[brandall10]

Interestingly enough, if you have a task that is due soon and flagged, and you have in the settings for the badge count to show for both attributes, it will actually show as a +2 in the badge count.

Ex: upon coming into the office this morning I had five tasks set to be due today. I flagged a couple, then left the app to do something else, and before opening it again noticed that 5 went to a 7. :confused:

I emailed this in as a bug and got a prompt response from a support ninjas telling me this is expected behavior, with this explanation "if a user looks at the badge and sees "10", then they head into OmniFocus to start working. What if they see "6 Due Soon" and "5 Flagged"? (They might start to worry that OmniFocus isn't giving them correct data.)"

Um... okay. If you take two sets that separately have their own values, then merge, you don't double count the unions. Basic set theory. That badge count should represent actions, not a count of attributes. If you have an issue with this would you please send them an email? They claim to have had a few complaints, which leads me to believe there's no current motive to change this behavior.

[whpalmer4]

Not sure I see the harm here, or the error, for that matter.

Harm: the number counts up a little faster than it should, but it also counts down faster than it should when you check off those double-counted items.

Error: you claim it should be counting the union of those sets. That's one viewpoint. Here's another: an item that is flagged AND is overdue is a bigger issue than one that is flagged OR overdue. Why should 5 flagged items look the same as 5 flagged overdue items? If that dock badge number jumps I'm going to go investigate and hopefully do something about the situation. It would be most unhelpful of OmniFocus to suppress that indication that I'm falling behind!

[atreinke]

I agree with brandall10. The badge count should show the actual number of actions that you have configured the badge count to display. If I set my badge count to show flagged/due/overdue items, and I have one separate action that is due, one separate action that is overdue, and one separate action that is flagged it should show 3 items.

If I have one action that is both flagged and due, and one action that is overdue it should only show 2 in the badge count. Showing 3 would be misleading and confusing. If I have an action that is both due and flagged, I'm still only going to complete it once. The badge number does not show importance or priority, you need to go into OF and determine what actions are triggering the badge count and determine that yourself. You can look at the Forecast to determine if it is a due or overdue action, and the Flagged view to see if there are any flagged actions. I personally use a Today perspective that gives me due/overdue/flagged all in one.

Based on my Today perspective, and using the method of counting all statuses (flagged/due/overdue), I could have 3 actions due and if all 3 actions were also flagged my badge would show 6 but my perspective would only show 3 actions. That just doesn't seem right to me.

I never notice the way this worked with the badge count since I have only set it to show due and overdue items, never flagged items. I only set due dates for actions that have a hard due date. I flag actions that I would "like" to get done today, but don't have too. This way, if I get a badge display on my OF icon I KNOW that I have something I need to get done today.

[brandall10]

Originally Posted by whpalmer4

Here's another: an item that is flagged AND is overdue is a bigger issue than one that is flagged OR overdue.

Okay, so a weighting system. So how about an overdue item vs. one that is due soon? Would you agree the former is more important? They're both +1. Or how about an overdue vs. one that is due soon and flagged? I would argue the former is more important still, yet OmniFocus tells me the latter is twice as important.

Regardless, what Omni is doing here breaks form with typical usage in iOS - as a count of _something_, whether unread articles, unread email, or in this case as tasks that need attending to.

[brandall10]

Bump, in hopes that this is addressed. I submitted a report for this back in 1.1, if you feel the same way I do about this (that badge count should represent actual actions) please do the same.

[Brian]

In addition to the mental math confusion the other ninja mentioned ("Five plus six does not equal ten. Your app is buggy."), there's another advantage of the current behavior. It exposes more information about state changes in your database.

With a merged count, if a flagged item in your database became due soon, the merged badge count wouldn't give you any indication that happened.
The current behavior does expose that information. When you see that the badge has changed from X to X+1, you know that something's changed in your database.

(For similar reasons, I have my badges to count flagged and overdue, but not due soon. I wish there was a way to better differentiate between due soon and overdue in the badge, but we can't control the badge color, and we can only feed it a single number to display.)

[Brian]

Rereading the thread, the set theory comment helped me understand how folks that are asking for this are thinking about it.

If it helps, the current badge count is meant to tell you "Hey, you have X many reasons to pay attention to the stuff in your database right now". We feel that's more useful than a badge that says "You need to pay attention to X items in the database" without giving you any information as to why you should pay attention.

So, yeah, from an items perspective, we are "double-counting" but only because we think the additional information is useful/helpful.