#110

Some great inspiration in this thread! I’ve been looking forward to streamlining my workflow with automation since day 1 of using Obsidian, but had to figure out what that workflow is first. Now I’ve finally manage to piece together some ideas, and have produced two iOS Shortcuts that are all I need to take Obsidian to the next level:

  1. Clip To Obsidian: a classic webclipper - create a new file based on a webpage.
  2. Take A Memo: dictate a one-liner, which is prepended to an existing file.

I ended up using Obsidian’s URI protocol to create the file in #1. But because I’ve moved to iCloud, I could use the built-in iOS Shortcuts prepend action for #2. So no third-party requirements.

While I chopped ideas from a few places to produce the result, they are derived directly from what has being shared in this thread. The main starting point for each is listed in a comment within the shortcut itself.

I found it a bit hard to get going with iOS Shortcuts, given their smooth veneer within iOS. So I made this video to give other’s a taste before they jump in. There’s a lot of context to wade through, so feel free to use the navigation links in the description to jump to the relevant parts.

3 Likes
#111

These are absolutely fantastic. They do exactly what I wanted iOS shortcuts to do. Thank you for sparing me the ongoing frustration of trying and failing to code these myself. The web clipper is the best of its kind I’ve seen.

Seriously, these are game-changing for my use of Obsidian. If and until we get an official Sharesheet extension, these are the go-to shortcuts. I simply could get any of the others to work. You have my thanks!

1 Like
#112

I’m using a numbered folder system to separate different areas(10. Research/ 11. Project X) and I use the “folder note” plugin to create index notes for each folder where I store tasks for that area/project. I would like to come up with an IOs shortcut that does not simply create a task but also let me select which of the folders this should be allocated to. Does anybody if this is possible?

#113

This is brilliant, Ryan - thank you!

1 Like
#114

Did you ever figure this out?

An accented character e.g., ê will need to be URL-encoded for it to work in a URL scheme. So your URL should actually be something like:
obsidian://new?name=Demo123&content=%C3%AA

where %C3%AA will become ê once the URL scheme is launched.

In Shortcuts, you can use the action “URL Encode” to encode any piece of text like this. Pass the result of that action to the shortcut instead of your human-readable text and it should work no problem.

#115

I was under the impression that shortcuts is sandboxes and can only access files inside the iCloud Drive/Shortcuts folder? Did you move your Obsidian vault into that folder to get around it?

I combined your “take a memo” with @ryanjamurphy’s “append from airmail” using the advanced URI plugin to append the dictated memo to the daily note.

https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/e38d48329ff445c78b83ec9125d25773

preview on showcuts

The downside is that it requires unlocking the iPhone for the memo to be appended.

#116

Not anymore. If you have a File action, you need to specify the container. It will say “Save [file] to Shortcuts,” but you can select Shortcuts and replace it with a folder of your choosing (in iCloud, I believe).

Screen Shot 2022-01-28 at 8.13.41 PM
Screen Shot 2022-01-28 at 8.13.41 PM1188×276 44.4 KB

1 Like
#117

Fantastic!
With that I can append text from Siri to the Daily Note without having to unlock the phone.

https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/e317a2b49c1248509a28eb6e0fdf8bc1

Thanks!

#118

When setting this up to add to daily note do you need to type this {{today}}.md. ?

#119

Yeah, you need to add .md. (I think that’s what you’re asking?)

#120

when i enter the path to today file it responds with unable to open. I even downloaded the Show Current File Path plugin to ensure I was entering it correctly

#121

Use a Show Alert action to examine what your trying to do.

Remember that the shortcut I posted above was just for show. I didn’t test it.

This one does:

https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/4c91d9a5eae344c18b7145dae821cb7b

#122

Thank you. That works a treat

1 Like
#123

Does anyone have a shortcut that will open a specific weekly note? Im assuming I might be able to achieve this with the Advanced URI plugin and an open url action but just not sure how to format it.

#124

A specific weekly note as in the same note every time? Or a specific weekly note as in e.g., a menu to open the current, previous, or next weekly note?

1 Like
#125

Like a menu: previous week, this week, next week.

#126

It would be easy to do this for existing notes. You just need a way of programmatically creating the file name for the note, and then you’d just tell the Obsidian URL scheme to open that file.

The following shortcut should be easily modified to do this:

https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/8b3b1bbf7f3d42e6996fd04c4403a2f9

I don’t know exactly what kind of string you need to provide in order to get it to fit with the name of your weekly note, but it should be possible. Share an example weekly note name and I can think about it, if you can’t figure it out yourself.

Getting a shortcut to create the weekly note if it doesn’t already exist it’s also possible, but it would be much more involved. You would need to have someway of detecting my data file already exists, and then if it doesn’t, you would need to invoke some kind of macro — or embed the template for the weekly note directly in Shortcuts — in order to create it properly.

1 Like
#127

Has anyone been able to get the ‘Clip to Obsidian’ shortcut to work on MacOS? (Monterey)

It shows a “Safari Reader is unavailable” error every time I try to use it.

Same error shows regardless of source. Safari is my default browser.

#128

Unfortunately, many of Safari’s iOS Shortcuts actions are not yet available on macOS. There might be some other way of making it work, but it’d be a hacky workaround. Something like “if on macOS, do this, if on iOS, run the shortcut as it currently exists”.

#129

Is anyone aware of a reliable web clipping solution for Safari on MacOS?

Ideally it should:

  1. Support clipping selected text & images as well as clipping the whole page

  2. Automatically title the new note based on the title of the page

  3. Be configurable wrt tags and other metadata or frontmatter.

Nice-to-have: support clipping of selected text from other apps (e.g. spark email)

1 Like