Creating tasks from apple mail

Hi all. I know this has been a weak spot for apple mail for a long time, but I really need to solve it. I use Fantastical (subscription) and that’s primarily where I keep my tasks as well. I want to be able to create a task in Fantastical and have it link back to the email. Sometimes I’ve been able to make this work, but generally, I can’t – it just copies over the title of the email instead of the link. I need this to work on ios and my computer. My to-dos are piling up in my inbox because my workflow sucks!

I also have Things 3 and it handles this better, but it doesn’t sync back to my calendar so I can see everything in one place. I use the Fantastical menubar and leave that open all day to keep me on task. The fact that Things doesn’t have a menubar widget is a dealbreaker for my workflow.

Thanks for any tips you have.
Doty

On iOS in Mail highlight what you want your reminder to be called and hit share and pick reminders. Also… on your phone or iPad with the email open just say “add this to reminders” and it creates a reminder in your default list. Fantastical can access your reminder list so should end up there with the link. In Mail in Mac you can do same. Highlight something from the message and right click share—>reminders.

Thanks for your reply. That did work to create a reminder (I’m on iOS at the moment and haven’t tried the Mac). However, when I go to fantastical the link to the original email is not there.

You can turn it into a menu bar app using Platypus:

have you tried this? If so, does Platypus enable Things Cloud sync even while the app is quit?

thanks :slight_smile:

I have not tried it with Things.

I do have it working on my Mac with Apple Notes, Finder, and Devonthink.

You can easily figure out if it will do what you want - Platypus is wrapping scripts in an app. So your options for for a Things menu bar would be that when you click the menu bar icon one of these things would happen:

  • Run a Terminal Command to open Things
  • Run a Shell Script to open Things
  • Run an Applescript to open Things
  • Run a Keyboard Maestro Macro to open Things [you can run a Keyboard maestro macro through a number of the above options]

As for me, I have each of the 3 apps above set up so the menu bar icon runs an Applescript, which in turn runs a Keyboard Maestro macro.

So bottom line - the easiest way to figure out if it can do what you want is to see if you can write a Keyboard Maestro macro to accomplish that task.

This is super interesting. Thank you. I will look into it. I have Keyboard Maestro. If I could get this to work that would be cool, but I still need to figure out an iOS solution.

I know this isn’t a direct solution to your problem, but Omnifocus lets you add tasks via email. You can just forward a message to Omnifocus and it lands in your inbox.

Hi all, after struggling with this for the last few days, I’ve settled on Things 3. It works with all my devices and it’s helping me get through my email inbox in a more reasonable way. Control + Option + Spacebar sends the email link to Things on the Mac. On the iPad, I use split view and drag the email over. Slowly I’m moving away from keeping tasks in Fantastical. It’s going to take some time to get used to it, but I think I’m going to stick with it.