
These particular apps are all ones AppleInsider has not just road tested, but leaned on heavily for years.įrom task managers to calendar apps and beyond, they're also tools that will fit the greatest number of people. That's what each of the following six app recommendations do, even as they do it all in so very different ways. They'll leave you to the bits of your work that you enjoy. They will leave you to concentrate on the elements you know best. They'll do it by removing or at least radically reducing all of the setting up or managing you have to do.
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On the good side, though, it is unquestionably certain that there are Mac apps that will speed up your work. What you do every day on your Mac is different to absolutely everyone else and that means a tool that is a true boon to you, can be thought worthless to your boss or your colleagues. This is one area where the number of apps isn't the issue, the quality of any one of them isn't the problem, but you are.
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It's the same with image or video editors and in fact, maybe with just about every genre of app software you can think of.

As easy to guess from the names of my templates, I use OmniOutliner for outlining writing, preparing lectures and talks, and project management.There may be a pretty infinite number of word processing apps around, but only a handful of great ones. Outlines can be exported to many formats, particularly useful is the Keynote format (where the top-level headings become individual slides) and the OPML format which is “understood” by Scrivener and many mind-mapping applications. It’s pretty easy to add a weblink, an email, or attach a file to an outline entry. Another example, for project plans you may want to keep start and due dates of individual tasks.įinally, OmniOutliner smoothly integrates with other software. You could introduce a second column called “Responsible” and format it as a drop-down list of names of all co-authors. For example, you may want to keep an outline of your article and track who is responsible for each section. Thirdly, by default OmniOutlines has only one column, but you can easily add other “dimensions” to your outline by introducing additional columns. I have templates called Writing, Presentation, and Planning. OmniOutliner also allows to save outlines as templates and then start new outlines based on an already existing template to avoid starting all this customization anew. For example, in preparing talks I want to highlight entries associated with pictures in my slides, so I set up F1 to make an entry background yellow and press F1 every time I add a note concerning a new picture in my presentation. make all 1-st level headings bold and blue) or associated with a function button. Secondly, a formatting panel on the left not only contains a “table of content” for your outline, but also allows you to define custom styles depending either on the level of entry (e.g. But there is much more to OmniOutliner.įirst, bringing up the Inspector gives you a lot of possibilities for formatting and customizing your outline: from the numbering style of sections to background colors, headings and much more. This is pretty sufficient for a large part of simpler outlines. There is also a possibility of “hoisting” or displaying only one heading and its children if you want to work with just one part of your outline. By pressing ⌘-’ or a little icon next to an entry you can insert a text note related to that entry.

There is plenty of other outlining software (often combined with mind-mapping), but none matches OmniOutliner in its simplicity, elegance and power.Īt first sight, OmniOutliner is very simple: you can create headings of different levels, move them around and “collapse” or hide lower level headings to get a higher-level overview of your outline.


It is indispensable for preparing writing outlines, lectures, talks and project plans. OmniOutliner is one of my favorite and most frequently used Mac apps.
