A lot apps are adding AI to their products in the most direct way. Companies like Google, Microsoft, and Meta are adding colorful buttons and pop-ups to their user interfaces and bombarding their customers with marketing emails loudly imploring users to try modern AI features.
In this context, it was refreshing to talk to independent app developers Omni Group about their approach to artificial intelligence. The Seattle-based company produces OmniFocusa powerful task management app that has long been beloved by reviewers and enthusiasts for its exceptional flexibility. If you can imagine how you would like to manage your tasks, OmniFocus is malleable enough to let you do so without feeling too cluttered. The AI plan is consistent 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 asking to utilize AI within the app itself. Instead, AI is being added as a potential tool for anyone who wants to build automations or anyone who is installing one of the automations someone else has built. A few people have already done this; you can find several such automations Here. Here’s how to give them a chance.
OmniFocus works on several Apple devices.Courtesy of Omni Group
Configuring AI in OmniFocus
To get started, you’ll need to run one of Apple’s modern “26” operating systems – macOS, iOS, and iPadOS are all supported. All of these operating systems support one of the least talked about modern features of macOS 26 – third-party apps can now take advantage of Foundation, a multi-language model that supports Apple Intelligence.
To utilize these modern features, you also need an up-to-date version of OmniFocus, which is currently the only Omni app with AI support. (According to company representatives, these features will soon appear in other Omni applications such as OmniPlanner and OmniGraffle.)
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ScreenshotCourtesy of Omni Group
Then go to Omni-Automations Catalog and click on one of the productivity tools that looks captivating. You’ll see the source code for the automation, but you can always click the Install Plugin button above the code for the plugin itself. (You may need to enable scripts from external applications before you can install anything.)
One, called a Support Plan, can break down any task in your inbox into subtasks. I tried this out in an assignment titled “Write about OmniFocus Automation Features,” and a few subtasks were quickly added below, from research to drafting to finalization. These steps are not Exactly how do I go about writing an article, but the idea is more to start when you feel stuck.