Professional grade personal task management

OmniFocus, the Getting Things Done productivity tool, is finally out of Beta and officially 1.0.

With the help of productivity whiz Ethan Schoonover, aka Merlin Man, OmniFocus is an unassuming yet highly effective piece of software. It gives you limitless possibilities to organize and manage your notes. First plan your projects and actions, then set them in contexts, whether by date or by topic. Features can be added, removed and shifted around as you like. The Perspectives feature is great to save all your custom settings a click.

The folks at Omnigroup have really worked on interaction, and integrated OmniFocus to Mac apps like Mail, Spotlight and iCal. The program is also built so that notes taken anywhere, whether in an email, a document or another note taking app, can be effortlessly integrated in OmniFocus. Another handy little feature is SmartMatch. With this method you can quickly access or edit notes or parts of notes in a few keystrokes. Saves you a considerable amount of time.

While OmniFocus is a highly flexible application and even though you can use it whatever your style of project management, it still is very GTD centric. If you don’t particularly like that method then you might not adjust to it. Another point: at $79.95 it’s a pretty expensive piece of software, but considering the level of innovation put into it we think it’s worth it.

OmniFocus is the perfect organizer for GTD afficionados.

Workflow Improvements * Remaining items in context mode now include items from pending projects, not just active projects. * The Inbox count now includes Inbox items which are blocked by a future start date.Interface * The list of contexts in the Dock menu and the menu bar status item have been replaced with a list of Perspectives. o This works the same as the Perspectives menu in the application; the Perspective will open in a new window based on the stored setting; this can be reversed by holding down the Option key. o The built-in Inbox, Flagged, and Due built-in perspectives have badge counts in the global status menu. * The user interface shortcuts for focusing have been changed. o Double-click to Focus now requires that the option key be pressed when Double-Clicking. o In Planning mode, the contextual menu for Projects and Actions has two commands: + Focus + Focus in New Window o In Context mode, the contextual menu for Actions has a “Focus in New Window” command. * “Focus in New Window” is equivalent to Option-Double-Clicking. * Improved the appearance of the highlight state of the menu bar status item. * Context and Project drop down menus are no longer displayed off-screen when the associated row is near the bottom of the screen. * Typing in the date field in the “Move Old Data to Archive” sheet updates the number of items which will be archived live as you type. (Previously, the summary was only updated after pressing Return or Tag to confirm the date, which could result in an unexpected number of items being archived.) * Perspective keyboard shortcuts are now required to include the Command or Control key. (Function keys are still allowed as keyboard shortcuts without any modifier keys.) * Fixed a bug where a newly assigned keyboard shortcut for a Perspective might not have worked until the Perspectives menu was shown or OmniFocus was relaunched. * If a Perspective has a keyboard shortcut assigned to it that includes the Option key, the Option key doesn‘t reverse the “Always open in a new window” setting when selecting the Perspective via the keyboard shortcut.Badge Counts * The Dock and Menubar badges now work like they do in the iPhone and iPad edition of the application. o The badge count totals your Overdue, Due Soon, and Flagged items. By default, OmniFocus totals your Due Soon and Overdue items, but not your Flagged items. If you’d like to include or exclude any of these, you can change the settings in the Data Preferences. o The badge color is chosen based on the most urgent item present. * The Dock and Menubar badges now sum due soon and overdue items. If there are overdue items, the badge will be drawn in the overdue color. Otherwise, the due soon color is used. * Sidebar counts (in both Planning and Context mode) are now the sum of Overdue and Due Soon items. * The Inbox counter is the sum of Overdue and Due Soon items. If there are no Overdue or Due Soon items, the Inbox counter is the number of items remaining in the Inbox. * Fixed a bug where due soon and overdue count for “No Context” in the menu status item didn’t honor the “Hide Parents Items in Context Mode” setting. * Fixed a bug where the count and badge color for the “No Context” group in Context mode would not update correctly when actions transitioned from due soon to overdue status.Preferences * Added an Omni Sync option to the Sync Preferences. (Previously it was only possible to configure Sync with the Omni Sync Server by using the Advanced sync type.) * Updated the help text at the bottom of the Sync Preferences to indicate that OmniFocus for Mac can sync with OmniFocus for iOS devices. * The controls for sharing your Sync Settings with your iOS devices are now hidden by default in the Sync Preferences. They can be accessed by clicking on the disclosure button at the bottom left. * The user interface for hiding counters in the sidebar has been removed. * The “Show Projects and Action Groups in Context Mode” setting has been removed from the menubar and placed in the Data Preferences. Toggling the setting updates all windows open in Context mode immediately. * Updated Data Preferences to fit better on small screens.Stability * Fixed a crash encountered when assigning a context to actions in the “No Context” group in Context mode. * Corrected parsing of timespans when running localized versions of OmniFocus. * Improved error reporting for corrupt transaction files.Miscellaneous * The Growl notification names now correctly refer to Items instead of Tasks. * The help button in the licenses panel now loads the correct page in the Help Viewer.

Changes

• Workflow Improvements * Remaining items in context mode now include items from pending projects, not just active projects. * The Inbox count now includes Inbox items which are blocked by a future start date.Interface * The list of contexts in the Dock menu and the menu bar status item have been replaced with a list of Perspectives. o This works the same as the Perspectives menu in the application; the Perspective will open in a new window based on the stored setting; this can be reversed by holding down the Option key. o The built-in Inbox, Flagged, and Due built-in perspectives have badge counts in the global status menu. * The user interface shortcuts for focusing have been changed. o Double-click to Focus now requires that the option key be pressed when Double-Clicking. o In Planning mode, the contextual menu for Projects and Actions has two commands: + Focus + Focus in New Window o In Context mode, the contextual menu for Actions has a “Focus in New Window” command. * “Focus in New Window” is equivalent to Option-Double-Clicking. * Improved the appearance of the highlight state of the menu bar status item. * Context and Project drop down menus are no longer displayed off-screen when the associated row is near the bottom of the screen. * Typing in the date field in the “Move Old Data to Archive” sheet updates the number of items which will be archived live as you type. (Previously, the summary was only updated after pressing Return or Tag to confirm the date, which could result in an unexpected number of items being archived.) * Perspective keyboard shortcuts are now required to include the Command or Control key. (Function keys are still allowed as keyboard shortcuts without any modifier keys.) * Fixed a bug where a newly assigned keyboard shortcut for a Perspective might not have worked until the Perspectives menu was shown or OmniFocus was relaunched. * If a Perspective has a keyboard shortcut assigned to it that includes the Option key, the Option key doesn‘t reverse the “Always open in a new window” setting when selecting the Perspective via the keyboard shortcut.Badge Counts * The Dock and Menubar badges now work like they do in the iPhone and iPad edition of the application. o The badge count totals your Overdue, Due Soon, and Flagged items. By default, OmniFocus totals your Due Soon and Overdue items, but not your Flagged items. If you’d like to include or exclude any of these, you can change the settings in the Data Preferences. o The badge color is chosen based on the most urgent item present. * The Dock and Menubar badges now sum due soon and overdue items. If there are overdue items, the badge will be drawn in the overdue color. Otherwise, the due soon color is used. * Sidebar counts (in both Planning and Context mode) are now the sum of Overdue and Due Soon items. * The Inbox counter is the sum of Overdue and Due Soon items. If there are no Overdue or Due Soon items, the Inbox counter is the number of items remaining in the Inbox. * Fixed a bug where due soon and overdue count for “No Context” in the menu status item didn’t honor the “Hide Parents Items in Context Mode” setting. * Fixed a bug where the count and badge color for the “No Context” group in Context mode would not update correctly when actions transitioned from due soon to overdue status.Preferences * Added an Omni Sync option to the Sync Preferences. (Previously it was only possible to configure Sync with the Omni Sync Server by using the Advanced sync type.) * Updated the help text at the bottom of the Sync Preferences to indicate that OmniFocus for Mac can sync with OmniFocus for iOS devices. * The controls for sharing your Sync Settings with your iOS devices are now hidden by default in the Sync Preferences. They can be accessed by clicking on the disclosure button at the bottom left. * The user interface for hiding counters in the sidebar has been removed. * The “Show Projects and Action Groups in Context Mode” setting has been removed from the menubar and placed in the Data Preferences. Toggling the setting updates all windows open in Context mode immediately. * Updated Data Preferences to fit better on small screens.Stability * Fixed a crash encountered when assigning a context to actions in the “No Context” group in Context mode. * Corrected parsing of timespans when running localized versions of OmniFocus. * Improved error reporting for corrupt transaction files.Miscellaneous * The Growl notification names now correctly refer to Items instead of Tasks. * The help button in the licenses panel now loads the correct page in the Help Viewer.