OmniOutliner 6

Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Nov 5, 2025 at 12:47 PM

[Warning: This is probably more off-topic than on.]

Around 2008 I decided to go back to Apple for my personal computing—for the previous 13 years I used PCs, because that’s what I had at work. But two Mac apps convinced me to return to Apple. Those were Scrivener and OmniOutliner. I was drawn to Scrivener because I thought it would help me write my novel. OmniOutliner seemed the nearest thing to the old DOS app I loved, GrandView. Oddly, I’ve never used either of those apps much. Scrivener because I don’t really have a novel in me, I think. OmniOutliner, because… well I’m not sure, but I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that there is a lot of friction using it, and even back then there were more nimble outliners, even if they didn’t pack the same features. Don’t get me wrong, I admire OO—and I think it is great to learn that a new version is in the works. I still have a copy on my current MacBook. I tried to use it the other day, but then thought that I would do better in Workflowy, where I can just bang out the outline. But it still seems the OO is the only local outliner with the ability to add columns for viewing meta data (remind me of others if I’ve forgotten any). That makes it special.

Thanks for the update!

Steve