Use Apple Automater to Automatically Move Downloaded .md Files to Obsidian (MacOS only)

I use the amazing Markdownloader by @death.au for my Read Article Later needs.

But, the files end up in the Downloads folder. Wouldn’t it be great to move .md files immediately to an Obsidian folder for future reference?

Enter Apple’s Automater.

Here is how:

  1. Open Automater and make a new Folder Action. Select “Downloads”.
  2. Run an Applescript inside this automation.
tell application "Finder"
	
	move (every file of folder "Downloads" of home whose name extension is "md") to POSIX file "!replaceMeWithPathToYourObsidianFolder" with replacing
	
end tell
  1. Tell your browser to automatically download files without asking for it’s location. (It’s somewhere under Downloads in settings.)
  2. Use MarkDownloader as normal. Click ‘Download’ in the extension’s pop-up.

Voila. The article gets moved to your Vault in the background.

Extra tip: I added a #readlater tag to the downloaded files with the MarkDownloader options. Then used the Dataview plugin to list all of the ‘up next’ articles with that tag.

5 Likes

Hi. I like your solution for moving md files into the Vault folder. Do you know if this automation could be revised to also move images that download alongside the md file?

Bumping this q re: moving images up — this would be super helpful. @Geffrey

Heya! I totally missed your question @adamcooper. Sorry about that.

Hey @friednslip . Thanks for the question.

Uhm I’m not sure. That would mean we’d have to check the images that have been downloaded at the same time as the .md.

That’s a challenge! I’ll take a look at that.