At this point, Obsidian can be expanded to allow knowledge management, project/task/day management, RSS reader, database querying, and even buttons for interfacing. I guess another feature I would love to have integrated is an email client.
This would not only offer the usual email client features but allow for obsidian-focused features such as:
Treating each email received as a note that could be referred to anywhere in a Vault (a possible implementation would be to automatically create a special type of note for each email received which can only be interfaced with certain commands to ensure the equivalent is performed on the email address. I leave this to figure out for people more qualified than me )
Auto-tag each email with the sender’s email address/topic, or whatever custom filters (for future querying with dataview for example, allowing for an effective email database system)
Auto sorting the various emails received into different “inbox” folders based on various conditions (edit: not obsidian specific, but nice to have non-the-less)
Add the possibility to archive to Obsidian instead of the email provider’s archives (email would be copied in a note in the email archive folder in the Vault, and deleted from the email provider)
etc…
The way I would envision this, this theoretical email client would only be truly useful if properly integrated with obsidian features (so having each email represented as a note is a pretty hard requirement for it to be preferable over other existing email clients)
Thoughts?
P.S. I do not have the technical skills to undertake such a project, so please feel free to take up the idea if you feel like it!
I was actually thinking about this the other day, too. I think it would involve quite a bit of effort, but email apps are generally garbage. Having access to Obsidian’s plugin ecosystem and architecture would go a long way to making email easier to suffer!
This could be killer if done well. I’ve been very interested in emacs because it has all these plugins that allow you to just live in the app. Email integration would bring Obsidian one step closer to an app you can live in.
This is another plugin that I absolutely need. As an Emacs user, I used to manage my email using mu4e (mu for Emacs), but I stopped because after changing my laptop, it was too much of a hassle to quickly set up a working environment that would allow me to do at least what Gmail or other mail provider allows within their web interface. The advantage of Obsidian over Emacs is that with Obsidian mobile, I can see Obsidian becoming a centralized productivity app to manage my whole life in the future.
An email client is a LOT of code and then work to maintain. Perhaps the custom frames plugin can allow you to embed the web email view in an obsidian note. I am not sure if it will work given that the frames are likely sandboxed.
You can send a note by email via URI Commands. One of those markdown web clippers might let you send an email to your notes? But this is extra work on top of your existing email client, I don’t see it being worth it for most people.
I create an iframe directly in a note and works. I didn’t use custom frames plugin because it gave some other issues. I use M365 and I can read/reply to mail, see the calendar, etc. I don’t get local storage, but I can copy from the iframe and paste into a note.
Hi @pshev, may I ask how you achieve using iframe? Is it using a separate client in your machine? Apology, I am not a developer so can’t imagine how this works. Hope to hear from you soon.
why? Because I want my data especially all the meta data attached to an email. i want every email in my own vault. I want to be able to have every email sent or received as a note so I can use all these wonderful tools that OBSIDIAN has enabled for us
even if I could get a importer/exporter of my email so that I can deep dive into my email data would be very enlightening.
Yes for RSS only if there is an option for downloading for offline use (not just a summary and read more link) and tagging saved/favorited articles.
Having an email within obsidian would be interesting to see especially if it’s easy to work with/manage.
I recently integrated my emails (Gmail) into Obsidian using a custom version of the Smart Connections plugin. If you’re unfamiliar, Smart Connections uses AI to surface the most relevant notes based on the currently active note.
I have been extending that functionality to my content outside of Obsidian, like Gmail and WordPress.
If you’re interested in integrating external content like this, please comment on this GitHub issue for the Smart Connections plugin with the platform you want to integrate.
In the top right of the screenshot below, you can see what my private Gmail integration looks like. Clicking links to the message in Gmail.
Done right, that would be amazing, especially when used with a separate vault specifically for email. I’m picturing it being a bit like MailMate, but more powerful, flexible, and customizable—and cross-platform, with mobile as well as desktop apps.
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