OmniGraffle 3 4+

Gesture Issues

The UI updates are very good and intuitive (especially if you are familiar with previous versions). But this latest version has huge problems with the gestures I’ve used from earlier versions. For example I use “Duplicate” very often. I touch and hold the object and then two-finger tap where I want the duplicate to be. Instead of duplicating the object, the original object displays it is selected. The older versions would have selected the original object as soon as it was touched. If I two-finger tap a second time the object will be duplicated. This is very awkward.

Another problem is that if I tap and hold an object and then two-finger tap (which selects the first object) and then remove my finger from the original object and tap-off to unselect the first object a selection circle is displayed randomly on the screen. If I tap-off again then a selection bubble is displayed. It takes 3 tap-offs to fully clear the selection.

I use an iPad Pro with the Apple Pencil and this issue displays regardless of the proximity of the Apple Pencil. I use this tool professionally and this is costing me time. Please fix the gesture issues and I will bump this back up to 5 stars because the new UI is great.

Frustrating to use

I want to like this app. I want to USE this app. But it’s very clunky. I try to position shapes but they snap to weird positions that aren’t even on the grid. Creating custom stencils was brutally non-intuitive (apparently they don’t show up if you save them in the cloud?) Sometimes it gets into a mode where I can’t even add text boxes. That was the tipping point for me, leading me to write this review. I know there’s a powerful tool underneath here, it’s just HARD to use, especially compared with the desktop version. Not what I would expect from an app for which I’ve paid so much, nor from a company with so much experience. I don’t want to have to carry my laptop with me just to make some basic diagrams—that’s why I though the iPad app would be useful. I’m sorry, but this app is just really not quite there.

Developer Response ,

Thanks for letting us know your points of frustration! The bug with being unable to add text should be fixed in the latest updated, 3.11.2. The problem was with certain gestures resulting in our gesture system getting stuck in a bad state after our iOS 13 update. As for stencil locations, currently they need to be saved in the local OmniGraffle application folder or the OmniGraffle folder in iCloud that is created by the app. In an upcoming feature update we will be adding the ability to link arbitrary folders for templates and stencils so they appear in the app.

The issue with shapes snapping off grid is not something we have an obvious explanation for. We would love to talk with you about this issue to figure out what's going on. Our support team can be reached at omnigraffle@omnigroup.com or by phone Mon - Fri, 10am - 5pm Pacific at 1 (206) 523-4152. Thanks!

Frustrating, in need of a rewrite

Same application, same frustrations, same bugs as the other versions going back to 1.0. Clearly this application has never been rewritten, as identical bugs and frustrations have been carried forward. Objects are difficult to select, hard to move around, occasionally it’s unresponsive to taps and drags, and performance is laggy as the number of objects grows, even on an iPad Pro with M1. Sometimes your changes are saved, sometimes they’re not – I just now returned to my documents to find that my saved drawing was a much earlier version, and all of my work since that point was lost. Well, Omni Group, I’ve lost my work with your application for the last time. It doesn’t help that it is published by the greediest company on the App Store except maybe Apple themselves. There’s absolutely no way that this application is worth the extreme price! Stay away from this app, and while you’re at it, the rest of the software from this developer isn’t so great either.