#1

Hi everyone, Kevin here from Snipd

I’m excited to announce our new feature to export podcast highlights from Snipd to Obsidian, including transcript, episode metadata & more :tada::tada::tada:

Context

Snipd is a podcast player to highlight & take notes from podcasts. Many of our users are using Obsidian as a second brain and have asked us to build an integration to easily export highlights to Obsidian. So we did it :slightly_smiling_face:

We are still relatively new to Obsidian and this is our first(-ish) version, so please let us know how we could improve it in future iterations.

Demo

obsidian_integration_gif_v2

How Does The Export Look Like In Obsidian?

For each podcast highlight (=snip), the following is exported:

  • private note
  • transcript
  • title (automatically generated)
  • summary (automatically generated)
  • shareable link to the original audio segment

Additionally, you can add metadata about the episode, including:

  • episode title
  • show notes
  • name of the host
  • publish date
  • podcast show title
  • shareable link to the episode

Here’s an example:
obsidian_desktop_gif_v2

The episode metadata is formatted to be compatible with the Dataview community plugin and contains backlinks for the show name & host name. Here is an example Dataview query:
obsidian_dataview_v2

This is my personal podcasts graph based on my podcast listening from the last 3 months :slight_smile:
obsidian_graph_gif_v1

We’d love to hear what you think :slight_smile:

Fyi, we’ve also written a blog post on this with some additional details. You can find it here.

4 Likes
#2

I really like this integration! Thanks for the effort in supporting this feature.

It would be great if the following can be somewhat supported:

  • Change the default extension from .txt to .md. This way, one does not need to manually change it after exporting the note.
  • Allow for more customization on the note template, e.g.
    • Change <blockquote> and <br/> into native Markdown syntax, e.g. > for quotes. This way, it’s easier to view text in edit mode.
    • One can decide whether to create tags for #podcasts and links for Show and Host. For instance, one can still use Dataview for querying notes related to a show, even if the show name is not in the format of note links.
    • Not sure if it is feasible to customize these small things, though.
#3

That’s great to hear :slight_smile:

W.r.t. your mentioned points:

  • the file ending: could you describe what your process is? Are you first creating a file and then importing that file into Obsidian (instead of directly copying the text into Obsidian)? In this case, the file ending is unfortunately created automatically by the OS.
  • We’re happy to enable more customization possibilities in the future. Our plan is to collect the feedback on this first version and then decide how best to extend it. So thx for your feedback, this is exactly what we need!

FYI: The reason why we used <blockquote> & <br/> was because the transcript can easily become difficult to read and take up a lot of space. So we decided to make it collapsible & use one block quote per speaker block. Unfortunately, the Markdown quote syntax > is not compatible with the collapsible html, which is why we used <blockquote> & <br/>.
But I completely get how this makes it more difficult to read in edit mode.

#4

I tried to export the snips and notes as follows:

  • Select Export snips to Obsidian
  • Select all
  • Select Summary, Transcript and Episode information
  • Then export to a local folder in the File app on iOS.

After these steps, the generated file has the ending .txt.

To make the transcript collapsible with Markdown syntax in edit mode, could making “Transcript” a header, e.g. #### 📚Transcript instead of 📚 **Transcript**, be an option? This way, one can collapse the Transcript section by using certain themes or modifying the CSS snippets.

#5

Transcript Formatting:

That’s a great idea! I’ll add it to the list of suggestions.

File extension:

Ok, in your described scenario, the iOS creates a random filename and sets the file extension automatically to txt. My suggestion is to set up a new shortcut in the iOS Shortcuts app, similar to the following:

IMG_F2D97B9FFA7B-1
IMG_F2D97B9FFA7B-1750×1276 113 KB

You can then select this shortcut from the iOS share menu, instead of clicking on Save to Files. The shortcut will save a file to your desired location with the filename Snipd_export_<datetime>.md.

You can copy this shortcut from me using this link: Shortcuts

Alternatively, here is a step by step guide on how to create this iOS shortcut yourself:

  • open Shortcuts app
  • click the + at the top right
  • click on the three-dot menu at the top right
  • enter a name (e.g. “Save to Markdown”)
  • activate “Show in Share Sheet”
  • for the “Share Sheet Types” only select “Text”
  • click on “Done”
  • click on the + to add your first action
  • search for and select “set name”
  • configure the action (this is where you should use a filename with .md file extension)
  • click on the + to add your second action
  • search for and select “Save File”
  • configure the action to your liking
  • click on “Done” at the top right

Now you should be able to select this action in the iOS share sheet menu.

1 Like
#6

Thanks for the detailed explanations! The shortcut works like a charm!

1 Like
#7

This looks exactly like what I’m looking for. Unfortunately I ran into some trouble when trying it out.

When trying to install from the Google Play store on my Android phone, it failed to install. I tried multiple times, but kept getting the error “Can’t install Spid” at the end of the installation process.

Most of my podcast listening happens on the iPad though, so I thought I’d try and install it there as well. However, it seems the app was only designed for iPhone, so it shows up as a small phone app in portrait mode, which doesn’t really work for an iPad sitting on the table top in landscape mode.