Streamlining My Daily Notes: Automating Obsidian with iOS Shortcuts
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Chapter 1: Introduction to Automation
In the past, I have manually crafted my daily notes in Obsidian every morning. Mornings often start with offshore meetings, leaving me little time to organize my day beforehand. Frequently, I find myself caught up in discussions only to realize that today’s note hasn’t even been created yet. A key part of my daily note template is a checklist that helps me kick off the day. However, due to this new morning routine, I've been struggling to complete it. To address this, I decided to explore macOS Shortcuts over the weekend to automate the creation of my daily note, ensuring it is ready to go when my day begins.
Section 1.1: My Daily Note Template
I utilize Obsidian to manage my daily activities effectively.
Section 1.2: Crafting the Shortcut
With the launch of macOS Monterey, Shortcuts became available on Mac, prompting me to experiment with it. Although the feature isn't fully developed yet, I managed to create a functioning shortcut for generating notes. However, I discovered that macOS currently lacks the ability to schedule shortcuts. This led me to transition to iOS, where I was pleased to find that most of my macOS configurations translated well. I did have to update the Calendar integration to pull today's meetings into my note, but that process was straightforward. Overall, I was pleasantly surprised by the capabilities of iOS Shortcuts, which opened up a realm of possibilities for automating various tasks in my note-taking workflow.
Description: Learn how to automate your periodic notes using Obsidian with this detailed guide.
Section 1.3: Setting Up the Shortcut
The first step is to create a note titled with today's date. The format I use is yyyy-MM-dd.md. To achieve this, I apply the Format Date Action followed by a Text Action to append .md to the filename.
Next, I check if the file already exists to avoid creating duplicates. I configure the Get File action to search for today's daily note in the specified folder. If the file is found, the shortcut will notify me and cease further actions.
If there’s no existing note, it’s time to create one. In the else branch of the conditional, I retrieve the template from the templates folder, open it, and save it in the daily folder with the new filename. Notifications can be included here to confirm that the tasks have executed successfully.
I’ve also integrated an iOS shortcut that fetches my meetings and includes them in the note upon creation. I’ll delve into this feature in a future post. If you choose to download the shortcut, you might want to adjust this component.
Chapter 2: Automating the Process
Unfortunately, automating the shortcut to run daily posed a challenge on macOS, as the feature is not yet available. I contemplated using third-party applications like Keyboard Maestro, but I prefer minimizing the number of tools in my workflow. Consequently, I opted to create the shortcut on iOS instead, where automation is user-friendly.
Description: Discover how to build and automate a daily note template in Obsidian with this insightful tutorial.
Section 2.1: Conclusion
Now, when I execute this shortcut manually, I either receive a notification of a newly created note or a message indicating that one already exists. This marks my initial experience with shortcuts, and while there’s room for improvement, I’ve found that altering my designs sometimes causes the shortcut to fail, likely due to the still-developing nature of the Shortcuts app.
I sync my notes across devices with Obsidian Sync. Occasionally, I need to access the day’s note on my iPad to view it on my work computer, given that my vault is stored in OneDrive. This issue seems isolated to my work computer; my personal laptop displays it without any problems. If anyone has insights on this, I would appreciate the input.
Feel free to share how you set up your daily notes in the comments. Are you currently automating any tasks, or do you wish to automate something but are unsure how to proceed? I welcome your thoughts.