Drafts

Example actions and other extensions for Drafts, the quick-capture notes app.

Example actions and other extensions for Drafts, the quick-capture notes app.

Simple simulator of the Drafts iOS app to help with script development. - jneug/drafts-sim

Example actions and other extensions for Drafts, the quick-capture notes app.

Example actions and other extensions for Drafts, the quick-capture notes app.

Example actions and other extensions for Drafts, the quick-capture notes app.

Example actions and other extensions for Drafts, the quick-capture notes app.

This past month I attended my first conference of the year. It was actually a forum of several hundred people, but I have a couple of other similar events coming up. A two day exhibition at the London Expo this coming month and an SAP HR event in May. At this first event all of the non-networking events were taking place in a single large room and I just captured everything on my phone and my work laptop. The next events however are going to be bigger venues with multiple locations for sessions, and even though my laptop is pretty light I’d like to travel lighter still. Dumping the laptop, spare USB C battery pack & cable and replacing them with my iPad and a keyboard (but keeping my iPhone) would be better. To that end I set about coming up with a new workflow for capturing information at conferences.

Example actions and other extensions for Drafts, the quick-capture notes app.

Drafts 2023 Year in Review As 2023 comes to a close, I wanted to take a moment to say thanks and reflect on the progress made throughout the year. Thank you to all those who support Drafts through a Drafts Pro subscription! Drafts is always changing, but continues to work toward being the best place to capture, edit, and share anything you do with text on Apple platforms – and your support makes that possible! Below is a quick review of some of the highlights of Drafts releases in 2023, in cas...

Example actions and other extensions for Drafts, the quick-capture notes app.

Example actions and other extensions for Drafts, the quick-capture notes app.

Example actions and other extensions for Drafts, the quick-capture notes app.

Example actions and other extensions for Drafts, the quick-capture notes app.

Documentation for Drafts app, a quick-capture note taking app for iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple Watch.

Evernote’s web clipper extension for OS X Safari is a thing of beauty. The Evernote bookmarklet clipper (on iOS and OS X) is a slow piece of crap.

From making newsletters to your own personal Wikipedia.

Yesterday I posted some details around using Shortcuts to send a new note to Obsidian. Today, I’m going to look at a different and also popular capture option for Obsidian; using one of my favourite applications, Drafts.

Drafts, by AgileTortoise, is my ubiquitous note app. I use it for capturing ideas, drafting content, shopping lists, general note taking, and more besides. The content is often temporary, but when it isn’t, the content gets reflowed off into files (such as in one of my Obsidian vaults), social media posts, e-mails, or some other channel. Last year I also began using another note app - Tot by the IconFactory. Tot has a very different view of notes. It is a much simpler app and is opinionated in how complex it can get. But, what it gave me on the Mac was a free menu bar app that I could keep snippets on for short periods. In real world terms, I think of Drafts as my ubiquitous pocket notebook, and Tot as the pad of last few sticky notes on my desk. There is undoubtedly overlap, and I am sure I could make Drafts provide near identical functionality to Tot. However, having a distinction between them works for me, and having Tot as a separate app to fulfil a niche requirement in my workflows has stuck. The only friction that occurred is where I wanted to transfer information between the two apps. But I’ve been able to smooth that over and I’m going to explain how in the remainder of this post.

Example actions and other extensions for Drafts, the quick-capture notes app.

Example actions and other extensions for Drafts, the quick-capture notes app.

Example actions and other extensions for Drafts, the quick-capture notes app.

Last summer I created a Drafts action for a user to allow them to mark some text in IA writer’s Markdown syntax for a highlight. Now my solution was not the first solution offered, but it was a little different to the others, and I have been meaning to write it up for quite some time now to go into a bit more detail about how it works and the benefits it provides over other, existing solutions.

Extract a checklist from a Drafts document and import it into Things 3.

Example actions and other extensions for Drafts, the quick-capture notes app.

Example actions and other extensions for Drafts, the quick-capture notes app.

Example actions and other extensions for Drafts, the quick-capture notes app.

Example actions and other extensions for Drafts, the quick-capture notes app.