[Greg Jones]

I don't understand why they have not put in reminders and alarms into this product. Otherwise they are admittng the software programmers at RTM, Toodledo, and Things, are smarter and design a better product.

I have no experience with RTM or Toodledo, but I do have experience with Things. Perhaps you would share with us how the reminders and alarms feature(s) in Things is superior to OmniFocus?

[FMiguélez]

@chestercheeto:
Have you read the other posts about iPhone and alarms?

I agree that iCal's editing is weak.

But you do not have to "double" your work at all by entering everything in iCal again.

For those critical tasks that you don't want falling through the cracks you could try entering them in iCal (instead of OF) as EVENTS. Then you just set the alarm to warn you with email (and pop-ups and/or annoying sounds if needed), write the title of the task and the symbols needed to make OF automatically grab it and place it in the correct place, context ( and flag, dates, etc).

That's probably not the most elegant solution there is, but it involves no extra work at all, you keep your tasks in one place (in OmniFocus -just consider iCal your screaming dummy if you dislike it so much), you already have it in your computer, and you NEED a calendar anyway (any calendar)...

I suggest you spend a few minutes trying that and see if you like it or not.

I use this method when I need to be reminded of something on the last friday of every 2 months, for instance.

_

[avandelay]

"All or nothing" alarms/notifications is my biggest (and basically my only) gripe with OF on iPhone and Mac. There really are some things you want popups or alerts for and some things you don't. I'm really suprised OF doesn't just have a simple "alert me at X time" on a per-task basis. iCal does this right, with multiple alerts, alerts of different types, etc. (And no, I'm not interested in scattering my work by putting some tasks into iCal -- this is pretty expensive software to be lacking such a basic feature).

[lectrohowie]

I too jumped on the OF bandwagon early only to drop it due to lack of alarms (in the fullest of senses). Now I'm just remembering how amazing a tool it is in most every other way - but still it has no reminders or alarms! To me it just doesn't make sense and it prevents me from using it entirely. I've already logged it (long ago) as a request - and will remain hopeful that one day we will see that improvement.

[whpalmer4]

How did people ever get things done with paper calendars, I wonder?

[Christian]

Originally Posted by whpalmer4

How did people ever get things done with paper calendars, I wonder?

Now that you mention it....my leather-bound calendar often fails to alarm me. I should file a request.

Also, how does OF not have alarms?

[CatOne]

Originally Posted by Christian

Now that you mention it....my leather-bound calendar often fails to alarm me. I should file a request.

Also, how does OF not have alarms?

It does, if you use Growl.

And it has them on iOS.

[Christian]

If this is about the options o set individual alerts then I wonder how you want to use this. If you do GTD you should only set due dates for tasks really due on a given day. Then why do you want to be reminded of some due tasks but not of others?

[Brian]

Like many OS X applications, OmniFocus provides alerts through the Growl framework; one advantage of that approach is that the majority of your alerts all look and behave the same. You don't have a half-dozen different-looking alerts popping up all the time, depending on which app is telling you something. (Of course, if you want them to look different, you can configure it that way.)

In any case, folks on pre-Lion builds of OS X can use Growl for free; as of OS 10.7, it's become a $2 product on the Mac App Store. I can certainly understand some folks being reluctant to purchase it, so I'll file a feature request for an option that doesn't require Growl. Thanks everyone!

[PatrickH]

According to reviews on the Mac App Store and elsewhere, people are having a lot of problems with the Mac App Store version of Growl. I wouldn't mind paying the $2, but I don't want to rely on something so unreliable.

There's also a new free version available from another developer (and some people claim it works better than the "official" version), but it crashes my Finder when I merely try to install it.

Brian, please rush the option for OmniFocus alerts that won't require Growl.