Omnifocus Things

 



OmniFocus is powerful task management software for busy professionals. With tools to help tame the chaos, you can focus on the right tasks at the right time. Getting Things Done & OmniFocus 2. Here’s the specific stuff. OmniFocus is the best way to implement GTD on Mac and iOS. Capturing in OmniFocus. The Inbox The Inbox is where capture happens. Anything can go here: the more you enter, the less you’ll forget. Things treats selections of multiple tags as an AND operator, but overall this hasn’t been a deal breaker. What I’m loving about Things: The interface is incredibly simple. Seeing my tasks in OmniFocus vs. Things is a staggering difference, but now my focus can return to tasks, not the interface. Actionable captures can be transformed into actionable tasks and sent off to OmniFocus. Things that aren’t immediately actionable, but still potentially have future value (e.g. The great idea that you had in the shower) can be sent off to the appropriate repository for future review,. Philosophically, OmniFocus wants to keep all items without start dates in front of you until you “kick the can down the road” by adding a start/defer date. 2 Things, on the other hand, places an emphasis on its Today and Upcoming views, so it only puts items in front of you that you affirmatively choose to see.

Here’s how you can import your to-dos from other apps into Things.

This page is about importing to-dos on the Mac. To import to-dos on your iPhone or iPad directly from Todoist, open Things and tap Settings >Import.

In this article:
  1. Import from OmniFocus 2 or 3 (Pro)

How to Use the AppleScripts

Some of the import options below require you to download an AppleScript. Here’s how to use it:

  1. Download the AppleScript you’d like to use via the Download AppleScript link.
  2. Locate the downloaded file and double-click it. This will launch the AppleScript Editor.
  3. In the toolbar, click the ▶ Run button.
Things

Import from Apple Reminders

This option requires macOS 10.15, iOS 13, or iPadOS 13.

Your lists are imported as projects in Things, but some of them might be better off as areas. Consider creating a new area and moving your to-dos over. Repeating to-dos are imported, but are not set to repeat, please re-create them inside Things. Apple doesn’t expose all Reminders data to us, so the following data are not imported: attachments, list groups, sub-task indentation, flagged status, priority, location-based reminders.

Mac
  1. On your Mac, open Things.
  2. In the menu bar at the top of your screen, click File >Import >Import From Reminders.
  3. In the new window, click Import Now to start the migration.

If you’re looking for ways to quickly add individual to-dos to Things via Reminders check out this page instead. (requires macOS 10.14 and better)

iPad
  1. On your iPad, open Things.
  2. In the sidebar, tap > Reminders Inbox.
  3. Tap Open Reminders Importer.
  4. In the new pop-up window, tap Import Now to start the migration.

If you’re looking for ways to quickly add individual to-dos to Things via Reminders, for example by speaking them to Siri, check out this page instead (requires iOS 12.1 or later).

iPhone
  1. On your iPhone, open Things.
  2. In the main view, scroll to the bottom and tap Settings > Reminders Inbox.
  3. Tap Open Reminders Importer.
  4. In the new pop-up window, tap Import Now to start the migration.

If you’re looking for ways to quickly add individual to-dos to Things via Reminders, for example by speaking them to Siri, check out this page instead. (requires iOS 12.1 and better)

Watch

You can use Siri to speak Reminders on your Apple Watch, which will then be created in the Reminders app on your iPhone. To add individual Reminders to Things, please check out this page.

Import from OmniFocus 2 or 3 (Pro)

Imports projects and to-dos with due dates and notes, converts top-level folders to areas, and contexts to tags. Once downloaded, unzip the file and double-click the app to run it. Please note that only the Pro version of OmniFocus provides AppleScript support, so it will only work if you have that version installed.

Import from Wunderlist

As of May 6, 2020, Wunderlist has shut down and no longer offers any export option for your data. In turn, it’s no longer possible to import your data to Things. As of now, we do not offer import options for Microsoft To Do.

Import from Todoist

Imports to-dos and projects. Projects with children will become projects in Things; projects without children will become Areas in Things. Repeating to-dos are converted to normal to-dos and you have to make them repeat manually. Labels become tags.

Mac
  1. On your Mac, open Things.
  2. In the menu bar at the top of your screen, click File >Import From >Import From Todoist.
iPad
  1. On your iPad, open Things.
  2. Go to >Import >Import from Todoist.
iPhone
  1. On your iPhone, open Things.
  2. Go to Settings >Import >Import from Todoist.

Import from Outlook for Mac

When you run the script, you’ll be provided with some options for including projects, completed to-dos, categories, and priorities. Notes will be imported as HTML markup.

Omnifocus Vs Things 3 Reddit

Import from Toodledo

Uses a Toodledo XML export file. Imports to-dos with due dates, notes, and contexts as tags. Creates projects from your project folders. To-dos without a project go into the Next list.

Import from a plaintext file

Creates a to-do for each line in a plaintext file. If you hit ⇥ Tab after a title, the text that follows will be imported as a note: title⇥ Tabnote

Copy and paste text

If you quickly want to convert a simple list from an app like Apple Notes, Apple Mail or any other text app into to-dos in Things, here’s how:

Mac
  • Copy a plain text list and hit ⌘ Cmd + V inside Things. Each line of text will be converted into a separate to-do.
  • Copy a plain text list and hit ⌘ Cmd + V inside an open to-do. The first line of text will be converted into the title of your to-do, the rest of the text will be added to the notes of the to-do.
iPad
  • Copy a plain text list and hit in the top right corner in Things. Each line of text will be converted into a separate to-do.
  • Copy a plain text list, tap into the title of a new to-do in Things, and hit in the top right corner. The first line of text will be converted into the title of your to-do, the rest of the text will be added to the notes of the to-do.
iPhone
  • Copy a plain text list and hit in the top right corner in Things. Each line of text will be converted into a separate to-do.
  • Copy a plain text list, tap into the title of a new to-do in Things, and hit in the top right corner. The first line of text will be converted into the title of your to-do, the rest of the text will be added to the notes of the to-do.

Related Articles

After years of bouncing between task managers, I always end up coming back to OmniFocus. In 2019, after finally reading Getting Things Done and having it really click with me, I don't see how I could use anything else in the near future; OmniFocus is just so damn amazing.

Today I want to take you on a quick tour of how I use OmniFocus to get my life in order.

Overview

I use OmniFocus for personal and work items, and the app has a few tools that make it much better at doing this than any other GTD app I've used (skip to 'Perspectives' for details on this). I also really like that the app gives me the ability to customize the look and feel to design the sort of task manager that I want, and hide most of the stuff I don't care about.

Omnifocus Alternative

I'm also in love with how you can tell The Omni Group cares deeply about building top-notch iOS and macOS apps as each version of the app works extremely well.

This all adds up to an app that has enough control to let me structure my tasks well without adding friction which could discourage me from dumping all of my 'stuff' into it.

Tags and Projects

I could be more detailed here, but for me I really only use tags and ignore projects almost entirely. Tags, as I use them, are simply used to separate my work into the different parts of my life. I have the following tags set up:

  • work
  • personal
  • birchtree
  • freelance
  • shopping
  • reading

These 6 tags let me quickly filter my stuff into the major parts of my life. The first 4 are pretty normal, while 'shopping' is my shopping list and 'reading' is my reading list, something I've addressed at length already.

Perspectives

These tags are the main tool I use for my custom perspectives, and these perspectives are what really make OmniFocus work for me.

My usage: I only want to see my work tasks when I'm at work and my personal tasks when I'm at home. OmniFocus lets me do this with perspectives.

Without getting too into the details, perspectives let you set filters for what tasks you want to see in a view. You can save as many of these as you want, with the idea being that you can view similar tasks together. For me this means a 'Work' perspective that only shows me things I can do at work. When I get home, I no longer care about work, so I have a 'Home' perspective that only shows things I care about in my personal life. If I'm looking to work on this website, then I jump in the 'BirchTree' perspective and look at blog post and podcast ideas.

Omnifocus Software

And because OmniFocus has lots of customization options, you get very deep control over how these perspectives display. You can have them in 3 different task layouts and have them sorted and filtered however you want. Here's what I have going on with my 'Work' perspective, for example:

And here's what I have for 'No Due Date' which is a perspective I use to look at items that have moved beyond my inbox but don't have a due date yet. I find tasks like this have a tendency to get lost, so reviewing this perspective every now and again is very useful.

Inbox

One of the key tenants of GTD is having an inbox that you can easily add things to and then triage at a later time. OmniFocus is very good at getting things into your inbox, whether it be on iOS or macOS. On iOS it simply has a share sheet item that can save pretty much anything from a file to a website. It's a little less universal on the Mac, but there is a Chrome extension, as well as a system share extension for Safari and other native Mac apps.

The Mac also has the benefit of being able to set up a keyboard shortcut (I use Cmd + Ctrl + Opt + Space) to bring up a quick task entry pop up from anywhere. I use this all the time for adding quick things that come up through the day, and this also makes it easy to tab through things like projects, tags, notes, and due dates to set all of that right away. You can see this in action here.

I think Todoist does a better job at letting you add tasks with more info (their natural language parsing is great) but OmniFocus more than gets the job done for me.

Omnifocus Tags

The Forecast View

In addition to the custom views allowed by perspectives, I really like the Forecast view in OmniFocus. This view simply shows you what's next. Forecast only cares about due dates, so this mixes projects and tags, but often this is a good view for me.

I really like that if I decide I am not going to get a task done today, I can just drag the task to another date on the calendar and it's immediately changed to that day. No other task manager I've used has made it so easy and tactile to move tasks around. And of course this works on iOS and macOS.

Omnifocus For Pc

Conclusion

Omnifocus Tnt

This is by no means a complete explainer on how to use OmniFocus (for that the MacSparky Field Guide is a great resource), but I hope I've given you an idea of how I use OmniFocus.