#1

What turns me off from Obsidian is this .

It isn’t the quickest capture device for me.
Not when compared to OneNote.

As I watch videos on YouTube I will Copy the link and paste it onto a blank OneNote Page and voilà, the videos are embedded, and you’re video link automatically changes text.

In the case of Obsidian, I create an anew page, then I copy-paste the video title, then I copy the Video link, press Ctrl+K and Paste the link.
That it isn’t quick. I hope Obsidian finds a way around it.
Also I really wish Obsidian had WYSIWYG like in Notion for the different title levels

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#2

Search the chrome extension store for plugins for saving bookmarks as MD. For example, https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/markdown-clipper/cjedbglnccaioiolemnfhjncicchinao

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#3

Two things I do that make this easier for me,

  1. I use the daily notes plugin which creates a note for each day (almost like a journal entry or like Roam). This is where I take all my notes for the day before deciding a the end if new notes need to be created or links to be created, etc. I’ve also set a hotkey for it (CMD+T) in case I don’t have that note opened. So that’s quick access to the today’s note.
  2. I am on a Mac an have setup an AppleScript that gets the url and title of the current tab and formats it as a markdown link [TItle](url) and finally adds it to my clipboard. I’ve setup a shortcut for the script to CMD+SHIFT+C so I can run it without even selecting the address bar of the browser.

So, my workflow is, watch YouTube video, press shortcut and my clipboard has the well formatted markdown link. Swipe to Obsidian, bring up today’s note (if something else is open), click at the bottom of the file and paste. It’s quite quick really. I think you’re on Windows but as the user above suggested you can find extensions for Chrome that allow you to grab a url+title as a markdown link easily.

2 Likes
#4

Thanks!!
I was able to figure out how to do that!!
Is it possible to add the Date and time stamps into markdown capture link?
eg.

Title

Date Time

#5

Yeah why not! All scripting platforms have a way to get and format the current date/time. Just use that when copying the URL.

#6

Very inspiring idea, I almost forget there’s the AppleScript APP in my Mac!
Can you share the Script you setup? Is it also good to capture the entire webpage (text & images) for passing on to Obsidian?

#7

I don’t capture entire webpages really. I usually only need the link since many times I am just capturing YouTube urls with a note of what I learned from the video. Also, saving web articles seems to me a better fit for apps like Evernote which is more suited as a filing cabinet. Here’s my script for capturing a url from Safari and making a markdown link from it. It also gets rid of numbers like (21) which Youtube places in the title.

-- In Safari, this copies the Title and URL of the current tab to the clipboard.  
-- Save the script in ~/Library/Scripts/Applications/Safari
-- Using QuickSilver, I assign a trigger to this script using the hotkey ⌥-C (option c), with the scope of the trigger limited to Safari.
-- Inspired by CopyURL + (http://copyurlplus.mozdev.org/)
-- Christopher R. Murphy 
-- Modified by Rishi Talreja to get markdown link and remove YouTube (nn) notification number from title

tell application "Safari"
	set theURL to URL of front document
	set theTitle to name of front document
	--check for (nn) in the title
	if character 1 of theTitle is "(" then
		set brackets to offset of ")" in theTitle
		set sanitisedTitle to characters (brackets + 2) thru -1 of theTitle as string
		set theTitle to sanitisedTitle
	end if
	
	set the clipboard to "[" & theTitle & "]" & "(" & theURL & ")" as string
end tell
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#8

@Rishi this is interesting! I am currently also exploring some quick capture possibilities with AppleScript

Do you think it would be possible to make a script where I could select a text anywhere, right click and select: Services → “Save to Obsidian” and this quick action would take selected text and add to a daily note in Obsidian? This could be amazing.