[Android] Add a camera tool in the toolbar to quickly add images using the phone camera

Platform

iOS
Android

Obsidian Mobile version: v1.0.5


Add a toolbar option which would launch the camera in one click, and allow capturing the image with another click of the shutter button, which would directly add a link to the image in the currently open file and directly add the image file to the (set by default) attachment folder.
This would allow taking a photo and adding it into notes directly with just 2 taps. This would go a long way in aiding quick capture of events into notes.

Currently to be able to take a photo and to add it to obsidian one would have to leave obsidian, launch the camera app, take the photo, then go back to obsidian, and finally find the image using the attachment tool. This has a little too much friction (for me) to be able to use it meaningfully.

The Android app, Markor, has a similar toolbar tool but for some reason they combined many attachment options and made the capture process involve multiple clicks.

31 Likes

Exactly what i need

2 Likes

How the hell is this not a standard feature?

6 Likes

+1

Awesome idea :bulb:

2 Likes

+1
This would be very helpful for my workflows

1 Like

+1
Now I do exactly what @Peanut describes, but, in the field, I’m usually in a hurry (aren’t we all?), so I just take a photo an hope that I remember to add it later to Obsidian.

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It would be nice to be able to add/attach a scanned image directly from the camera, using the Obsidian iOS app.

Currently when you tap the attach icon in obsidian you have the options to:

  • Photo Library
  • Take Photo or Video
  • Choose File

If you choose similar in Apple Notes, you have the following option to Scan also?

It may be that this feature is only available currently to Apple apps?
Thanks

1 Like

I’m pretty sure that’s the case.

Completely different yet somewhat related feature request: Mixed reality Graph View integration

Thanks!

Hmm, I think I omitted the word PDF in my original post, which was merged with this one.
I’m explicitly talking about creating a PDF scan/image from the camera.

@WhiteNoise
This feature exists in iOS. This request here is for Android.

Also my request was for a scan to PDF button, not to JPG.
Please can you re open my request as I don’t think its relevant to the one in this thread.
Thanks.

I think this is critical to have on Android as well, though really on any device with a camera (e.g., the Surface Pro Windows tablets have both front and back cameras). And while they’re at it, allow the user to specify the default name of every attachment on every OS like GitHub - RainCat1998/obsidian-custom-attachment-location: Customize attachment location with variables($filename, $data, etc) like typora. to remove dependence on the plugin as it’s quite simple.

In the meantime, do you guys know of an Android markdown editor that has this function?

  • I’ve tried Markor but it isn’t ideal.
  • I only need to add quick photos to a few notes (kind of visual log notes), so I could add a shortcut to a particular md file on the home screen and launch another editor for this job.

And if anybody has another idea for quickly taking a photo, adding it to a note and typing some observations, I’m sure most of us are interested in your process, please share.

1 Like

I’ll auto-reply in case it helps anyone:

I’m using Zettel Notes for this and it does the job quicker and with fewer taps than any other app I’ve tried.

Only drawback: I can’t set it up to save the photos on a single folder of my choosing, it saves them on the same folder as the note. But this feature is on the roadmap.

would be nice to have a camera tool as a core feature for Mobile, right now we can install the community plugin “Obsidian Camera”, that one works nicely.

2 Likes

Really want this feature…

I’m taking notes in a conference and it’s painful flipping between camera and inserting via file system.

1 Like

This would be very helpful. Take a picture, add it to a note, in two clicks! YES PLEASE!!!

I tried Zettel Notes and it did not meet my needs.

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Why is it not yet a function of obsidian?

2 Likes

I find it useful on Joplin, which also has a bonus feature: offer to auto-scale the photo down to a lower resolution (to spare space, when you only need to remember what something looks like, not keep a hires picture on disk, esp. when you’re syncing data on some cloud with limited storage).

2 Likes

I would love to see that functionality added to Obsidian’s mobile app. Right now, I take notes that require photos with Google Keep and then import them to Obsidian.