I recently wrote about switching from OmniFocus to Reminders and gave a lot of reasons why I thought that was a good plan. I was wrong and I’ve since moved back.

Apple has made Reminders into a solid app with a lot of nice features, but I realized I’ve been taking OmniFocus for granted. First, I sorely missed its “defer dates”. That is, I don’t need to be reminded to buy Halloween candy when it’s nearly Christmas time. I don’t even want to see that on my action list because it clutters up both my list and my thinking. Second, you can set OmniFocus to repeat an action a certain amount of time after that action’s completion date, not only its due date. “Pay the electric bill” needs to happen at the same time each month, but “make a haircut appointment” should happen a few weeks after my last haircut, whenever that was. Finally, OmniFocus’s project options like “complete with last action” are unmatched. Mix in many less crucial but nice-to-have features like nested tags, and per-tag location reminders, and it’s too good to walk away from.

I started moving my actions back out of Reminders and into OmniFocus and switched to using the OF 4 beta on my iPhone and iPad. That beta is turning into what I’d hoped OmniFocus would become: a stunning app that’s a pleasure to use. If it follows this current path, and OmniFocus 4 for Mac follows soon after, I think it’ll be amazing.

I’m glad I tried this experiment, and if nothing else it forced me to deeply review all of my actions before copying them from one system into another. Apple should be proud of Reminders and I bet it does everything most people need. It’s not (yet) enough for me, though. Until then, OmniFocus, I’m back.