An outline doesn’t have to be a basic bulleted list – or a hassle to create. OmniOutliner’s powerful features and flexible designs let you create beautifully formatted, complex outlines with minimal effort.

Here are a few tips to help you master OmniOutliner faster than a speeding bullet.

Efficiency matters when you’re getting complex ideas in order – which is why OmniOutliner lets you outline without lifting your fingers from the keyboard. To quickly indent a row, for example, select it and press Tab (Shift-Tab outdents). Or move it up or down with the U or D keys. Just about every action in OmniOutliner is accessible with a shortcut, and with the Pro upgrade you can customise each one.

You already know how to reorder rows, but what if you need to completely revamp your outline? Click the Sidebar button to reveal the handy Sections view. Here you can see the big picture, expand and collapse individual sections, and rearrange multiple lines.

Need an extra column or two – say, to note the discussion leader and start time for each agenda item in a meeting? Click the Add Column button in the toolbar.

Most Mac apps support full-screen mode, but when you want to hunker down and work, enable Distraction Free mode (Preferences > General > Full Screen Mode > Distraction Free) to hide the toolbar, sidebar and inspector.

And if your outline gets too unwieldy, choose View > Focus to zoom in on one section. You can switch among zoomed-in sections using the Sections sidebar.

You can also use the nifty Omni Links feature to reference another section of the current outline or even specific content in another OmniOutliner document. Control-click the text you want to reference and choose Copy Omni Link; then select the text you want to link from and choose Edit > Add Link. You can also share Omni Links (say, in an email or a text message) to let someone jump directly to a specific document or location in a document.

Ready to give your ho-hum outline a little flair? Choose from a dozen themes (or many more with a Pro upgrade) to apply the perfect combination of colours, fonts and styles.

A Pro upgrade also lets you change the settings for any element in your outline. Select an item type, then pick your favourite font, size, colour, formatting, alignment, line height, padding and more. Once everything is perfect, choose File > Save as Template to add your custom document to the theme browser so you can use it for your next outline.

Themes are almost infinitely customisable via the Inspector panel: Select any item type and pick your favourite font, size, colour, formatting, alignment, line height, padding and more. Once everything is perfect, choose File > Save as Template to add your custom document to the theme browser so you can use it for your next outline.

If you need to find specific text, use the Filter field to quickly search your document, notes or just a specific column. But the Pro-only filters in the sidebar level this feature up: they let you save queries to show only rows that match combinations of criteria – keywords, checkboxes, numbers, text in notes and more.

Into automation? OmniOutliner is unmatched in the variety of ways it lets you streamline frequent actions. In addition to supporting macOS technologies such as Shortcuts, Automator, AppleScript and Voice Control, the developer’s JavaScript-based Omni Automation platform lets you create automations that work across all your devices. These scripts and plug-ins can also integrate with Shortcuts and with Voice Control (letting you automate the app with your voice!) and they can query Apple’s Foundation Models to process data and respond to natural-language prompts. For example, the Outline the Clipboard plug-in can create an outline based on the content of the clipboard — useful!

Some OmniOutliner features require the Pro upgrade.