Took OF 4 for a Spin, Discovered a Limitation

Software
1

I couldn’t help myself,, I decided I had to give OF 4 a spin. I think it is better than OF 3, in fact, OF is once again, tempting. However, I discovered, or was reminded, one of OF’s limitations.

I have OF automation set to capture Apple Reminders. However, I do not receive the corresponding OF notification unless I have first activated OF. When I use Apple Reminders and set a Reminder, I always receive a notification even if the Reminders app is not open or is in the background. With OF, the notification does not appear unless I’ve first brought the app to the forefront at least once after previously setting the reminder.

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Do you mean the notification right after you’ve set it? Or do you mean a notification at the appropriate time/place/etc.?

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At the appropriate time. For example, I ran several tests. I created several reminders with both the keyboard and Siri. I set a time to be reminded of these tasks at 10, 15, and 20 minutes. OF was in the background, Reminders Capture was on, and notifications for OF was on. OF captured the reminders immediately—they disappeared from the Reminders app, but OF never activated a notification. On the other hand, if I brought OF to the forefront just for a moment then minimized it, the OF notification would appear at the designated time.

I would consider OF again because I got a free upgrade (that’s a very tentative consider) if this was not an issue, but I need the notifications to fire without me needing to bring OF to the forefront on one of my devices before the notification is due. I know that I can enter directly into OF and I can tell Siri to “remind in OF of x…” but it is faster and easier when I’m out and about to simply create a reminder via Siri expecting that OF will capture it and notify me at the designated time.

4

Just a goofy question – do you have background app refresh enabled for OmniFocus? I would think so, but could be one thing to look at.

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Not goofy at all, but yes, I do.

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Is what I’ve described normal behavior? I would think that once OF has captured the reminder it would trigger the notification so long as OF is running in the background.

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It doesn’t sound like a normal behavior to me. I was suspecting that OF would not import Reminders while in the background but you mention that you the reminders disappear while OF is not active so that’s not the issue. It seems it is not correctly setting the notifications while in the background.

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I think that’s something to report to the developers.

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I have, I’m waiting for the response from support. I suspect with a new release support is busy! :slightly_smiling_face:

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10

I’m curious, too. Also, I wish that Macs could also ingest reminders since background activity is more reliable there. I understand they’re concerned about duplicates from multiple OF instances grabbing the same reminder and then syncing, but that’s solvable…