Forum Posts Feed
OmniOutliner 6 is out
< Next Topic | Back to topic list | Previous Topic >
Posted by Amontillado
Jan 6, 2026 at 07:46 PM
I sense OO is not the most popular outliner out there. For those who follow OO, version 6 has just been released.
Extra columns mean I can add custom metadata, and I’m getting some mileage out of my cross reference script.
That does the same thing as a focus. Click a topic, run the script, and you see just that topic and its children. But, it also looks in any other column you want and adds any topics under a Research topic which match keywords in the focused topic.
Another script maintains topics under Journal organized in a Year, Month, Day hierarchy. I don’t keep progress notes very reliably. Having the widget to open up the topic for me somehow makes me more likely to keep a log.
Cost is a negative factor with OO and always has been. That’s particularly true for the Pro version, which I think is required to run automation scripts. I bit the bullet because it handles my outlining methods. I’ve been using Devonthink for outlining, using transclusion to maintain context. My cross reference script does that in OO.
OO6’s styles are a little hard to understand. You can apply a style to a column, but it gets overridden by the whole document and row style. I’m still exploring workarounds.
On the whole, I can cope with style strangeness in an outliner, even if I would prefer more flexibility. I don’t plan to use it as a word processor.
Posted by Bob Spies
Jan 6, 2026 at 09:14 PM
Great! I’ve found OO to be the most capable, and best “industrial strength” outliner out there. I depend on it heavily for all kinds of uses.
Posted by Amontillado
Jan 6, 2026 at 10:47 PM
I have found one disquieting thing. I installed it on my laptop and opened it to configure OO6’s toolbar. It wouldn’t run. The instance on my desktop was unresponsive. I force quit and tried again. No luck.
It appears it checks to see if another instance of itself is running on another system. I do not condone software theft. On the other hand, I’d hate to be out on the road and unable to use OO because I left it running on my desktop.
Posted by Amontillado
Jan 7, 2026 at 01:00 AM
Word from Ken at OmniGroup, which I think may be Ken Case himself.
“We expect customers to be able to use a single license on all of their devices at once—even if they have multiple Macs, multiple iPads, etc. (We do this ourselves here at Omni!)”
Probably a new release issue, or an anomaly with my particular install.
Posted by satis
Jan 7, 2026 at 05:06 AM
This was an insta-upgrade for me through Omni’s website. When I last upgraded to v.5 (Feb 2019?) the upgrade price was $49.99, but back then the iOS app/upgrade was a separate purchase. Here it’s a one-time $49.99 upgrade and upon logging in with one’s Omni Account the iOS/iPadOS/macOS apps all unlock to Pro.
Although I’ve used Zavala for some light outlines, and I enjoyed playing with my registered copy of Bike, those apps’ bizarre decision to send you to a new subheading when using the Return key kept me from using them regularly. (I have decades of outline use and expectation for Return to deliver a new ‘sister’ item and not a ‘daughter’.)