lots of Apps are adding artificial intelligence to their products in the most straightforward way possible. Companies like Google, Microsoft, and Meta are adding colorful buttons and popups to their user interfaces, bombarding customers with marketing emails, and loudly encouraging users to try out new AI features.
In this context, it was refreshing to talk to indie app maker Omni Group about their approach to AI. The Seattle-based company makes OmniFocus, a powerful task management application long beloved by critics and enthusiasts for its extreme flexibility. If you can imagine how you want to manage your tasks, OmniFocus has the flexibility to do it without feeling too cluttered. And AI’s plans are in line with that. The development team wants to keep the AI offline and private, allowing users to configure it however they like.
This means that the average OmniFocus user will not see any pop-ups prompting them to use AI in the application itself. Instead, AI is added as a potential tool for those who want to build automation or install any of the automations that others have built. Some people are already doing just that. Here you can find some such automations. Here’s how to give them a spin.
OmniFocus works with multiple Apple devices.Provided by Omni Group
Set up AI with 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. All of these operating systems support one of the least discussed new features in macOS 26. Third-party applications can now take advantage of Foundation, the large-scale language model that powers Apple Intelligence.
These new features also require the latest version of OmniFocus, which is currently the only Omni application that supports AI. (According to company representatives, these features will eventually be rolled out to other Omni applications, such as OmniPlanner and OmniGraffle.)
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screenshotProvided by Omni Group
Next, go to the Omni-Automations directory and click on one of the productivity tools that looks interesting. The source code for the automation is displayed, but above the code for the plugin itself.[プラグインのインストール]You can click the button at any time. (You may need to enable scripting from external applications before installing anything.)
One is called Help Me Plan, which lets you break down tasks in your inbox into subtasks. I tried this out with a task titled “Writing about OmniFocus Automation features,” and it quickly added several subtasks below, from research to drafting to final finishing. Well, these steps are not that’s right As for how to proceed with article writing, here are some ideas to get started on your own when you feel stuck.
