Yesterday the OmniGroup announced the open beta of OmniFocus 4.0 for iPhone and iPad. This new version will represent the most significant change in the OmniFocus user interface ever. I’ve been on the private beta, and I dig it. This new version will give you much more control over the way the application looks and quality-of-life improvements across the board. There are new inspectors, easier navigation, and a much-improved outline view. All of this while maintaining the full set of OmniFocus tools. 

This new version is written entirely in Swift UI, which will give OmniFocus some real flexibility going forward. Also, this is the most complex app I’m aware of being developed in Swift UI. The Omni Group is very much at the pointy end of the spear with this project.

The beta is still early, and there are still features and even UI elements missing. Nevertheless, I’m excited to see the OmniFocus team willing to take risks to keep their software on the cutting edge. At this point, the beta is only for iPad and iPhone, but I expect the Mac will be getting similar treatment in the future.

The usual warnings go here about running beta software. Be careful. Back up. Don’t use it if you’re worried about data loss. I’ve been running the version 3 public release alongside the version 4 beta with no troubles thus far. 

These changes to OmniFocus mean I’ll be making a new OmniFocus Field Guide. It will be a new version and built from scratch with the new version 4. Expect it once the OmniGroup releases version 4 for Mac, iPhone, and iPad.

The Omni Group is sponsoring MacSparky this week, so I guess you can take this with a grain of salt, but I continue to be impressed with OmniFocus for the Web. For a web implementation of an iOS application, it has a lot more power than I expected. I didn’t realize the way they were pulling it off.

They are running Objective-C and Swift on Mac servers that then output to the web. This isn’t a simple web application. This is a Mac application driving to the internet. The OmniGroup explains in further detail at Inside OmniFocus.

Speaking of OmniFocus … if you like the built-in OmniFocus design aesthetic but wish there were more options today’s your lucky day. Josh Hughes has an excellent set of graphics for use as OmniFocus perspectives that fit right in.

There is a growing thread in the Mac Power Users forums about custom OmniFocus perspectives. Since it’s Sunday, I though I’d share one of my favorite Sunday perspectives. While I don’t use a defer-date management system for my tasks these days, I do use defer dates on flagged tasks. This perspective shows me all of those tasks on their defer dates going forward. It’s a great deal for a little weekly planning on Sunday.

This week Kourosh Dini released the third edition of his Creating Flow with OmniFocus book. This is, by far, my favorite book on using OmniFocus.

Kourosh has been using OmniFocus for years and has some great ideas on how to the most out of the application. The book covers concepts ranging from beginning to advanced and all of them are explained with Kourosh’s gentle and insightful writing style.

This week, the Omni Group has released version 3 of OmniFocus for the Mac. This release closes the loop on the version 3 release which began a few months ago with the release of version 3 for iOS.

While the new version of OmniFocus still works with GTD, I look at the new release as an intentional breaking away from prior constraints related to making it a GTD tool. Contexts are out. Tags are in. But what does that mean? I wrote an article for Inside OmniFocus over the weekend where I explained the addition of tags has fundamentally changed the way I use the application.

Multiple vectors into your task system can only be a good thing. With the new version of OmniFocus you don’t need to put four tags on every task but where appropriate, you could. With increased flexibility with tags, it makes OmniFocus’s custom perspectives even more useful.

One example I cited in my above-linked Inside OmniFocus article is invoice follow-up. I’ve got many legal clients and some automation that will generate a task for me to follow up on invoices. Those tasks appropriately belong with each individual client but with the new OmniFocus, I’ve been adding one additional tag to my creation script that inserts an “invoice” tag. Now when I set aside time to follow up on invoices, it no longer involves a hunt through my system. I simply pull up available tasks with the “invoice” tag and go through my list. That’s a small example, but you get the idea.

Just like with the release of version 3 for iOS, this new version of OmniFocus doesn’t make any change simply for the sake of change but only where it makes the application easier to use or more powerful and, in several cases, both of those things. 

Another example of that is the new Forecast view that now mixes your calendar items in with your tasks in their calendar order. If you have a deadline at 9:00 and a dentist appointment at 10:00, the deadline appears first. Clever.

The deceptive part is that these changes and refinements add up to way more than the sum of their parts. I find the application more nimble and more powerful than before. It’s completely changed my own “system” for using the application. To learn more about version 3 check out the OmniFocus web site. If you’d like a lot more words on the new version, I’d recommend Rose Orchard‘s review over on MacStories. And, of course, if you’d like 5+ hours and 69 separate videos on using OmniFocus, I’ve got that covered too.