MarkDownload - Markdown Web Clipper

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121

MarkDownload files in your -Inbox

For technical reasons, the MarkDownload browser add-on can only save to the browser’s Downloads folder, which is usually ~/Downloads. We usually let it save downloaded pages into the MarkDownload subfolder.

Now if you want to have direct access to the downloaded files in Obsidian, you can symlink the ~/Downloads/MarkDownload folder (and its subfolders, in case you also save the images from webpages) into your Obsidian vault’s -Inbox folder.

In my case, the Obsidian -Inbox is at ~/Dokumente/Obsidian/Knowledgebase/-Inbox, so the commands are as follows (in a Linux terminal—use your folder names!):

cd ~/Dokumente/Obsidian/Knowledgebase/-Inbox
ln -s ~/Downloads/MarkDownload/

and presto! you have a Markdownload subfolder in your Inbox and can directly access the downloaded pages, edit them and put them into their final place in Obsidian.

-Inbox_001
-Inbox_001974×589 119 KB

View in the file manager

Google Chrome is getting a reader mode on desktop.md () - Knowledgebase - Obsidian_001
Google Chrome is getting a reader mode on desktop.md () - Knowledgebase - Obsidian_0011204×1035 221 KB

View in Obsidian

Note: This should also work on MacOS and Windows, you might have to use other commands, though (like mklink on Windows).

Note 2: If you are syncing your vault between machines (using the same folder structure), the MarkDownload folder in your machine’s Obsidian will only ever show what’s in that machine’s MarkDownload folder. Remember we’re only syncing a symlink, not the real ~/Downloads/MarkDownload folder (which of course isn’t synced, and thus different on each machine).

So it pays reworking the downloaded files soon and eventually putting them into their final place in your vault (where they then will sync).

I thought I’d finally share this, since colleagues on the Discord assure me Obsidian Sync can handle symlinks correctly. Syncthing also does.

So it should work even if you sync your vault, only of course requiring the same folder structure. Syncing to my Android breaks the symlink there (no ~/Downloads/MarkDownload folder on Android) but since the link just gets copied as a symlink, it doesn’t matter.

@Licat also tells us we shouldn’t symlink across filesystems (like to another mounted folder that’s actually on a NAS or so), because Obsidian’s internal file reader can’t cope with that.

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122

Thanks for the tip.

I think a complete solution would require inotify to detect file changes in the folder and sync them with the vault.

Anyways, great extension, OP. Basically replaced pocket for me.

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Btw @death.au, is it possible to include the link/url of the original webpage on the clipped markdown? Like on the YAML front matter or just normal obsidian link in [ ]. I may have missed the option.

Could be useful when I need to trace back the original webpage.
I basically use it as a read-it-later clipper like pocket.

Thanks again for the very useful extensions.

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Put something like this in as part of your frontmatter template

articleweblink: "[HERE]({baseURI})"

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125

Oh so that’s what “Include front/back template” option does. Thanks a lot.

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Pleasure - It’s a great plugin and very tweakable - I have it setup to put images into a folder in the same fashion as I have obsidian configured so I just drag and drop into my vault and presto it works

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127

You can include the source URL in the front matter and in the body text. For a while I had it in source: in the yaml front matter and then "Source: " in the body text itself but this felt duplicative.

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Yes, but only hard links work, I’m using bash shell. The usual soft links provided by the “Finder” don’t do the job. At least not on Mojave.

Thanks for the tip!

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Thanks for testing this! Hard links can be dangerous … and Finder aliases aren’t real symlinks. But you can use real symlinks on Mac, see here → Ability to index / add external folders from across computer - #6 by Moonbase59

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@Moonbase59
I don’t understand why it should be dangerous to use hard links, but ln - s works perfectly, Thanks so much!

Someone should pin your help.
Because it’s highly unproductive to copy only originals into Obsidians “database”

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is there a way to get the website address? (the first part of url before the first /) it is a useful metadata

i think there was more custom text at the beginning of development of this extension than it is now. is it my memory or really there is less option now?

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132

FWIW: I’m on a Mac and I discovered this wonderful Firefox add-on. I too noticed that it would only save to the Downloads folder. I made a soft link from my bookmarks folder in my vault to a “bookmarks” folder inside the ~/Downloads folder. Works perfectly fine.

Every time I make a soft link I always cd to where I wish it to be, to avoid typing out long location strings multiple times (risk for typos). As the format is “ln -s [full-path-to-original-folder/file] [location-of-link]” I only need to end the command with the name for the file folder at the location of the copy, and I don’t mix up if the original or link comes first/last.

So, in a terminal (iTerm2 in my case) window I did:

cd ~/Downloads 
ln -s /Users/mathiashellquist/git/resources/bookmarks/ bookmarks

Job done. Works great. As I sync my vaults via Git I don’t have to care about the ~/Downloads folder, which is where the symbolic link lives, syncing or not. I will only be syncing “real” files via Git to all my devices, and the path within the vault is the same on all my used platforms (macOS, Linux, Win, iOS).

PS. As I was scrolling this thread today when I found it, my take on Chrome is that it should be avoided at all cost. It is basically spyware. If you care about Privacy in the slightest, and you should, you shouldn’t use Chrome. There are also good Blink (Chromes “rendering engine”) based alternatives out there, that doesn’t collect all your personal details. There is no need to hand over all your personal details to Google these days. IMHO. :slight_smile:

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133

You can clean up any similarly named tags using the rename function of tag wrangler plugin!

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I love the markdownload metadata extraction. But have 2 questions.

  1. I usually don’t want to extract the body of the website / article. Is there an option to by default NOT load the webpage body, but only the metadata.

  2. With Open Graph formatting, I want to copy the {og:image} or {og:type} . Is this possible? I can’t get it to work.

Thanks!

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after the recent update i cant download images, not touched the setting

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It’s easy to automate the moving of the clipped files into an Obsidian vault.

  1. :warning: Important! Change the default ~/Downloads in the plugin settings to something like WebClips.
  2. Open the console and create a symbolic link from your vault to that location in ~/Downloads:
    For Linux and MacOS it is ln -s /home/tripleight/Obsidian/tripleight/Inbox ~/Downloads/WebClips
    For Windows, it will be: mklink /D C:\Obsidian/tripleight/Inbox C:\Downloads\WebClips
    Where Inbox is a folder in your vault where you will find your clipped files.

:warning: DO NOT make a link to your default Downloads folder, it will be painful.

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Now I’m looking for a way not to have the images alongside the .md file - it’s a lot of clutter in the tree.

As @Archie suggested in MarkDownload - Markdown Web Clipper - #70 by Archie
It’s worth storing them in a separate dir elsewhere in Vault and linking to that dir from every new clipped .md file.
So far I came up with
image
image

But I’d want to have a separate /image dir in my vault so the images would be stored there with a /{pageTitle}/ prefix. This will both help decluttering the tree and easily remove the dangling images.

1 Like
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Ok, now you are just messing with me:

image

How is this even possible?

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Heyho, thanks for this great plugin!! I use it literally everyday. :))

I have a feature request which would be insanely useful for wikipedia links. I always struggled with, how wikipedia articles are cluttered with citation links. It is a real pain to clean them up.
Until I stumbled across this website: https://wikipedia.thetimetube.com/
it basically provides you with a cleaned article, ready to download as pdf.
UNFORTUNATELY it won’t woirk with markdwonloader. Which is just a minor setback, I just can copy and paste. But it would quadruple my speed if your extension would work with that website. :slight_smile:

Cheers!

2 Likes
140

Hello, thanks for the great plugin. I’ve saw that this plugin remove obsidian uri for sending content to obsidian.

I’m adding feature for markdownload to able sending clipboard to obsidian. This is the feature:

  • Send selection to New file in obsidian
  • Send tab to new file in obsidian
  • Bypass URI character limit

IMG_20220821_205811_059
IMG_20220821_205811_0591280×622 116 KB

Currently it’s still in my branch and need to tested and merged by @death.au. Hopefully it’s acceptable.

PR link:

Thanks,

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