Drafts App -- Questions

Software
1

I’ve been trying to use Drafts more for a bit more than just jotting down some scribbles here and there. I may be overthinking this, or not using it right, but I’ve hit a bit of a weird scenario that I could use some help with.

I coach a hockey team and our banquet is tonight. I figured I’d jot down a few things to say about each player, so I threw open a note in Drafts. I use Obsidian all the time which means I’ve worked with markdown a lot, and I created my document…something like this:

## #1 Joe Smith
- Good at going to the net
- Good attitude
- Listens well

## #3 Smithy Joe Joe
- Hard shot
- Works hard

…and so on and so forth.

When I print that from Drafts, it looks exactly as it does up there in italics, hashtags and all. In Drafts the player number and name are in bold (e.g. #1 Joe Smith), but when printed all the markdown symbols are there. So then I got thinking, what if I was sending this in an email to someone. Same thing, all the markdown symbols are there. I don’t want that. I do want the formatting I see in the Drafts window, but not the markdown symbols.

Then I got thinking more. If Drafts is the place where text starts…let’s say I want to email my friend and make it an email. I might have a heading, some bold or italic font etc. When I export that, it does me no good to have all the markdown symbols go with it. My friend doesn’t want to see that.

I have no issue writing in markdown whatsoever. In fact, I find it’s faster than rich text. But when I want to put the text into other apps I’m constantly running into issues where it takes all the markdown symbols with it which makes MD less convenient. I know, symbols are what MAKE markdown what it is, but that back and forth between drafts/markdown → another app/rich text is tricky.

I see there is an action in drafts to “copy to rich text”, but I’d want that built into the actual action of exporting the text to another app – not an additional step.

Or am I missing something here.

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2

You need to “preview” in rich text.
Here’s a link to a script

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3

Turns out, I had the script already installed suggested by DannyR.

I found this post also which addresses the issue, which takes me to this. That seems like what I need.

But do I now need scripts to convert from markdown to rich text when sending to other apps as well? Day One for example. Seems like you almost have to set up each action and its steps individually. This is getting complicated.

4

I have these options on my Drafts toolbar. Can’t remember if they came OOTB or if I installed them from the Actions Directory.

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5

From the export menu, both Mail and Markdown Mail are listed as separate options. If you chose Mail, then you will get the plain text with the Markdown visible inserted into the body of a compose window. However, if you select Markdown Mail, then the Markdown will be converted to HTML and inserted as rich text in the body of the compose window.

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6

I’ll just say here that one of the many reasons why I love MailMate as my email app in Mac is that I can paste in markdown but my recipient sees rich text. I write almost every email message in Markdown.

7

I think maybe you haven’t got your Drafts set up quite how you want to use it. It is very customisable and it’s worth taking the time to do this. E.g. if you do write a lot of emails in it, you should make sure the email action is the one you want, then you can just send your text to email without worrying about this stuff. Likewise for other apps/functions you use regularly.

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8

I agree with @Pupsino — taking the time to customize Drafts is worth it. You can really make the app customized for what you want/need to do. For example, there are quite a few actions to send text to Day One from Drafts, and I happen to use this one to update a specific journal. (Day One is markdown friendly, so you don’t need to convert text coming from Drafts.) Yes, there is some up-front time investment in understanding how to customize Drafts, but as you do that, you’ll see real potential for adding Actions for various repetitive tasks involving text.

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