#1

This felt like a victory today in my long quest for handwriting to a zettelkasten text system. GoodNotes handwriting through to an Obsidian template. Appreciate any input if anyone has ideas to speed it up (simplify the shortcut) or other ideas!

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The result still needs some time for bibliographic information and the tags, but I find with autocomplete it is much faster to do this work in Obsidian with a keyboard, and it gives me time to expand/trim/tighten up the note (and fix those typos generated from my messy handwriting!).

Anyways, shortcut here:
https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/86d6f937a0e241c8940fe8ea9c9a825f

5 Likes
#2

Wow, handwriting recognition has really gotten good, hasn’t it?

2 Likes
#3

Lol, in my defence, I CAN actually write neater. But yes, it has. I have another workflow that does the same thing using prizmo go for paper/pen notes, which is almost better at accuracy. (It would appear, however that this will be sherlocked by the new OCR feature in iOS 15).

#4

That is awesome!! Thank you.

1 Like
#5

Re: speeding up: you could probably URL-encode the text of the note you’re saving and use the Obsidian Advanced URI plugin to write the data straight into Obsidian. This would open the note once it’s done saving, which might be better or worse for your workflow.

Advanced URI documentation is here: GitHub - Vinzent03/obsidian-advanced-uri: Advanced modes for Obsidian URI

The final actions would then be something like:
…a text action with contents:

obsidian://advanced-uri?vault=Your%20Vault&filepath=Notes%2F<yourFilenameVariable>&data=<yourURLEncodedNoteText>

and

open URL <text from immediately above>
2 Likes
#6

Oh. Good idea!! Haven’t played with uri encoding but will give it a try!

1 Like
#7

LOL. My last serious use of handwriting recognition was learning to hand write the Graffiti alphabet on my Visor PDA (a PalmPilot knockoff created by the founders of Palm when they left to start their follow-on company, Handspring)!

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#8

I am cautiously optimistic that iOS 15 Live Text will allow me to take a picture of my paper daily note and use a shortcut to get it into Obsidian. My brain likes handwriting, but my archive would be much better as searchable, and PKM/Backlinkable text.

#9

You could probably rig something up to do that right now using Toolbox Pro’s Scan Document action.

#10

I’d LOVE that as it solves a problem that was next on the list for me but when I click to the shortcut link I get a page with a button to get the shortcut but when I ty it I gt an error about Safari can’t open the specificed address and then an attempt to download the linked file gets me an HTML file not the shortcut itself.

This would be the very first shortcut I’ve attempted to use so I have no experince in how they are normally shared.

#11

I tried building that shortcut a year ago! The OCR was not usable for me (let’s just say, I am not a calligrapher). I am optimistic because when I handwrite on my iPad using Notes, the OCR is near-perfect. I am assuming that Live Text will use the same ML engine and have better accuracy. That being said, I may dust off the Toolbox Pro shortcut and give it another go!

1 Like
#12

Hmm. I’m not sure if the trouble is on my end or yours. But here is a screen grab of the shortcut

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#13

Here’s hoping!

#14

The new drafts beta is allowing ocr right into a document (pre IOS 15) which you can then export to obsidian.

1 Like
#15

I’m down to the setting the ToolBox Pro Bookmark folder to be my obsidian vault but It’s not an option. I don’t have anything related to Obsidian anywahere on my iPad.

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I clearly see my Obsidian folder and vault in the files section of my iPad.

The only other weirdness is even if I set the Currend date format to ISO 8601 It all still seems to be coming in as some other format not what i expected at all.

I tested the earlier part by saving the file to downloads, sharing it with my mac and then adding it to Obsidian on my mac.

#16

Do you have the mobile Obsidian app installed? If so, where is your vault? In ICloud? If so, you need to add it in Toolbox pro (Settings/Folder Bookmarks)
I’d suggest setting your date to custom.

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#17

Yes

In the Files section on my iPad

No, I do not use any cloud services I do not control

That’s the problem I tried that but the vault does not show up as an option to choose from as shown by my screen shot.

I’ll try that.

#18

Strange! I just added a test vault on my iPhone (not iCloud) and it appears in Toolbox pro under an obsidian folder. Sorry I can’t be more help.

#19

How did you add the test vault?

Here’s how I get my Obsidian vault over onto my iPad.
make sure Obsidian is not running on either iPad or Mac
Connect iPad to iMac with a USB cable. Open a finder window and select the ipad.
Select the files tab over on the right
scrolldown to the obsidian folder and click on the arrow so you can see the vault folders
on the mac
open a finder window
locate the obsidian vault folder (Mine is called Oogie_Adversaria)
click and drag the entire vault folder from the Mac over onto the iPad into the obsidian folder
To verify the folder is over properly do a get info on the vault folder on the iMac and note the date/time last modified
Compare to the date time last modified showing on the iPad’s copy of the same folder

#20

Perhaps try creating your vault within obsidian on iOS? Doing that created a clear folder on my iPad accessible to toolbox pro.