For example, let’s say you’re tweaking the rocket engine you’ve been building in the backyard, and you’re stuck because you need a specific wrench. To make matters worse, the light in your workshop went out when you went searching for that wrench. You’ve added the wrench as an action in your Colonize Mars project, and you just added the lightbulb to your Household Errands project. But what’s to keep you from forgetting one or the other the next time you go to the hardware store? The answer is that while they’re part of different projects, you can associate these items with a Context.

Contexts can be created in two ways:

• From the Contexts perspective:

  Tap Contexts in the sidebar or home screen, then tap the New Context button in the toolbar. The context editor appears, where you can assign a name to your new context, set its status (Active, On Hold, or Dropped), and choose a location (see Location Reminders below) for where you need to do that ultra-important thing.

• While editing an item:

  While editing an inbox item or action in one of your projects, you can choose a context for it or create a new context by entering a unique name in the text field. After entering the name for the new context, don’t forget to tap Create (context name) below the text field to add this context to your list.

As you can see, contexts give you an amazing amount of control over the depth of information you can add to actions, inbox items, and projects. We have preloaded OmniFocus with a bunch of contexts that we think you’ll most likely need, and the new contexts you create show up at the bottom of the list. But let’s say that you don’t need some of the preset contexts, or that you want to move your new contexts to the top of the list. Alrighty, let’s do that next.

To delete or move contexts around, tap Edit in the toolbar ( in the iPad sidebar). To the left of the contexts, you’ll see a deletion switch ; and on the right, you’ll see a reordering handle . If you tap the deletion switch, you won’t delete the item right away. Instead, a Delete button appears to the right where the reordering handle was. Tap Delete to remove the context from your list.

To change the order of the contexts in your sidebar, just touch and hold the reordering handle and drag the context up or down in the list. As you move that context around, you’ll notice that the other contexts move out of the way so you can drop the context where you would like it to be.

When you’ve finished making changes to your contexts list, tap Done in the upper-right corner of the sidebar to save your changes.

By default, actions in context lists appear in the same order they are listed in their projects. Tap View Options to sort by flagged items and due dates, with flagged items shown first and then items by due date from soonest to latest.

For example, when you have important people who are associated with important places, you could assign contexts to them independently – or, you could group them together by their common location. So if you have a Work context, you can move your boss, coworkers, and even work-related tools like your computer or drafting table into it to keep things clearly organized.

There’s no limit to the amount of context nesting you can do, which means you have the ability to give your actions fine-grained detail about where or how you need to do something.

With notifications turned on, you can now set up locations for the contexts you use in OmniFocus.

To set up location info on a context:

In the Contexts list, tap on a context (then tap on its bolded title again to edit it), and then tap Location. None is the default; tap it to specify a place.

1. Here uses Wi-Fi or cellular triangulation to pinpoint where you are. Neither method is 100 percent accurate, but they can get pretty darn close.

2. Anywhere designates the context as always available, no matter where you are. It isn’t really a location—it just means that any context with this location are things that you can do anywhere, such as practicing your banjo (although, don’t try this on the bus during the morning commute).

3. Search lets you enter a keyword to search for. This option is particularly handy, for example, when you need to pick up something from a hardware store, but aren’t quite sure which one is closest to you. You can just type Hardware and then tap Search on the keyboard to choose a business near you. You can either assign the context an exact location that appears as a result of the search, or you can use the search itself.

4. Address gives you the option to enter a specific address (if known).

5. Contact gives you the option to choose the address for a person or place that you’ve added to your contacts. If this is the first time you’ve opted to set a location from the Contacts app, an alert will pop up asking you to authorize OmniFocus to access your contacts.

6. Pin lets you touch and hold a spot on the map to drop a pin at a location of your choice.

The notification dialog appears below the location you’ve chosen on the editing screen. You can choose to be notified when arriving or when leaving your specified location.

After setting your notification option, you’ll be able to choose a distance. The three distance options are very approximate. The small dot is about 200 meters or 650 feet; it covers about one city block and is useful for things such as coming home or leaving the office. The middle-sized circle is about 500 meters or about a quarter mile; it covers something such as a small neighborhood or park, and is useful for knowing when you are a few streets over from a certain store. The big circle is about 10 kilometers or 6.2 miles; it’s useful for things such as a city you occasionally visit. But remember, the actual distance where you get your notification could be quite a bit different from these rough numbers.

However, if you have set a location that’s far away, you can pinch on the map until you’re zoomed out enough to see a red location pin; tap the pin to see the available tasks associated with that context. Tap Info on the popover to view and edit the context and its associated tasks directly, or tap Get Directions to get directions to the location based on your current location.

When you tap Get Directions, the Maps app comes to the front and plots a course to the destination from your current location. To return to OmniFocus, double-tap your device’s home button and select OmniFocus from the app switcher.