Android Quick Input for Obsidian

[cotemaxime]

I spent a couple of hours with Tasker and its scene feature to create a task and scene combo for Obsidian. That means you can trigger it from a shortcut, gesture, or a lot of other ways (with Tasker or your Home app) and input some text to be appended to your daily note:

I only tested it on my phone so some things might be off or require fiddling with Tasker on your part, it’s all standard Tasker feature though so it should be fine for the most part, maybe just height/width and position adjustment.

Files

Obsidian_Quick_Input_v1.1.zip (1.7 KB)

Changelog

• v1 - Original release
• v1.1 - Added copy to the clipboard as a fallback in case of merge with sync. Now the text you entered will be in your clipboard to paste in those race condition problems

Requirements

• You need Tasker installed and correctly working on your phone
• You need the Advanced Obsidian URI plugin installed and enabled on your Obsidian Mobile.
  • You could probably get it working with the default URI, but there’s currently no easy way to append to daily notes.

How to use

• Download the zip with the 2 XML, unizp them and send the 2 files to your phone in a directory that you can easily access (Download, for example).
• Open Tasker and import the scene from the XML Obsidian_Input.scn.xml.
  • Simply click the header for the object to import opens an import menu in Tasker.
  • 
• Import the task from the XML Obsidian_Input.tsk.xml.
  • This is the task that will trigger the opening of the scene and allow input.
• The import will have to create multiple variables (VARS) in Tasker for the configuration.
  • 
    • OBS_CONTENT and OBS_INPUT are just temporary working variables to allow the URL encoding to happen.
    • OBS_FIRST is what will be added to the text field when it’s created; if you want to write a list, add - or you can leave empty for nothing (sadly, Tasker strips out spaces and enter, so you cannot add those here).
    • OBS_VAULT is the URL encoded name for your vault; just like using a standard Obsidian URI, you need to replace space with %20 and encode other characters.
• At this point, you’re done; you can try to trigger the task to see that all worked correctly. A popup should appear, and if you hit save, it will open Obsidian and append to your daily note. If it works, you can create a shortcut in your home app to trigger that task.

Customization

• Scene UI
  • The scene is pretty straightforward if you want to customize it for yourself. I won’t go into the how-to edit scenes because there’s plenty of resource for this already, but there are only 4 elements, so nothing fancy.
• URI Action
  • Most of the logic is in the 2 buttons, Cancel will clear the variables and close the popup, and Save is where the works get done.
  • If you want to change the URI action or add more parameters, you just need to edit the Browse URL step in the Save button; that’s where the URI gets called.

[Wen]

Thanks for sharing this! I was looking for something like this for quickly taking notes on the mobile.

For my use case, I mainly take inbox notes on Obsidian Mobile. Therefore, is it possible to append text to some random note, e.g. an inbox note? Would the appended text be treated as a list item automatically, or one needs to input manually - for creating list items?

[cotemaxime]

Yeah Advanced URI supports appending to a random file you give it in the URL (you can see all the options here ) The best would be to try on PC to find the correct working syntax for your inbox note then copy it on the scene tasks.

If you click on Scenes in Tasker and select Obsidian input then click the Save button it will open the settings then Tasks → Browse URL is where you adjust with the new settings you want. Just remember to re-add the variables (at least the %OBS_CONTENT since it’s the formatted content you typed into the field).

Sadly there’s no formatting or anything (other than URL encoding) so if you want all items to be a list you need to add a - in front. It just takes everything you type exactly as is and append it to the note.

[Wen]

Great! Thanks for the explanation. Will try it later.

[Kobuster]

Here is a way to do it easier:

Install the quickadd plugin and create a capture. This is better because it allows you to insert the capture at precisely the place you want.

Then create a uri to the corresponding command and launch that per Tasker.

I use this to write down what I do in my daily app. With Samsung modes i just click my power button twice and can write down my current task. Also this way you don’t have to click the text field, the keyboard will jump up automatically