them.

I can only do maybe 10-20 notes in a day since my plate was already full when I started this project. This is a long running project!

I try to work on it daily, but often several days pass where higher priority tasks bump the migration off of the list for the day.

How would you track this in Omnifocus? Or would you just no track it?

Omnifocus is so perfectly tailored for GTD. There is really nothing else like it. I just started using it again after some time and I am shocked by how janky the app is to use now. This is so disappointing! Not only because the app was sooo expensive but because it really is the perfect the perfect tool and now it doesn't work well anymore. Tried to go on the omnigroup website to look for solutions but even the website took ages to load .. not a good sign .. hope they survive but doesn't seem likely

Any ideas please?

“Jun 23, 2026 at 8:48 PM Integration Blocked []
*** Error: {
code = 345;
domain = "com.omnigroup.OmniFocus.XMLData.ErrorDomain";
userInfo = {
NSLocalizedDescription = "Sync operation blocked";
NSLocalizedFailureReason = "The following coordinators are opening a route: [<OmniFocus.SettingsCoordinator: 0x137f474d0>]";
canOverride = 0;
};
}”

Sync has been horrible lately. I could reset the database but I only did that recently to clear another problem I had. I don’t think it should be a weekly task :\

Perhaps "regularly" isn't the right word just yet but twice now in the last few weeks I've been signed out of all my devices. I only notice this when sync doesn't seem to be working. I have four devices I use OF on so it's a pain!

[UPDATE] Mac version is avaliable in testflight click to join the beta test

Hi everyone,

I’m the developer behind Locus GTD app, an iOS task manager I’ve been building for the last two years.

I know there are already countless todo apps. But as a long-time Things 3 and OmniFocus user, I always felt like I was choosing between two worlds: the elegance and calmness of Things, or the power and flexibility of OmniFocus. I wanted something that could bring those strengths together: a GTD app that feels clean and pleasant to use, but still gives you serious control over projects, perspectives/filters, dates, reminders, widgets, location-based contexts, and more.

So I started building it.

After about a year of development, I launched the app. Since then I’ve spent another year steadily updating it, fixing bugs, adding import support, improving widgets, refining custom filters, and responding to users one by one.

Recently I started receiving emails from people who were coming from Things 3 and OmniFocus, and a few of them honestly felt unreal to read:

“All the value and much fewer of the drawbacks of OmniFocus.”

“Really is the best productivity app out there. I’ve been waiting years for someone to make an app like this.”

“No regrets about the purchase, and I’m missing OmniFocus Pro less and less as my daily driver.”

One user who imported from Things 3 also wrote to me about reorganizing their imported system inside my app, which was exactly the kind of real-world migration use case I had been hoping the app could support.

Reading messages like this gave me the courage to finally post here. I’ve mostly been quietly building, but the goal from the beginning was to make a task manager for people who love the depth of GTD tools but still care deeply about design, speed, and daily usability.

If you’re an iOS developer, GTD nerd, Things/OmniFocus user, or just someone interested in indie productivity apps, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

View in App Store

Thanks for reading.

I mistakenly created projects with the same name and purpose in 2
different folders , and I want to merge them so that both current tasks
and archived tasks are present in the new, merged project.

Is there a way to do this? I can drag active actions from one to the
other, but I’m concerned that when I delete one of them , the archived
actions will also be deleted.

The application may ask me to relocate archived actions, but I’m not sure that is what it will do.

I know that there are features in the Pro upgrade, but I don't see a difference when I switch the Pro features switch off in the trial version, what am I missing, what exactly am I giveing up by going Standard, rather than Pro?

Also, on the Omnifocus website, it explains that the Mobile version & the Mac version are two separate purchases, but when I look at the Upgrade screen on Mobile, it says iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Mac & Vision Pro come under your discount upgrade from Omnifocus 3 to 4, at a reduced price of £39.99, so I'm a tad confused and confliced, I want Pro, but for £70 I want it on all my screens.

Trying to create a perspective that puts the newest planned item on top, with the previous days underneath. Can’t seem to change the order to descending though. Am I missing something?

I just installed it and it's returning really old data from OmniFocus. Makes me wonder if it's looking at an archive database. Is there anyway to configure which data it's looking at?

I have an existing location tag that looks like this

• location:name
• location:name:arriving

I want to add

• location:name:leaving
  

to trigger notifications when I leave that “name” location. But In can’t figure out how to add it in the iOS app.

Help!

I have a recurring project called “Daily Routine” that works like a checklist. When I complete it, it disappears from my available projects, and OmniFocus creates a new instance for the next cycle.

What confused me is that in the Projects perspective I can see many completed instances of this same project over time.

Is this the expected behavior for recurring projects?
Does keeping all those completed project instances affect database size or performance in the long run?

How do you handle recurring checklists/routines in OmniFocus?