Omni Newsletter Fall 2024

Here in Seattle, the leaves have fallen and the harvest is in. As the end of the year quickly approaches, it’s time to put down our tools and celebrate the year’s successful work. In this season, we bask in gratitude and gratification.

App Store Awards 2024 Finalist

Just before Thanksgiving, Apple announced the finalists for their Apple App Store Awards for the best apps and games of 2024. For the “Mac App of the Year” category, they wrote these words: “OmniFocus 4, for fostering focus with simplified task management.”

We are humbled and honored at the same time.

The OmniFocus 4 app as an App Store Awards 2024 Finalist

When we built OmniFocus 4 with Apple’s new SwiftUI technologies, our goal was to make the app approachable and easy to use at a light level, while still providing the depth, power, and stunning customizability our customers expect when they need to go deep. Apple’s emphasis on “fostering focus with simplified task management” feels like recognition that we achieved our goal. And naming OmniFocus as a Mac App of the Year finalist just puts an exclamation point on it!

Updates for All Omni Apps

From the moment the starting gun goes off at WWDC in June, until the upgrades ship in the Fall, each summer finds us hard at work (in a mad dash, if you will), doing our best to ensure all of the Omni Group’s suite of apps are ready for Apple’s platform updates on the first day they’re available. Getting our apps ready for day one is a challenge, of course, since it means developing for platforms that are still under development themselves!

This year we also focused eagerly in preparation to integrate the full power of Apple Intelligence. But we managed to tear ourselves away from exploring App Intents long enough to make sure all our apps were compatible with all of the new operating systems – macOS 15 (Sequoia), iOS 18, iPadOS 18, watchOS 11, and visionOS 2 – on the day they shipped.

I’m pleased (and gratified) to share that all of the Omni Group’s suite of apps shipped on "day one"!

We think it’s important to be ready on “day one” since many of our customers are eager to update their devices as soon as possible (perhaps because they’re buying new hardware), and since we know our customers really rely on our apps.

With schools back in session, academics at all levels use OmniOutliner to get their materials or homework ready. Many projects kick off in the Fall, from constructing websites to starting new businesses — and people putting together timelines for those projects can really put OmniPlan through its paces. Whether folks are headed back to class or planning presentations for work, many rely on OmniGraffle to help them communicate thoughts visually. And with so many projects in motion, many people are using OmniFocus to keep track of what they can do next, to keep moving forward towards achieving their goals.

There’s very little in life more gratifying that setting a big team goal — like compatibility of four apps across as many as five platforms, all in one summer — and reaching that goal. It’s quite a harvest. One thing, however, that is more gratifying is a significant feature update to one of those apps.

OmniFocus 4.4

Naturally, one of the reasons so many of our customers update their platforms so quickly is because they’re excited about the new features being introduced in those updates, and so are we!

Illustration with colorful OmniFocus perspective icons, alluding to how it’s never been easier to access the most powerful features of OmniFocus 4

This year’s OS feature updates particularly benefit OmniFocus. OmniFocus 4.4 introduced new Quick Entry, Quick Open, and Open Perspective functionality across all supported devices. On devices running iOS or iPadOS 18, new Controls for accessing these features are available to add to your Lock Screen and Control Center, or you can configure them for even quicker access via your iPhone’s Action Button.

You’ll also find these features in your Spotlight search results on supported operating systems, as well as available as new shortcuts on any app platform. Even OmniFocus on the Apple Watch now supports creating and completing items via the double tap gesture on watchOS 11. Of course, we also updated complications and widgets, optimizing for watch face tint color, adopting interactivity, and introduced a new widget that displays Inbox, Forecast, and Flagged item counts in the the Smart Stack and on supported watch faces. It’s never been easier to access the most powerful features of OmniFocus 4!

OmniFocus 4.5

After shipping OmniFocus 4.4 (and some improvements to Apple Watch sync performance) — rather than rest on our laurels — the team quickly turned its attention to the next major OmniFocus update.

We just released OmniFocus 4.5, a powerful update tuned to make you more productive through automation, integration, and customization. With improved Shortcuts actions for automation, enhanced integration in Spotlight results, Tips to reveal the hidden power of OmniFocus, and new Mac-exclusive appearance options. OmniFocus 4.5 is here to help you focus, and will look good while doing it!

For OmniFocus 4.5 we re-wrote or expanded our previous Shortcuts actions using the latest Apple technologies, built new actions to support new workflows, and laid the foundation to continue expanding easy automation. In all, we included 14 new Shortcuts actions, as well as six re-written and improved Shortcuts actions, but fear not as the older (now ‘legacy’) Shortcuts actions also still work.

OmniFocus 4.5 also introduces completely reworked integration with Spotlight to show your actions, action groups, projects, folders, tags, default perspectives, and custom perspectives. We also added in-app hints, tips, and guidance. Plus, for those times that words fail, and emoji aren’t quite right, you can now use Genmoji in your action and project notes.

Omni Automation Vids

Got a minute? Hot off the launching pad, check out Omni Automation Vids, which are super quick snackable nuggets to show you tips, techniques and concepts related to Omni Automation.

An automaton making a short presentation about Omni Automation. The presentation references OmniFocus, OmniGraffle, OmniOutliner, and OmniPlan.

Each episode is a short video screencast. Most of the episodes are about a minute, though to set a good foundation the intro episode is a whopping three minutes long. The longest episode tops out at five minutes.

Omni Automation Vids are available on the Omni Automation website and via the Apple Podcasts app.

Highlights from The Omni Show

We’re super grateful for the wonderful community of people who are generous about sharing approaches and Pro Tips with each other — and you. Here are some other highlights from the amazing community surrounding the Omni Group’s award-winning products, as heard on The Omni Show:

How Amy Zamikovsky Uses OmniOutliner — A seasoned financial advisor and licensed attorney who has mastered the art of data organization and retrieval, Amy shares her journey of discovering OmniOutliner, which revolutionized her approach to law school and exams, as well as client management in the world of wealth advising.

How William Gallagher Uses Omni Software — Deputy chair of the Writers Guild of Great Britain and the creative force behind the 58Keys YouTube channel, William shares how he leverages OmniFocus and other Omni Group products to manage his diverse responsibilities, including producing the Apple Insider podcast and his famous “Three Biscuit Guides.”

How Michael Keithley Uses OmniFocus — A seasoned technology leader with extensive experience at the intersection of Hollywood and Silicon Valley. Michael shares his insights on how he uses OmniFocus to manage his professional and personal life, emphasizing the importance of simplicity in productivity.

From the Omni Labs: Universal OmniGraffle 8 Takes Shape

We’ve talked a fair bit about OmniFocus, but over the past few years behind the scenes we’ve also been hard at work designing and building the next major version of OmniGraffle. Our big focus in recent months has been bringing inspector palettes from the Mac to all the other platforms, thus making all the palettes universal — a big milestone towards our goal of improving feature parity across platforms.

It’s also quite a design challenge! OmniGraffle 8 has dozens of inspector palettes, used for content creation, arrangement, navigation and organization, and for manipulating the properties and appearance of objects, canvases, and the document itself. We want all these controls to be readily available on all platforms, but we don’t want all that power to be overwhelming — especially on smaller screens.

We’ve also implemented long-requested features — like themes, reference objects, and object skew — and laid the groundwork for greatly improved feature parity across all supported platforms: Mac, iPad, iPhone, and (soon) Apple Vision Pro.

If you’re interested in where OmniGraffle is headed, this is an ideal time to share your feedback with the team! We’re actively exploring many new ideas, and your feedback helps guide our decisions. So if you use macOS 14 Sonoma or later, and have some time to put it through paces and let us know what you think, you’re invited to join the OmniGraffle 8 TestFlight today.

Until Next Time

Thank you very much for reading this latest issue of the Omni Newsletter. Until next time, stay in touch with us on Mastodon, and of course on our blog.

Want to catch up on past newsletters? Check out the archive here.