With iOS/MacOS 26, I have now gotten the warning that OmniFocus 3 is no longer being updated. It’s time to consider where I should move my GTD/productivity system to.
My key requirements:
Perspective to only show projects/tasks that are available (deferred/planned/future-dated).
Recurring tasks that recur at a set time after the completion date or assigned dates.
Supports weekly review (when I often defer routine/maintenance tasks).
Sequential and parallel projects. Folders are nice-to-have.
Available on Mac and iOS with offline use. Being available on PC/web is a bonus, but I hadn’t felt the need for it.
Maybe I haven’t been “properly” doing GTD, but my use case has been relatively simple, so I’ve had no desire to upgrade from OmniFocus 3 Pro since 2018. I trialled OmniFocus 4, but didn’t see anything that made me want to pay for an upgrade. I’m back in uni now and the education discount makes the upgrade cheap, but I thought it might be worth considering my options anyway.
In total, I’ve got ~60 actions in 10 projects. Uni studies accumulate as active to-dos, but that’s only 1 project. There is a minimal “project” for general single-action tasks. All work tasks and projects are tracked on DevOps at work, so there’s no blending of work and home life. Shopping lists are tracked on the household shared Microsoft To Do lists instead of OmniFocus. Bills are all on direct debit. My life tends to be a daily routine of study and work with minimal need to check/reference OmniFocus. I only plan/track bigger projects (e.g. vacation travel) a few times a year.
Most of what I’ve got in OmniFocus are deferred/future-dated repeating routine/maintenance tasks (e.g. washing machine drum clean in “infrastructure maintenance” or schedule dental checkup in “health maintenance”) and one-off tasks (e.g. consider cancelling AllTrails+ subscription under “personal finance”).
Are there any other GTD/productivity applications I should consider? Or should I just spend the $22.50 / $44.99 to upgrade to OmniFocus 4/Pro on edu discount?
I’d be curious what fellow long-standing OmniFocus 3 users/stragglers are planning to do.
Just because it’s not being updated doesn’t mean it doesn’t work.
In my case I did upgrade to 4 when it came out, but apparently wan’t impressed so went back to using 3. Only finally went to 4 when 4.8 came out with new features I actually cared about.
I suggest you run 4.8 on trial to decide if you want to pay for the upgrade and want the Pro version (I didn’t go for the Pro).
I bounce between Omnifocus and 2Do, so that could be worth a look.
2Do has only received stability updates for about 2 or 3 years now, so basically its “as is” and if it doesn’t do what you want, then there’s little chance of it changing in the near future.
However its a great app that’s really flexible in terms of how it handles tagging & custom views compared to Omnifocus, which has always been frustratingly rigid. It also handles recurring & scheduled tasks in a way that works really well for me.
Tbh the only reason I use Omnifocus is because 2Do won’t work properly with Hookmark. But if you don’t use Hookmark, that’s not a factor.
I notice its had a price rise and is now 60 bucks for a lifetime license, which is a lot imo for an app that’s not being updated. But it does give you a 2 week trial so that’s plenty of time to test it out, and of course its much cheaper than OF. Its included in SetApp, if you use that.
Not a flawless app, but still better than many todo apps out there.
I think if you rely on defer dates, fine-grained repeat options, weekly review, and different project types, you’re solidly in the OmniFocus camp. OF4 has been excellent, and they’ve been releasing new features regularly. Since 4.7, OmniFocus added planned dates (like “do” dates) alongside defer and due. Having three different types of dates takes a bit of workflow adjustment, but it’s worth it.
One catch: Omni stated back in late 2023 that OF4 would remain backward compatible with OF3 for a while, but new features would eventually require a database migration only supported in OF4. I believe that shift happened recently with 4.7. That means your OF3 database may not work with the current 4.x releases. If you want to test again, 4.6 was likely the last version compatible with OF3.
I don’t claim detailed knowledge of the capabilities of all the task management apps out there but I’m under the impression that the project review functionality is pretty unique to OmniFocus (and personally I agree with you that it’s hard to imagine finding a task management system without it satisfactory)
[quote=“enochko, post:3, topic:42860, full:true”]
Interesting. I haven’t kept up with v4 news… what features in 4.8 did you find useful enough to migrate over?/quote]
Much better handling of repeating events. All of my events are repeating. And remember that I already paid for V4, so going to 4.8 was no cost. OTOH, I didn’t like the visual appearance of V4 as it seems to be harder to read.
As far as a second trial, you could download and install and see what happens.
I can’t speak for your budget, but for me, anything under $25, or even $50, to keep using something I already know and am comfortable/happy with falls into the “ain’t broke, don’t fix it” category.
Do you really want the cognitive overhead and possible unhappiness of learning another tool, switching to it, getting your existing data in for possibly a horizontal shift in productivity?
Perhap you could try go to the system settings and visit the accessibility settings. In “Display & Text Size”, turn on “Reduce transparency” and “Increase Contrast”. That might help.
The first mention of OF4 was back in May 2021 with a first look at OF4 for iPad.
The first release of OF4 was issued to bring the code base up-to-date using the then-new Swift programming language. Some users were disappointed because it felt like nothing new was added. It was mostly under-the-hood improvements. Over time, tweaks were added that allowed us to slowly get used to OF4.
New features meant that a database structure was needed that would break with OF3 compatibility. That came in v4.7.
I’m loving the Planned dates to schedule my tasks, the new repeat settings to end a repeating task after X repetitions or on an end date, and being able to use Apple Intelligence to help project creation. That’s just a few of the most recent additions that are getting the spotlight.
There’s a lot that happened in 4 years. Read the blog posts and go back several pages to get a summary.
The Omni Group blog also has some info about the various releases. Go back a few pages where the first mention of OF4 was also in May 2021.
Totally fair. Last time that I had a good look, I didn’t see anything quite approach OmniFocus level of feature completeness. I’ll need to have a look into planned dates and see if/how to use it in my workflow. How do you use it, if you don’t mind sharing?
Yay! I have access to trial again! That certainly makes figuring out whether to upgrade a bit easier, rather than relying on my impression of the initial v4 trial years ago.
I am going to argue that you already spent the $44 in the time you spent reading the responses, and it would seem that if OF works for you, the time spent migrating somewhere else for you would be far more than the $44 and continuing to GSD.
Sure, here’s an example: I’m a professor. I have student papers to grade. My task in OmniFocus is deferred until 2 weeks from now, as that is when the assignment is due, so I can’t start working on them until then. I typically try to return them within a week of receiving them, so that is the due date I put in OmniFocus. However, when I do my weekly review, I’ll probably make a judgment about the best day to start grading them, and that will be my planned date—somewhere in between the defer date and the due date.
So, there are probably innumerable examples, but that is one from my workflows. You can also update the custom perspectives to show planned dates, which is useful and quite powerful.
I’ve been in a similar position. I was very unhappy with the initial OF4 release. V4.8 is what they should have released in my opinion. Prior versions were glitchy with ui issues syncing issues and the experience was not pleasant. 4.8 has been excellent. It’s smooth and I’m no longer fighting the app, but getting on with my work. I have no regrets with OF4.8.
Yay! I have access to trial again! That certainly makes figuring out whether to upgrade a bit easier, rather than relying on my impression of the initial v4 trial years ago.