Send to OmniFocus

When you’re in another app and you’re inspired to add something to OmniFocus—whether it be a webpage in Safari, a picture in Photos, or a bit of text, image, or audio file from another app that supports sharing—all you have to do is tap Share and choose OmniFocus from the list of apps that appears (if it’s not there, swipe from right to left and tap More to add it).

You’ll get a simple “quick entry”-style form to create a new item, with a field for its title, notes, project, and tag. The item is populated with some information relevant to the data you’re sharing back to OmniFocus (website URLs in the note field and title pre-filled in the title field, for example). Edit these if you want, and then tap Save when you’re ready to send it to your Inbox.

Today Widget

Swipe down from the top of the screen anywhere on your device, then swipe to the right, and you’ll see what’s going on today: a collection of widgets that iOS presents as a curated set of data relevant to your current place and time.

You may see some Calendar entries, perhaps a Reminder or two, and you’ll notice that at the bottom of the screen there’s a button labeled Edit. Tap it and you’ll be brought to the edit screen, where you can add other custom widgets to your Today screen—OmniFocus among them.

Tap the green plus icon next to OmniFocus and it’ll be added to the list of extensions shown on the Today screen. Use the reordering handles on the right to change their order, and when you’re happy, tap Done. From now on you’ll see OmniFocus items that are relevant today alongside events of current interest from other apps, and you can check on their status (or check them off as complete) from anywhere on your device.

The OmniFocus widget shows a single item by default (the one it deems most relevant based on your settings). Tap Show More to see an extended list of upcoming actions as they appear in chronological order.

Just beneath Show More (or Show Less) in the OmniFocus widget you’ll find the New Inbox Item button, which makes it even easier to add a task to your OmniFocus Inbox from anywhere on your device. Tap it to open OmniFocus with a new Inbox item ready for entry.

OmniFocus uses the Today settings to determine which items are displayed in your Today widget. Due Today is the default, but you can choose another (or multiple other) task attributes to suit how you personally describe priority in OmniFocus and put the most important things front and center.

In the Badges section of Notifications settings, you can choose to have a summary of the OmniFocus icon badge count (a badge that displays the number of OmniFocus items deemed important based on your settings) as part of the Today widget. This adds a row beneath your actions that contains the badge count and its breakdown by item type.

If you have an Apple Watch with OmniFocus installed, the display settings you choose for the Today widget apply to the OmniFocus for Apple Watch home screen and Complications as well. See OmniFocus for Apple Watch to get started with OmniFocus on your Apple Watch.

Spotlight Search

Swipe down from the center of of the iOS Home screen to open Search. When you enter a search term, iOS includes results from your OmniFocus database so you can jog your memory about a task that needs doing, or check to make sure you noted that book you wanted to read (at the same time as you look for it online).

Tap a search result from OmniFocus and it opens directly to that item in the app.

If you would rather not include OmniFocus items with your iOS search results, visit iOS Settings > Siri & Search and scroll to the OmniFocus entry there for controls to turn it off.