capacities.io has a feature where you can send a message from WhatsApp/email/Telegram/Facebook messenger and automatically make a note. It accepts photos too.
Unfortunately, the data can’t be exported yet, so that site appears to have no use.
Still, there should be a way to set this up for Obsidian, possibly using existing tech of some sort. All we need is a bot that can read messages and save them locally into the vault.
you are saying that capacities.io has a dedicated WhatsApp phone number that you can write to?
Yes. I think they do
The main difference between Obsidian.md and all the other Cloud based solution like capacities.io, notion, … is that Obsidian.md is offline by design.
This means that obsidian.md can be free because the cost of the server are lower.
We could not even create a free plugin for it because the API of WhatsApp are not free
Just for anyone who found this, I use
and if you have the WhatsAPP app on your desktop as default link opener, it’ll open right at that contact. I haven’t figured out how to share info yet other than copy/paste, but I think it’s possible.
Going the other way isn’t possible without more hacky stuff afaik, such as (often dodgy but very widely used) 3rd party apps that link into web.whatsapp.com
I made a greasemonkey script to put a shortcut to the client details from web.whatsapp.com but that was before I was able to use the other shortcut
It’s messy, but it’s what most of the world are forced into, which is why there’s so many 3rd party stuff trying to help with the situation
Wondering if anyone found a way to make WhatsApp work for quick entry to Obsidian, especially on iOS?
I’m not sure what you mean by that. What are you trying do?
Enter a message or an attachment in WhatsApp on iOS and get that to my obsidian Daily Note, similar to capacities.io or Mem.ai
I only know of copy and paste on android, and WhatsApp doesn’t even allow copying part of a message
In absence of anything better, I use Drafts. The only problem is that it relies on Obsidian sync so I have to remember to open the Obsidian iOS app so that the sync is initiated. It’s a frustrating process and no idea why Obsidian team doesn’t provide easier options.
Was anyone able to find a solution to this?
You can check hints.so, they seem to be doing that and there is a free tier
Hints dropped Obsidian support as their focus shifted . I wonder if there’s any good solution for mobile capture when using Obsidian…
You can use Custom Frames plugin and use Whatsapp web as a panel as a simple halfway solution, you can drag and drop pictures and text from Whatsapp into your daily note or straight into the final notes.
Another way would be through integration services like Zapier but you would be communicating with a company bot on Whatsapp which is dubious in terms of privacy
Telegram would be a better place to start I think!
I tried to create a custom frame to use Whatsapp in Obsidian, but when I opened the custom frame it didn’t work. A message appears warning me that the version of Chrome I’m trying to access WhatsApp web on is too old. And I don’t know how to update this browser within Obsidian. Do you know how to solve it?
Yep this is a key limitation. Not going to hold my breath for a solution.
Midway you just use obsidians iOS share sheet to share the text (only?) from specific messages to obsidian.
beeper.com is another way into whatsapp. I’m not sure if it helps yet?
Twos (twosapp) is another note-taking app that accepts content from WhatsApp.