This article is for troubleshooting keyboard shortcuts that you’ve chosen for menu commands and other features in OmniFocus. The most common custom shortcuts people choose for OmniFocus are the shortcuts for Quick Entry and our Clippings service, but with Pro, we also provide in-app support to set up shortcuts for perspectives and Omni Automation plug-ins. Additionally, you can also use System Settings to set your own custom shortcuts for any menu command in OmniFocus.
If you are just looking to set up a shortcut for our Clippings service for the first time, please see our OmniFocus Manual.
Check for a conflict with another app
- Restart your Mac in safe mode, which starts up your Mac without launching any background / menu bar apps.
- Make sure OmniFocus is the only app open in the Dock.
- Test out your shortcut.
If you find the shortcut works, then this confirms that there is another app using that same shortcut, which is sometimes taking precedence. Identifying that app will just be a process of elimination. While still in safe mode start opening the other apps you typically use one at a time — be sure to also check your login items — and continue to test the problematic shortcut. When the shortcuts stops working again, you should now know which app is the source of the conflict.
To resolve the conflict you’ll have a few potential options:
- Check in the conflicting app’s settings to see if it allows changing the shortcut
- Use System Settings to change the conflicting shortcut for the other app
- Change the shortcut that OmniFocus is using
Quick Entry and Clippings
Since our Quick Entry and Clippings service shortcuts can be used from anywhere on your Mac, there are a lot more possible conflicts you could encounter.
For Quick Entry, we provide a default shortcut (Control-Option-Space bar), which we’ve found pretty reliable. That said, using modifier keys and the Space bar is a popular combination for shortcuts, so it also wouldn’t be surprising to encounter a conflict with this. As an alternative shortcut you could try another shortcut we’ve found pretty reliable: Control-Command-Comma.
If you do try that alternative shortcut for Quick Entry, you could then pair that with a similar shortcut for our Clippings service (for the US keyboard layout): Control-Command-Period.
Clippings service
Our Clippings service only works in other apps that support the Services menu and when you have a valid selection of text to clip (or a message selected in Mail.app).
If you are having trouble using your Clippings shortcuts, you’ll want to double-check whether the problem is with the shortcut or just that the Clippings service itself isn’t available to be used in that instance:
Compact-list
- Open the app menu (to the right of the Apple menu )
- Choose Services
- Look for, then choose if found, OmniFocus 4: Send to Inbox
