Use case or problem
Initiating the Obsidian command “Download attachments for current file” shows a window that allows the (de)selection of the embedded external images in the note that the user wants to download and convert to internal links. By default, initiating the command selects all images in the note, and the user can deselect, one by one, images from the selection — there is no option to deselect all images at once!!! Thus, it can be time consuming to deselect undesired images in notes containing lots of them.
Additionally, a note should be added to this command’s window, warning the user that the use of such command can not only “fail”, but also mess up both the images in the note, and the “downloaded” images. That’s because the web link of certain embedded external images, doesn’t link directly to the web where the image is actually hosted, rather, it links to a sort of secondary web that also contain the image (as an “anti-scraping” measure implemented in many websites?), but the command “Download attachments for current file” is unable to extract the images from them.
Instead, by running the command “Download attachments for current file” in a note containing such links, 2 problems may arise: 1) The images won’t be downloaded (yet, Obsidian will create an attachment note, simply containing a “broken image” icon), and thereby, 2) the original note will stop showing all images that were selected to be downloaded (since now the images’ links will point to an internal link containing no attachment at all).
There may be additional problems not easily solved, like having to locate/delete all broken attachment notes created when running the command in a note that contained numerous images.
Proposed solution
- Add a toggle switch to automatically select/deselect all images.
- Add a warning note to the command’s window, suggesting the user to verify the image links, and/or test out the feature with a single image first.
Current workaround (optional)
- Deselecting images one by one (bothersome, annoying, inefficient, etc.)
- For the 2nd problem, the external image links can be manually modified (I’m not aware of any way to automate this task), so they link to the actual web where the image is hosted, which should work without issues with the “Download attachments for current file” command. I think this cannot be fully solved from Obsidian, thus my suggestion of adding a warning note.
Related feature requests (optional)
Add filename format setting(s) for "Download attachments for current file" (related to the 2nd problem described hereby, since attachment notes with “random” names can be harder to locate in attachment folders that contain a large number of notes).