Disabling automatic syncing
 

Hey,

Thanks for the great products you've all brought us... I've been using the OmniFocus beta, and I've set it up to sync with a wedDAV i've got set up. The only issue I am having is a nuisance more than anything else. I have my keychain password protected and locked in it default. Omnifocus wants to open my keychain every tiem it wants to auto-sync. I would prefer to be able ot sync manually whenever I need to and just disable the autosync so I don't have to keep typing in my password every 15 minutes or so.

Is that something that is an editable setting, or is it something that you'd have to put in your gtd list?

Thanks, and keep up the great work!

Cheers,
Rano

Before I get into the controls for changing the timing of automatic synchronization, I should note that we plan to modify the keychain code to look up the credentials once when you first synchronize, and use those credentials until you quit the app (similar to what Mail and iChat do), so hopefully the keychain prompt issue will go away soon. But in the meantime…

There are two hidden preferences which control the timing of automatic synchronization, MaximumTimeBetweenSync and TimeFromFirstEditToSync. Both are specified in seconds. MaximumTimeBetweenSync is how often OmniFocus looks for changes on the server when no changes have been made locally; it defaults to 3600 seconds (one hour). TimeFromFirstEditToSync is how soon OmniFocus will sync after you've made an edit, and it defaults to 60 seconds (one minute).

You can change these hidden settings by entering commands into a Terminal window, although the new value won't take effect until you quit and reopen OmniFocus. Here is the command you would use to change the MaximumTimeBetweenSync to approximately one year (31,536,000 seconds):

[CODE]defaults write com.omnigroup.OmniFocus MaximumTimeBetweenSync -float 31536000[/CODE]

And here is the command to restore that value to its default setting:

[CODE]defaults remove com.omnigroup.OmniFocus MaximumTimeBetweenSync[/CODE]

I should note that we impose a minimum period on both of those settings: you can't make TimeFromFirstEditToSync shorter than 2 seconds, and you can't make MaximumTimeBetweenSync shorter than 15 seconds.

Hope this helps!

Hey, does this preference still work in 1.7.3 and Snow Leopard? I tried it and it doesn't seem to. Thanks,

-Matt

[QUOTE=invictus26;67121]Hey, does this preference still work in 1.7.3 and Snow Leopard? I tried it and it doesn't seem to. Thanks,

-Matt[/QUOTE]

There's really no need; you can set OmniFocus on iPhone to sync manually. I'd suggest you choose that, rather than set the sync interval to a year, based on a forum tip that is over a year old!

Thanks, but I actually want to set the sync interval to 2 seconds after an edit so that everything is synced when I close my laptop. At any rate, I think it's working now. I deleted the plist file and now it's syncing right away.

Sync interval
 

Just stared trying out OmniFocus 1.7.5 here.

I noticed the large, round, orange "Sync" button on the toolbar. Does this mean that I need to push it manually to have my data synced to MobileMe?

Is there a way to adjust the sync intervals in this new version of the software? Any word on how to tweak the preference files accordingly?

Ideally, I would like to have immediate, automatic syncing, so that all my date is in the cloud as soon as I enter new info (or at least within a few seconds).

Thank you very much.

No, syncs happen automatically one minute after you make a change, and every hour thereafter (and also when you launch the application). The sync button is there to allow you to force a sync to happen immediately, for example if you think that another client has made a change which has been synced to MobileMe, and you want to make sure that the computer you are using has all of the changes. Or perhaps you had a connectivity problem that prevented the last automatic sync from happening, and you think that you have addressed the issue and want to try again.

As for altering the sync timers, Ken's post earlier in this thread tells you what you need to know.

[QUOTE=macula;72105]Ideally, I would like to have immediate, automatic syncing, so that all my date is in the cloud as soon as I enter new info (or at least within a few seconds).[/QUOTE]

That's pretty much what OmniFocus does out of the box: make a change, wait 60 seconds, automatic sync kicks in. Of course, you can sync manually at any time as well by clicking on the big orange spinner button or hitting Control-Command-S.

On top of that, there are some hidden preferences for manipulating the automatic sync intervals. See [URL="http://forums.omnigroup.com/showthread.php?p=41834#post41834"]Ken's post from 2008[/URL] for more info.

-Dennis

PS - Ha, just realized it was [I]this[/I] thread that Ken posted the above info. Thanks for pointing that out, Bill.

Thanks for the quick reply, Toadling. Sixty seconds is decent but I would would like to get it down to five or ten at most. Unfortunately, the preference keys in the quoted post seem to be nonexistent in the most recent version of the software.

May I ask the Omni developers to point us to the correct keys, or some other solution?

Thank you.

Huh, didn't work for me either when I tried to set the TimeFromFirstEditToSync . Not the first regression, won't be the last either, I'm sure. Send in a bug report with Help->Send Feedback.