Apple Shortcut to add a quick note

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1

After moving from Apple Notes to Obsidian (which Is very nice) I missed being able to add a quick note to a single file (to be sorted later) using Apple Shortcuts so I wrote this Shortcut. It works on macOS, iOS and iPadOS.

When activated by clicking on the Shortcut widget, running from the Shortcuts app or from the Shortcuts dropdown menu in the menu bar, a window will appear where you can add your quick note. By saying “Siri, Obsidian Quick Note” a note will be added using the built-in speech-to-text function.

Each quick note records the date and time added. New notes appear at the top of the file but this can be easily changed to append new notes to the bottom of the file. See comments in the Shortcut to do this.

The date format can be easily changed by altering the “Format Date” call.

As noted in the Shortcut comments you first need to add the location of your Obsidian vault to the Shortcut which is very simple. The file “Quick Notes.md” can be saved in any folder of your choice by choosing said folder when selecting the location of your Obsidian vault.

Obsidian Quick Note (Apple Shortcut)

If there’s an interest I can also write a similar Shortcut that saves each quick note in its own file in a dedicated folder. Also any other suggestions for an Apple Shortcut for use with Obsidian are welcomed. Just let me know here along with any questions or suggestions about this Shortcut.

Thanks

6 Likes
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This is great, thank you! Would definitely be interested in a shortcut that makes a new note for the text and puts it in my inbox

1 Like
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Give this a try: Obsidian note to inbox

I needed to set the name of the note to the date and time to make sure a unique note was created each time the Shortcut is run. Please follow the quick setup instructions in the Shortcut.

Let me know if this is what you were looking for. Feel free to suggest any changes.

Thanks

3 Likes
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Thank you @tango_103. Useful little shortcut.

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Were these comments left in 2024, 2023, 2022? Why doesn’t this forum show dates in full? It’s ridiculous. It’s everywhere. Instead of dates we see hip and trendy indicators like ‘5 months ago’, ‘Just now’. Why do developers not see how rubbish that is?

1 Like
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I’d prefer to see clear and precise date-and-time data without any faffing around.

Users can hover (as shown below) to see specifics:

date and time
date and time1822×384 78 KB

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Just wanted to say this is an amazing shortcut and has solved the one problem that’s kept me from fully committing to Obsidian. Thanks so much!

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Thanks a lot, your shortcut works great for me, it works unattended on both Mac and iOS, I can just dictate something to Siri and it will append to the note I’ve configured in the shortcut. Do you know how to create a similar shortcut that will append the text to today’s daily note?

9

Hi, just to add to the list of Thank You’s. This is such a lovely little short cut. Am feeling rather happy right now. :hugs:

10

Works good on iPhone and MacBook, but not working in Apple Watch. How I can fix it?

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The thread below has posts about getting Apple Shortcuts to work on Apple Watches. Also has a sample shortcut that I rely on in my hourly use of Obsidian:

12

I am having an issue with remotely save plugin syncing. If I make a few quick notes on my iphone throughout my day, it is possible that I could forget to sync on my iphone. If I then make a few quick notes on my ipad later and click sync on my ipad, then the next time i click sync on my iphone, the note will be overwritten by the most up to date version on my ipad causing a loss of the notes from my iphone. Any ideas of how to fix this? My plan right now is to just reserve quick notes for iphone use only which would likely be the only time I would need the quick note feature, but it would be nice to have the option to use it on mac and ipad.