Using (and automating) Obsidian on macOS - Meta Post

[ryanjamurphy]

Collecting posts on useful workflows for macOS. Link posts in this thread and I’ll consolidate.

Keyboard Maestro

KM Macro for creating a TOC from text headings

Here is another potentially useful Keyboard Maestro macro. This time for creating a TOC from headings within the text. You have to be in editor mode, with the cursor in the text. Once triggered, it will select all the text, copy it, parse it and return a structured TOC in a display window and to the clipboard. Example: # Markdown #LoremIpsum [[Lorem Ipsum]] # H1 ## H2 ### H3 #### H4 ##### H5 ###### H6 ##### H5 #### H4 ### H3 ## H2 # H1 The macro will return: ## Content - [[#Markdown]] -…

Create a Table of Contents from selected files on macOS using Keyboard Maestro

Folks have been hoping for a Table of Contents plugin for a while. This isn’t that, but if you’re on a Mac and have Keyboard Maestro, I’ve created a simple macro that will produce a Table of Contents from a selection of files. To use it, you select a few files in Finder and activate the macro. The macro copies a bulleted list to your clipboard where each line corresponds with each selected file in link format. E.g., if you have two files named A.md and B.md, the macro copies the following bull…

Quote from Safari/Chrome to Obsidian with Keyboard Maestro on macOS

There are many solutions out there for clipping text from the web into Obsidian. If you use Keyboard Maestro on macOS, this one might be the simplest and most customizable of all. This Keyboard Maestro macro takes selected text in either Safari or Chrome and places it in your clipboard in the following form: > quoted text - [Website title](website link) The result looks like: [Screen Shot 2020-07-09 at 11.15.29 AM] (Depending, of course, on your theming!) Here’s what the macro looks l…

Open Today's Note from anywhere on macOS with Keyboard Maestro or Alfred

This is a trivial macro to build, but just in case someone else hasn’t considered it, I thought I’d share it here. If you’re on macOS, Keyboard Maestro is an incredibly powerful automation tool. This little macro simply uses the keyboard shortcut assigned to Today’s Note to open it in Obsidian, and will work even if you’re currently working anywhere else on the OS. Here’s what it looks like: [Screen Shot 2020-07-09 at 10.15.36 AM] Using Keyboard Maestro’s URL triggers, it’s pretty easy to a…

Changing Obsidian’s appearance on the fly with Keyboard Maestro

To celebrate the creation of a macOS meta post, another km macro for quickly changing Obsidian’s appearance and default font. There are 3 macros, actually. They work in the following way: set up a md file with the path of all your vaults. set up a md file with the path of all your favorite skins (a.k.a. CSS files) add your favorite font names to the fonts macro and make sure to adjust the css selectors. adjust the path to these files on the macros. But WATCH OUT: the CSS macro will DELETE …

Search a range of dates with Keyboard Maestro on macOS

The now-available upgraded search features afford a neat new capability: you can search across a range of dates! This Keyboard Maestro macro is a bit of a quilt, made of patched-together ideas from across the Internet. Once it’s enabled, if you trigger it, it presents a window where you can input a start date and an end date using natural language. For example: “Yesterday” and “July 30.” After a moment, it will set your clipboard to a range of dates in the Daily Notes format, formatted to be …

Backup your notes! (Do so automatically with Keyboard Maestro on macOS)

For everyone: this is a simple reminder that you should back up your notes. Cloud services are not a replacement for backups—in particular because changes to files synced to e.g., Dropbox or OneDrive propagate to the “backups,” too. Some of these services have quasi-backup features, like file rollback, but nothing beats the simple dependability of keeping a copy of your stuff somewhere else. If you’re on macOS using Keyboard Maestro, I’ve created a simple macro that will create regular backups…

Keyboard Maestro macros: Vault Snapshot + Quick Git Commit

Macro 1: Vault Snapshot Instructions Just input the path of both the vault and the desired backup location to the designated locations. What it will do Zip the Vault folder, timestamp it and move it to the backup folder. Macro 2: Quick git Instructions Change the first line of the shell script to the correct vault path. What it will do Commit all changes using a timestamp as commit msg. Warning Obviously you can only do it in a folder that is also a git repository. There are plenty of instru…

Insert daily note-formatted date (as link) using Keyboard Maestro on macOS

An even dumber version of https://forum.obsidian.md/t/search-a-range-of-dates-with-keyboard-maestro-on-macos/3456: Want to insert the Daily Note-formatted date for e.g., next Monday? Too lazy to figure out what that means and type it manually? Me too. With this macro, just type ./date (or set up whatever triggers you desire), enter the target date with natural language, and presto—your date will be inserted in your daily note format, already nestled comfortably within a double-[ hug. The macr…

Zen/focus mode with automation

What this is Want to be able to do this? [2020-07-29 13.38.38] Do It Yourself Requirements Follow the tweaking instructions provided here to develop a set of CSS that can recolour your interface so that only your active line is emphasized. You will need to have colours for your usual interface, and then faint versions of those colours for text you want dimmed. Instructions The basic logic of this automation is: on some trigger: find the obsidian.css file if the file already contains…

Save and load workspaces (with Keyboard Maestro and macOS)

Here’s three macros for Keyboard Maestro on macOS. As ever, this is provided as-is, but I’ve tried to make it easy to set up. Change the location of the vault in the yellow action on each macro before use. Save workspace Save Workspace asks you to specify a name for the current layout, then stores a copy of .obsidian/workspace in your Obsidian Vault in a new workspaces folder. Open workspace Open Workspace asks you to choose one of the workspaces you’ve saved. It looks up the workspac…

Toggle Andy mode (with Keyboard Maestro on macOS)

I love the magical Andy Matuschak mode enabled by @death.au’s CSS wizardry, but I don’t want it on all the time. This macro uses the same trick used in Zen/focus mode with automation to edit obsidian.css to toggle Andy mode. It requires Keyboard Maestro on macOS. Edit the location of your .css file before using. Download it here: Toggle Andy Mode

Transclude Me (KM macro on OSX)

While curating one’s notes, it is not uncommon to realize that some portion of text in current note actually merits being its own new atomic ‘topic’ (note). TranscludeMe makes this easy: it cuts the selected text, replacing it with a transclusion link to a new note that contains the cut selection. TranscludeMe is a working proof-of-concept of a future Obsidian plugin (or better, feature), prototyped as a Keyboard Maestro macro. For me, it works well enough as a macro to be useful today as is;…

Silly Keyboard Maestro URL Creator

This is the world’s smallest KM script, and it is custom to my vault name, but it could be useful. The trick is KM’s ability to alter clipboard contents. I’m just running the percentage filter so it adds all the necessary code for spaces and symbols in the name. [Screen Shot 2020-10-17 at 12.22.50 PM]

Alfred

Alfred Snippet for @mitzimbj's Daily Notes Breadcrumb Trail

@mitzimb describes their Daily Notes scheme including a breadcrumb trail created using espanso. I really liked the idea of the breadcrumb trail but I’m a dedicated Alfred user, so I made a Snippet to populate it. Here’s the snippet that will create the breadcrumb trail: < [[{date -1D}]] [[{date +1D}]] > which inserts this into the edit pane (imagine it’s purple except the < and >): < [[2020-07-10 Friday]] [[2020-07-12 Sunday]] > and shows like this in preview < 2020-07-10 Friday 2020-07-12…

Open Today's Note from anywhere on macOS with Keyboard Maestro or Alfred

This is a trivial macro to build, but just in case someone else hasn’t considered it, I thought I’d share it here. If you’re on macOS, Keyboard Maestro is an incredibly powerful automation tool. This little macro simply uses the keyboard shortcut assigned to Today’s Note to open it in Obsidian, and will work even if you’re currently working anywhere else on the OS. Here’s what it looks like: [Screen Shot 2020-07-09 at 10.15.36 AM] Using Keyboard Maestro’s URL triggers, it’s pretty easy to a…

Quick actions in Obsidian from anywhere using Alfred on macOS

Obsidian 0.8.15 introduced URL scheme (“obsidian://” and “obsidian:///”) and it makes building Alfred workflows so much easier! I’ve created a really simple workflow that uses URL schemes to open vaults, open daily note, and search for notes (all notes, recent notes, or today’s notes). Download it here and check out my Github repo for some instructions on how to set it up on your own computer. Edit: The workflow has been updated to work with Obsidian 0.9.0’s new url scheme.

Working with other apps

Workaround for making [[Wikilinks]]-syntax compatible with Ulysses

The writing experience in Obsidian keeps getting better, but I really like writing in Ulysses: it’s beautiful, syncs fast between iPad and Mac, has great grammar and spelling support, enables merging/splitting notes, offers great export options, and it can be set to work with an external folder of Markdown files, such as an Obsidian vault. Unfortunately, it doesn’t play well with [[Wikilinks]]-syntax. One day, I hope that Ulysses will modify its quirky Markdown syntax to accommodate it, but for …

Automation in DEVONthink: populate `URL` metadata fields with Obsidian's URL scheme

Incentive I index my Obsidian notes inside DEVONthink (DT) to take advantage of its algorithms to analyze the contents and suggest related documents to me. But when I’m viewing the indexed notes in DT, I often need to open it in Obsidian, which was cumbersome to do manually. After URL schemes were released, I realized I could reduce the friction in my workflow by somehow automatically populating the URL metadata field of the indexed notes with their URL schemes. This way, jumping from DT to Obs…

Alfred Workflow: Opening Daily Notes with Date Breadcrumb

This alfred workflow opens/creates a daily note with the Date on top (as a breadcrumb) as well as Opens the daily note in your Obsidian app. .md file would open as < [[2020-10-03]] | [[2020-10-05]] > Sunday, October 04 2020 Download: AlfredWorkFlowLink

Good to Know

macOS Text Replacement doesn't work

Just for information: this is a known issue with Electron apps in general. Something to do with Electron not using proper macOS text fields.

[phlind]

Open note in Obsidian from within Vim and vice versa

Hi, in case some of you also use or plan to use Obsidian and Vim (resp. vimwiki) side by side as two different viewports on the same notebase, this might be useful[^1] (the following describes solutions for macOS; maybe someone else could provide infos on how to do this on Linux or Windows): Open note in Vim from within Obsidian If you use Vim in iTerm, you can just create an App with Automator:[^2] -- TerminalVim.app -- This creates a shim Application that will enable you to open files from t…

Maybe this is relevant, since it talks about solutions for macOS specifically.