Unless I’ve been missing it I don’t understand why OF doesn’t have a calendar picker like Things when entering a defer or due date.
OF
Things
Am I just missing how to toggle this feature on in OF? The lack of this simple feature requires me to look at my calendar if I am uncertain of a preferred date when entering a defer or due date in OF.
Yes, I realize it does when a task exists but I’m not finding a way to see a date picker when entering a new task. I use OF 3 on all my devices and have for several years but unless I’m just really missing it, I don’t believe one can show a date picker when creating a new task on the fly like one can in Things 3. Am I just missing something?
I apologize, I was not clear in my explanation.
I was referring to the screen that comes up when I invoke the Quick Entry Shortcut on my Mac, in my case, control-option-command+o.
I get the input screen as shown below. When I click the defer or due date field there is no calendar as there is in Things 3. Am I just missing a preference setting?
It doesn’t have a calendar picker, but it does auto parse whatever you type, e.g. Next Thursday will translate to July 29th with your default end time.
Yes, and I have used that often. However, sometimes I’m not sure of the exact date I want until I’m able to look at the calendar. It would be nice to have a calendar pop up for the quick entry. 
Good idea. I’ve never joined their discourse forum but I’ll suggest that feature as they finalize development of v4. Thanks.
Now that you’ve mentioned it, why don’t they show a picker there?
Contacting Omni through support is the most effective way to get your vote for the feature counted. Bringing it up on the forum is effective if you can get other users to contact support with the feature request. So both might be prudent.
If they’re working on OF 4 for Mac, they haven’t said anything publicly yet, so the request will have to sit awhile, unfortunately.
I;d hate for them to add a picker if that means removing the option to type in the date. + The interface is cluttered enough as is.
I agree but these are not mutually exclusive options. In Things 3 one has both options when using the quick entry feature. Either can be used. I think this would be great in OF.
Things Quick Entry Option Date Picker:
Things Quick Entry Option Type Date:
You also have smart entry that processes somewhat natural language. Like:
Thu +1w = Thursday after this one
Mon +10d = Ten days after next Monday
Using this, I have never felt the need for a calendar.
I certainly understand but this presupposes that one knows what would be a good date for a project to start or end.
However, as I stated above, sometimes I’m not sure of the exact date I want until I’m able to look at the calendar. For example, I may need to have a project started or ended five days before an important meeting. Unless I open my calendar I may not know the date I need for reference. Because that meeting occurs, say on the 3rd Thursday of the month, I need that date to set my task. It is convenient to have a calendar picker under those circumstances to avoid the need to open the calendar. The point of a quick picker is to be quick.
I’m only suggesting a “nice to have” feature on OF like the excellent one implemented by Things.
I recently switched to Todoist after a few years with Things, and before that a few years with OmniFocus (which is another story in and of itself, with each tool having its pros and cons). One nice feature in Todoist is when you use the date picker, you can hover over a date and see how many other tasks you have scheduled for that day. (Todoist also has pretty robust natural language support).
Oh man, the last thing I need to consider is switching task managers! My workflow is nearly completely refined, just still experimenting between Obsidian and Craft.
But, I’ll ask this anyway. IF I’ve heard correctly, Todoist does not have the equivalent of Things’ “when” date (which I use very effectively as the “start” date for projects. In OF, I’ve used the “Today” tag for the same purpose.
Is my understanding correct about Todoist? A “start”/“when” date is as important to me as a due date.
Things 3 also looks a lot better, and has full keyboard navigation on the iPad
I wish I’d started with things a long time ago. I’d have loved it on the iPad and iPhone.
As it is now, the absence of automation leaves me anchored in OF unfortunately, even though the new beta has me screaming at night for a less cluttered and better navigable user interface.
Seems they’ve taken a page out of the safari manual: if it’s nuts, no one would ever think it’s sensible and no one will ever use it: it’s a good idea
I actually bought things 3 a few weeks ago and wanted seriously to move over. But the fact that most of my automations would die kept me from going through with it…
I now sometimes wish I had made the leap…
I have not automated too many things yet. I have a few Things shortcuts and that is all. I used OF for several years and I went back and forth twice but having tried a SHORT mini project/task in OF (mainly because there are times when I want an attachment and not just a URL to a file) I quickly released (quick entry date picking being just one example) why I’m happy, even delighted, with Things. I’m staying put.
You’re correct, which was almost a dealbreaker for me. But when I looked at my Things usage, I almost never used due dates, as my firm’s systems track those about 100 different ways and they’re always in my face. I use OF/Things/Todoist solely to plan my tasks for each day, and I’m rarely the one performing the task that satisfies a due date. Todoist’s due dates are really like start dates in other systems, and that’s how I use them. I might mention the due date of something in the body of a task.
If you’re happy with Things and don’t feel like it’s missing any features, I’d definitely stick with it. I only switched because my firm’s case management system released an Outlook plugin, so I switched from Mail to Outlook. I needed a tool to send my Outlook messages to my task management app (with a link back to the message), and Todoist has an Outlook add-in. For a while I was using the Outlook web-app, and had cobbled together a way to grab mail links using Keyboard Maestro (it involved taking an address from the web app and running it through a regular expression), but I prefer desktop mail apps over web apps, so switched to the Outlook desktop app. If Outlook had more consistent AppleScript support, or exposed message urls in the desktop app so I could grab links reliably, I never would have switched.
I love Todoist’s powers, integrations, and features, and I’m actually having fun with it, but I’m still not 100% sold on it. Part of that may be because I was trying to mold it to work like Things, but part of it is that it doesn’t feel like as good a Mac citizen as OF and Things. Certain things just work a little differently. And there seems to be two extremes — ultimate keyboard friendliness with the Quick Add feature and natural language parsing, but once you break away from that, it is very click-dependent. Things, by comparison, is very easy to navigate and jump around the interface with the keyboard, without excessive mouse clicking. I feel I’m slower in entering tasks (especially those related to mail messages) than I was with Things, unless I’m in the Quick Add box.
Yes, I was referring primarily to start dates.
I use both start and due dates extensively because they provide, for lack of a better description, the span of time during which I need to work on certain types of projects.
For example, I may be giving a speech in six months and want to start working on it eight days prior to delivery. I want to initiate a start date six months from now for eight days prior to that and then to be finished at least a day before I’m actually giving the speech.
I also do not have to use Outlook so for my workflow needs, I have found Things to work nearly perfectly. There are a few features that I miss, one of the biggest being the review feature, but a review can be done in a system – it merely takes discipline. 
While I don’t dispute that the OmniGroup forum is a great place to talk about OmniFocus, they’re very clear that if you want Omni to read what you write you should email it to support. They have a lot of possible places for feedback to come in and emailing it to them is the only guaranteed way to make sure they get it.
