Running Obsidian CLI from Apple Shortcuts opens a second instance of Obsidian

[michaelrfowler]

First, search the help docs and this forum. Maybe your question has been answered! The debugging steps can help, too. Still stuck? Delete this line and proceed.

What I’m trying to do

I am trying to run Obsidian CLI commands from the “Run Shell Script” action of a Shortcut, in Mac OS.

Things I have tried

I have created a shortcut with a single action, a “Run Shell Script” block, with the contents:

/Applications/Obsidian.app/Contents/MacOS/obsidian vault

I run the script, and a second instance of Obsidian launches. The second instance of Obsidian is not logged in to my Sync account, and does not know about my local vault. The result is that the CLI command does not successfully run.

[Pch]

What is your shortcut supposed to do, more precisely ?

I mean, the /Applications/Obsidian.app/Contents/MacOS/obsidian is how you would launch Obsidian (GUI) from the Terminal … but as Obsidian (GUI) needs to be open (before hand) for the CLI to work, it shouldn’t be needed (or potentially written differently, I guess )

Something like this (targeting the currently focused/active vault in Obsidian (GUI)) works fine for me though :

obsidian vault

Or using an action targeting a specific vault:

obsidian vault="Obsidian Sandbox" vault