Update on Search Omnifocus

1 minute read

I made some updates to the Search Omnifocus Alfred workflow over the last month or so thanks to some user suggestions.

Search Omnifocus update

I made some updates to the Search Omnifocus Alfred workflow over the last month or so thanks to some user suggestions.

Note search

You can search for note contents using .n.

Search for note contents
Search for note contents

Recent items

Using .r will show you the 10 last modified Omnifocus tasks and projects.

You can narrow the search scope to non-completed and modified items with .ra.

Future updates

Gabs Weatherhead wrote about The Evolution of Omnifocus over at Macdrifter. It’s a good read and a couple of his criticisms, especially regarding comparison with other tasks managers like 2DO, stand out:

it just doesn’t make notes important, it makes them searchable and actionable with special fields for emails, phone numbers, and URLs

This made me think about whether I can update the workflow to support this sort of query. Specifically, can it allow you to search for items that contain:

  • an email address
  • a phone number
  • an image
  • a PDF

I think simple queries for email addresses or attached files will work but less sure about phone numbers. I’m going to give it a go anyway. Here’s my idea for the next few updates:

  • v1.2.3: ‘search everything’ support (this is a simple change to allow searches to incorporate items in the inbox)
  • v1.2.4: ‘search for email address’ support
  • v1.2.5: ‘search for attachments’