How to Use the New AI Features in OmniFocus, the Power User’s To-Do List

A lot of apps are adding artificial intelligence to their products in the most direct way possible. Companies like Google, Microsoft, and Meta are all adding colorful buttons and pop-ups to their user interface and bombarding their customers with marketing emails, all of which loudly beg users to try new AI features.

It was refreshing, in this context, to chat with independent app creators Omni Group about their approach to AI. The Seattle-based company creates OmniFocus, a powerful task management application long loved by evaluators and enthusiasts for its extreme flexibility. If you can imagine a way you’d like to manage your tasks, OmniFocus is flexible enough to enable it without ever feeling too cluttered. And the plan for AI is in line with this: the development team wants to keep the AI ​​offline and private, and allow users to configure it however they want.

This means that the average OmniFocus user won’t see any pop-ups imploring them to use AI in the app itself. Rather, AI is added as a potential tool for anyone wanting to create automations or for anyone installing one of the automations created by someone else. A few people have already done just that; you can find a handful of these automations here. Here’s how to give them a spin.

OmniFocus works on multiple Apple devices.Courtesy of Omni Group

Configuring AI in OmniFocus

To get started, you’ll need to be running one of Apple’s new “26” operating systems: macOS, iOS, and iPadOS are all supported. These operating systems all support one of the less talked about new features in macOS 26: third-party apps can now use Foundation, the large language model that powers Apple Intelligence.

To use these new features, you’ll also need an up-to-date version of OmniFocus, which is currently the only Omni app that supports AI. (These features will eventually be available in other Omni apps like OmniPlanner and OmniGraffle, according to company representatives.)

ScreenshotCourtesy of Omni Group

Next, head to the Omni-Automations directory and click on one of the productivity tools that looks interesting. You will see the source code for the automation, but you can always click the Install Plugin button above the plugin code itself. (You may need to enable external application scripts before you can install anything.)

One of them, called Help Me Plan, can divide any task in your inbox into subtasks. I tried this on a task titled “Write about OmniFocus Automation features” and several subtasks were quickly added below, from research to writing to finalizing. Now these steps are not Exactly how I would go about writing an article, but the idea is more to start when you feel stuck.