I’m looking for a web clipper – either standalone or attached to some other software – that just works with everything. A ton of web clipper have trouble with Reddit pages (especially old.reddit.com, which is what I use). And even something like Raindrop.io which CAN save Reddit won’t save pages behind paywalls and has other limitations like that.
It’s driving me nuts. Something that just WORKS for EVERYTHING must exist out there, no?
I could just Print to PDF but I want meta-data like the date retrieved and the URL of the webpage to be saved too, and I don’t want to add all of that manually.
I would definitely take a look at SingleFile for this use case. It saves a fully encoded HTML archive of a web page. It also keeps the meta-data you mentioned like date retrieved and the original URL. I made some suggestions to the developer and he was able to add new integration features with Safari and Apple Notes.
I wrote an article going into more detail of using a SingleFile Web Clipper workflow if you would like to check it out: Apple Notes Web Clipper Replacement for Evernote: Apple Notes Unleashed Series (Dispatch No. 1)
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Thank you! But it seems like Apple Notes doesn’t index the text of the HTML file? Because I just tried that, and a search doesn’t seem to work.
Is that right, or do I just have to wait for it to index?
That’s interesting. I’m noticing that this seems to be a deeper issue with the HTML files created by SingleFile as I can’t seem to get Notes or Spotlight to search specific text within the documents either. Spotlight seems to just index the title of these files.
Maybe the developer has more information about the technical specifics related to indexing. I’ll get in touch with him.
Update:
The developer got back to me and referenced this support article that seems to indicate that Notes does not search within certain kinds of documents other than PDFs: Can Apple Notes search Office documents - Apple Community
I did a little more investigating and it looks like Spotlight will index Safari webarchive files properly. However, it doesn’t appear that Apple has included that part of Spotlight’s API into Notes, as the same webarchive found by text content in Spotlight cannot be found within Notes. Still not sure why Spotlight can’t search for text within SingleFile archives.
I like SingleFile and it works great. However, is there a way to just copy paste the content out of singlefile’s html and paste it into a notes app without losing formatting. I had difficulty with that. I found Evernote web clipper to be top notch. However, I moved to obsidian
SingleFile encapsulates the original formatting within its HTML archive, so it can’t be copied out of the file. The way to view the SingleFile web page or selection quickly within Notes is to select the file and press the Space bar to enable a Quick Look expansion of your content with formatting preserved.
I use Markdownload with Obsidian and works fine most of the time.
My new guide for the enhanced web clipper workflow with SingleFile, Apple Notes and Safari is now available: Enhanced Web Clipper Capabilities with SingleFile, Apple Notes and Safari
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