Troubleshooting OmniFocus Performance

There are several factors that impact OmniFocus performance and reliability, and that slow down connectivity to the Omni Sync Server database. This article describes what can slow OmniFocus down, or make the data appear incorrect, and offers some suggestions on ways to fix it!

Support Standbys

The following four solutions sound trite sometimes — some might suggest that they are “Support Call Clichés” — but what they should actually be called are, “Pieces of advice that really work!”.

Please check that you have tried these solutions before continuing through the other sections of this article:

Reduce the Database Size

Reducing the size of a large database can in some cases have a big impact on its performance. Usually the biggest contributors to database size are attachments. Read this support article for tips on finding and removing the largest attachments, as well as other ways to reduce the size of your database, such as archiving.

Be aware that when talking about the size of a database, we are talking about more than just the overall file size — the number tasks and attachments can also be a factor. For instance, below is an example of two databases that both have an overall size of 20MB, but which would perform very differently:

• Database A: 100 tasks and four 5MB attachments
• Database B: 10,000 tasks and zero attachments

Database B would be much more likely to suffer from perforamnce issues, as its 20MB comes entirely from the compressed XML text contents, which presents exponentionally more data that OmniFocus has to scan through every time it reads the contents of the database.

Sync All and Sync Often

OmniFocus needs to occasionally go through a important process called “compacting” where it consolidates the recent series of transactions (e.g. changelog), which plays a big role in your databse size. OmniFocus waits to do this until all registered devices connected to the same sync account have seen the same changes. When one copy gets out of date, all the others have to hold onto the intermediate changes until the left-behind copy syncs again. As an example of the impact this has, when you delete an item, all OmniFocus initially does is record a transaction that indicates the item that should be deleted. That item won’t actually be deleted until the databse is compacted after all other registered devices have synced and seen the record of this change.

This is why we highly recommend “Sync All and Sync Often.”

The more registered devices syncing to the server, and the more “behind” any device gets, the more likely that the system will be unable to compact the database, because the common historical transaction has been lost. If there is more than one device that is behind, the problem will compound. Sometimes there might be a “ghost device” registered to sync with the database — usually a duplicate registration of an OmniFocus instance. You will want to remove these un-used copies if you notice them, as they will also impact the system’s ability to compact.

To remove an un-used copy of OmniFocus from sync registration:

Geographic Location

Omni Group servers are located in Seattle, WA, USA. The further away you are from them, the longer it takes for the round-trip traffic to make it from your device to the servers and back again. Using a WebDAV host that’s geographically closer to your location is an option, not to mention you can set up your own WebDAV server.

Internet Connection

Internet connection speed is important to take into account. This means you can have different sync experiences between the Wi-Fi network at the office and the wispy cellular connection on the edge of town.

If you think your cellular connection is too slow to sync OmniFocus, try limiting OmniFocus to only sync on Wi-Fi. To do so, go to Settings > OmniFocus, and disable Use Cellular Data.

Sometimes, the source of a connection issue is the reliability of the network. If there is a network outage in one part of the internet path to our servers, then Omni’s Sync Server may appear to be down. In that case, it is always worth checking with the Support Humans and with your internet service provider.

Rebuild the Database

If the data on the application is incorrect, or the data showing in the Project Perspective is different from the data in the Inspector, then it might be time to “Rebuild Database”. This rebuilds the SQL cache database — a sort of middle man needed for performance reasons — from the canonical XML database, which is the “source of truth” and what gets synced between your devices.

Rebuild the database on a Mac

Rebuild the database on an iPhone or iPad