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.

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.

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.

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.

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'.)

satis wrote:

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.

Can the iPad version see the outlines on my Mac and vv?

Thx

https://support.omnigroup.com/documentation/omnioutliner/universal/6.0/en/connect/

Any document you keep in a synced folder can be opened and edited. Omni has recommended using iCloud Drive as the primary method for cross‑platform syncing, since iOS versions integrate the Files/document browser and make it easy to open and create documents directly on iCloud Drive.

Syncing relies on the standard OmniOutliner document format (the usual .oo3/.ooutline package) stored in a shared cloud location.

When using third‑party cloud providers (Dropbox, Box, etc.), Omni has warned that not all providers handle package file formats equally well.

It’s a no-brainer, I upgraded. The columns feature is what makes it unique to me.

Ok, an update.

Ken (Case, I believe) emailed asking for an activity monitor snapshot while OO was hung - and I can no longer get it to hang.

There was one thing different, though. The first non-hanging time I launched OO on my laptop, it gave me a warning that thumbnails had changed and asked if I really wanted to run the app.

Ridiculous question. It's OO6! Of course I wanted to run it.

Then, no more hangs. OmniGroup says there is no limitation on simultaneous instances on a single user license, a practice in wide use at OmniGroup.

My best guesses run along the lines of a connectivity issue between me and OmniGroup's license servers or perhaps some temporary issue at OmniGroup with an unintended side effect.

I take it from this and beta email OmniGroup's customer support is active and accurate. I'll confess a moment of panic when OO kept hanging. At this point, I have no doubts about it.

There is an ongoing mission for the OO user community, though. We need to pressure OmniGroup to get cracking on OO7. No more withering on the vine, please!

My vote for what we should sell OmniGroup on is a mind map view.

Amontillado wrote:

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.

Overview from a staffer new to outliners.

https://9to5mac.com/2026/01/09/omnioutliner-6-officially-released-with-liquid-glass-apple-intelligence-omni-links/

Apple App Store short article.

https://apps.apple.com/us/mac/story/id1462144368

William Gallagher is deputy chair of the Writers Guild of Great Britain, writes for AppleInsider, and runs the writer-oriented 58Keys YouTube channel. On his channel today he uploaded a 30-minute video on OmniOutliner 6

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94CrxoG2sqw

He's used Omni apps OO and Omnifocus for several years.

Thanks for the link. This was a really good overview of omnioutliner 6.