OmniFocus Perspectives Guide: 6 Custom Views That Cut Your Daily Review

A perspective in OmniFocus is a saved query over your single task database, not a separate list you have to maintain. That distinction is the reason this OmniFocus perspectives guide starts with questions rather than settings: once you know exactly what you want to ask (“what could I do in ten minutes right now?”, “who owes me something?”), the rules almost write themselves. Get it wrong and you end up with fifteen sidebar entries you no longer trust, which is worse than having none.

What follows is the reasoning behind six views that answer real questions, the exact rule and grouping combinations to use, and the traps that make a perspective look broken when it is only doing what you told it.

What perspectives do, and where the built-in views run out

Everything you enter into OmniFocus lives in one database. Perspectives are filters and layouts on top of it. Change a task in the Projects view and it changes everywhere, because there is only one copy. That is also why a perspective can never “lose” a task; it can only hide one.

The built-in set does a lot of the work:

• Inbox for capture, kept empty by processing rather than by browsing.
• Projects for structure: the place to reorder, add sequential dependencies and see whole outcomes.
• Tags for context browsing, one tag at a time.
• Forecast for anything anchored to a date, plus calendar events on the same timeline.
• Flagged for a manual shortlist.
• Review for your weekly review cycle, driven by each project’s review interval.
• Nearby on iPhone and iPad, which uses tags with locations attached.

They run out in three predictable places. First, combining conditions: the Tags view shows one tag at a time, so “errands that are not on hold and not deferred” needs a custom rule set. Second, energy and time filtering: nothing built in says “short and easy”. Third, tracking delegated work, where the useful sort order is oldest first, so items you have chased nobody about float to the top.

Custom perspectives are an OmniFocus Pro feature, on Mac and on iOS and iPadOS. Licensing and pricing change, so check the current options on Omni Group’s OmniFocus page before you plan a setup that depends on them. If you decide Pro is not worth it, the built-in views plus disciplined tagging will still run a workable GTD system, and the pruning advice later in this piece applies either way.

How the rule builder actually works

The perspective editor gives you rule groups. A group can require all of its rules, any of them, or none of them. Nesting is where most people trip up: a top-level “all” group containing an inner “any” group means “must satisfy every outer rule, and at least one of these inner options”. That single pattern covers most useful perspectives, including the Today view below.

Availability, in plain terms

The availability rule is the most common cause of a perspective behaving unexpectedly:

• Available: actions you could genuinely start now. Excludes anything deferred to a future date, anything blocked by an earlier step in a sequential project, and anything whose only tag is on hold.
• First available: the single earliest available action in each project or action group. This is the honest definition of a next action.
• Remaining: everything not completed or dropped, including deferred and blocked items. Use this when you want to see the future, not act on it.
• Completed and dropped: for review and archaeology, such as “what did I actually finish last week?”.

The other rules worth knowing

You can filter on specific tags (with the option to include or ignore child tags), on untagged items, on flag state, on due and defer dates relative to today, on project or group status, and on estimated duration where you record it. Text search rules exist too, though they age badly as your wording drifts.

Presentation matters as much as filtering. Choose whether the perspective lists individual actions or whole projects, then set grouping (by project, tag, due date, date added) and sorting. On Mac you also choose a layout, with a fluid list on one side and a columns view on the other, plus an icon and colour and the sidebar position. Grouping by tag turns a flat list into a set of decisions you can scan by context, which is the single biggest readability win available.

Six custom perspectives worth building this week

1. Today: one decision list

Outer group set to all, with availability set to available. Inside it, an any group containing: flagged, due soon, and (optionally) a tag such as Today that you add during your morning planning. Group by project so related work clusters, sort by due date, and set it as your default view on launch.

The point is that this list should be short enough to finish. If it runs to forty items, your flag habit has become a second inbox.

2. A trustworthy next actions list

Set availability to first available, group by tag, sort by project or by date added. Because it shows one action per project, the length of this list tells you how many active commitments you are carrying, which is useful information on its own.

This is the closest OmniFocus gets to a classic GTD next actions list, and it only stays honest if each project’s first action is a physical next step rather than a vague outcome. “Sort out insurance” blocks the list; “email broker for renewal quote” does not.

3. Waiting For

Filter on your Waiting tag, set availability to remaining rather than available (delegated items are often deferred to a follow-up date, and you still want to see them), group by project, and sort by date added with the oldest first. The top of the list is then your chase list.

Add the date you delegated something to the task name if you want it visible at a glance, for example “Waiting: signed contract from Priya (sent 14 Mar)”.

4. Errands and Nearby

An any group containing your location-style tags (Errands, Supermarket, Town, Post Office), with availability set to available. Sort by tag so items in the same place group together. On iPhone and iPad, attaching locations to those tags lets the built-in Nearby view sort by distance, which is the one thing a custom perspective cannot replicate.

5. Low energy

Availability available, plus either a Low Energy tag or an estimated duration rule set to short tasks where you record durations. Keep the list to admin-shaped work: filing, quick replies, ten minutes of tidying. The value is having somewhere legitimate to go at 4:30pm instead of reopening email.

6. Stalled projects

Set the presentation to show projects rather than individual actions, then filter for active projects with no available next action. Your version of the rule builder may offer a stalled option directly; if not, an equivalent view is projects whose remaining actions are all blocked or deferred. Check the options available in your editor and test the result against a project you know is stuck.

Open this once a week during your review. Every entry needs either a next action, a defer date, an on-hold status or deletion. For more advanced variations on these builds, including flagged-plus-context hybrids, there is a longer walkthrough of tricking out your OmniFocus perspectives on this site.

Setting them up on Mac, iPhone and iPad

On Mac, create a new perspective, name it in plain language (name it after the question, not the mechanism), pick an icon and colour, build the rules, then drag it into the sidebar order you want. Adding your two or three most-used perspectives to the toolbar makes them one click away, and the perspective settings are where to look for a keyboard shortcut option if your version offers one.

Custom perspectives sync across devices along with the rest of your database, so a view built on Mac appears on iPhone and iPad without rebuilding, provided you have Pro on those devices. On iPhone and iPad you can reorder perspectives and choose which appear in the tab bar, so put Today and Next Actions where your thumb already is.

Two extras are worth setting up once. OmniFocus supports the Shortcuts app, so you can open a specific perspective from a Home Screen icon or a Focus mode automation. Widgets can surface a chosen perspective on the Home Screen, which suits Today better than anything else. If you are assembling a wider desktop setup around this, the roundup of Mac productivity apps that build a working GTD system covers what pairs well with OmniFocus.

Finally, Focus (also Pro) narrows the whole app to a selected project or folder. Combine it with a perspective and you get a client-only or work-only version of the same view: set Focus to the client folder, open your next actions perspective, and everything else disappears until you clear the Focus. Remember that Focus applies on top of the rules, which explains the occasional empty list.

Why your perspective shows the wrong tasks

Nearly every “broken perspective” comes down to one of five causes.

• Deferred items vanishing. You filtered on available, and the actions are deferred to next Tuesday. Switch to remaining if you want to see them, or accept the hiding as intended and check Forecast instead.
• Sequential projects hiding actions. In a sequential project only the first incomplete action is available. If a project seems to have gone quiet, check whether an early step is waiting on someone else. Making that step parallel, or splitting the project, usually fixes it.
• On-hold tags. A tag set to on hold removes its actions from available views entirely. Handy for Someday and Agendas, confusing when you have forgotten you did it. Review your tag list for on-hold status when a whole category disappears.
• Over-tight or duplicated rules. Two conflicting rules in an “all” group can produce an impossible condition, for example “tagged Errands” and “untagged”. An empty list often means contradictory rules rather than an empty database.
• Focus left on. If a view is unexpectedly short on Mac, check whether Focus is still active from earlier.

A five-minute test routine

Before you trust a new perspective, test it against something known. Pick a project with a mix of states: one available action, one deferred to next week, one tagged Waiting, one blocked behind a sequential step. Open each perspective and confirm the right items appear and the wrong ones do not. Repeat this whenever you change your tag structure. It takes minutes and it is the difference between a system you act on and a system you second-guess.

Keeping the sidebar lean

Perspective clutter creeps in because building them is enjoyable. A working rule of thumb: one perspective per question you genuinely ask, and if two views answer roughly the same question, merge them. Six well-tested views beat twenty you scroll past.

Delete or hide anything you have not opened in a month. Candidates for removal usually include duplicate variations on Today, single-tag perspectives that the built-in Tags view already covers, text-search perspectives built around wording you no longer use, and per-client views that Focus handles better. On Mac you can leave a perspective in place but remove it from the sidebar if you are not ready to delete it.

Rules also age. Renaming a tag, splitting Errands into three locations, or dropping the Low Energy tag will quietly break any perspective that referenced the old structure, so re-run the test routine after any tag reorganisation. Omni’s own support documentation is the place to check current rule options if your editor looks different from what you remember.

One honest caveat: this level of control suits people who like tuning a system. If you keep 25 projects and mostly need a date and a reminder, Apple Reminders, Things or Todoist will get you there with less setup, and pairing a simpler task app with a solid note system (see our tested picks for note-taking in a GTD workflow) may serve you better than Pro features you never configure. For everyone else, working through this OmniFocus perspectives guide once and then pruning quarterly turns a long scrolling list into six views that answer the questions you actually ask.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a perspective in OmniFocus?

A perspective is a saved set of filters, grouping and sorting rules applied to your single OmniFocus database. It does not hold tasks of its own; it decides which existing tasks appear and how they are arranged. Built-in perspectives such as Inbox, Projects, Tags, Forecast, Flagged and Review are pre-made versions of the same idea.

Do I need OmniFocus Pro to create custom perspectives?

Yes. Custom perspectives are a Pro feature, alongside Focus and additional automation options. The standard version includes the built-in perspectives, which are enough for a basic GTD setup. Check Omni Group’s current pricing and licensing before buying, as options have changed over time.

How many perspectives should a GTD system have?

There is no official number, but most people settle at somewhere between four and eight custom views plus the built-ins. A practical test is whether each perspective answers a distinct question you ask during a day or a weekly review. If you cannot name that question, the perspective is probably clutter.

Why does my custom perspective show no tasks?

The usual causes are an availability filter set to available when the items are deferred or blocked, contradictory rules inside an “all” group, an on-hold tag removing items, or a Focus still active from earlier. Loosen one rule at a time and watch when items reappear. That tells you which condition was doing the filtering.

What is the difference between available, first available and remaining actions?

Available means you could start it now: not completed, not deferred to the future, not blocked, not on hold. First available narrows that to the single earliest available action in each project or action group, which is the truest next actions list. Remaining includes everything not completed or dropped, deferred and blocked items included.

Do perspectives sync between Mac, iPhone and iPad?

Custom perspectives sync with the rest of your OmniFocus data, so a view built on one device appears on the others without rebuilding. You need Pro on each device where you want to use them. Device-specific settings such as tab bar order and toolbar placement are set locally.

Can I build a reliable next actions list with perspectives alone?

Perspectives can produce the list, but reliability comes from your inputs. Filter on first available and group by tag, then make sure every active project has a concrete physical next step and that your tag statuses are correct. If the projects contain vague outcomes, no rule set will rescue the list.