I reviewed my subscriptions over the weekend and I’m trying to cut down the list of subscription software. One app I’m thinking of cutting is Drafts Pro. I realize I only really use it as it was originally developed. A place where text starts. I type some text, then move that text somewhere else, iMessage, Mail, Obsidian. I never use tags or any other organization features.
So I’m wondering if Obisidian can take the place of Drafts for this workflow? I’ve been experimenting with @ryanjamurphy’s tool, Lumberjack. (Thanks Ryan!). Which has been working pretty well on both iOS and Mac. The one friction point I have compared to Drafts is that moving the note from iMessage or Mail. Especially on the iPhone, copying and pasting is a bit awkward and not as nice as the Drafts action which will open iMessage and move the note to the archive bucket. Are there any tricks in Obsidian I’m not aware of to make this last piece better?
As a reminder, Drafts is free to install and provides basic usage without the subscription. In other words, if you cancel your subscription, you should be able to continue to use it as you have been – assuming you only ever use the built-in actions.
This is just a draft for you to build on—I haven’t used this kind of workflow, so it’s offered without warranties, guarantees, or free lattes.
Consider, for example, building separate Shortcuts for the different actions you might take (Messages vs. Mail, for instance). Then, configure the Shortcuts Launcher launcher to take the note title as the subject for Mail.
You can also pin the Shortcut Launcher commands to the top of the command palette so they can be reached quickly, or add them to the mobile keyboard bar for easy access.
Wow - that’s fantastic! I do Interstitial Journaling and one of the barriers to Obsidian being an appropriate tool is the friction quickly logging an action. Thank you and @ryanjamurphy !
Nerdsniping, sounds fun! Thanks, I’ll try this out and report back my findings. My Drafts subscription renews in June, so I have a month to experiment.
Actually, I RTM and figured it out. The key is to select Multiple in the Input Type in the Obsidian launcher and then in Shortcuts, you parse the text. Here is a screenshot of what I did in Shortcuts
I tried launching this “file” via Spotlight and it worked.
Alternatively, you could create a macOS text expansion for a URL command. e.g., in macOS System Preferences → Keyboard → Text, create an expansion to change “./timber” to “obsidian://timber”. Then, when you hit cmd+space (or whatever you do to launch Spotlight), you would type ./timber, space, enter, and it would expand into the full URL and launch it.
Cool, that Timber.url file works! I had to change the filename however. Spotlight kept wanting to give me information about the Timberwolves (I’m a sports fan, so that makes sense). So I changed the name to tmbr.url so there are no clashes anymore. Thanks Ryan!
(I would still like the command option in Obsidian when you get around to it).
I’ve been using Obsidian in place of Drafts for the past week and I have to say that in many ways it is better! The main reason being about half of the notes I was creating in Drafts ended up in Obsidian anyway. So it is better to just start off in Obsidian to begin with. Ryan’s plugin and the Shortcuts workflow also works very well with Mail and Messages, so all of my daily uses cases are covered. I will be cancelling my Drafts subscription.
BTW, I don’t have anything against Drafts, it’s a very fine piece of software. This is just a natural consequence of software as a subscription model. Sometimes the original version does everything I want or need, I don’t want to keep paying for irrelevant enhancements that I’ll never use in my situation.