▶️ How to email a "Note to Self" to your Obsidian vault

What This Workflow Does

This helper consists of two parts: an AppleScript and a Shortcuts workflow. The AppleScript is a Mail rule that triggers the Shortcuts workflow. The Shortcuts workflow then takes the email and turns it into a note in your Obsidian vault.

This basically adds a “Note to self” ability to your Obsidian vault(s), which uses what you already have and use: your existing email account and macOS.

Good to know:

  • For obvious reasons, your Mac and the macOS Mail app must be running for this work. (Mail can be in the background, though.)
  • It makes use of Mail’s rules feature and AppleScript, both of which are not available on iOS — this is a macOS-only workflow.

Download & Installation

Download Apple Shortcuts workflow “Mail to Obsidian note.shortcut”. Double-click the downloaded file to install the workflow in Shortcuts.

Download AppleScript “Send Mail to Shortcuts.scpt”. Copy or move the downloaded .scpt file into the folder ~/Library/Application Scripts/com.apple.mail/. (If you have trouble finding that directory: open a Finder window, open the menu entry “Go” → “Go to Folder…” (or press ⇧⌘G), then paste the path ~/Library/Application Scripts/com.apple.mail/ into the following prompt, and hit Enter.)

Requirements

  • Actions for Obsidian
  • macOS Mail app + an existing email account
  • Obsidian

Explainer video

Workflow Screenshot

Workflow history / Change log

2023-10-24

Adds link back to original message in Mail.app to the note.

2023-06-22

First version.

Update on 2023-10-24! Now the resulting note contains a link back to original message in Mail.app.

I like this a lot. But I wonder how it’s possible to specify a specific folder for these e-mail-turned-notes within my vault? Now I can just give the name of my vault, which makes it so that all the e-mails are just sitting there unsorted. I’d rather dump them into an appropriate place.

Welcome to the forum, @Reasder!

Yes, it’s possible. See the screenshot in the original post, and check out the very last action, Create Note. In the first parameter, where it reads [Mail subject] (“Mail subject” being a variable), you would change that to My folder/[Mail subject] — i.e., prefix the variable in that parameter field with your folder name, like so:

Hope this helps!

1 Like

The Script is great - thank you!
Is it possible to transfer an attachment of a mail to Obsidian as well?

@HotuMatua No, not yet. Two reasons:

  1. The used Applescript doesn’t export any attachment info
  2. Actions for Obsidian doesn’t support attachments and files yet (planned for v1.5, however)

And welcome to the forum!

Thank you very much for the quick reply.

Nice to be here!

Thanks for sharing this @czottmann – This is great and not only for a “Note to Self”:
I was looking for a way to build a slim CRM in Obsidian and this looks like one crucial piece to get it done.
Maybe also helpful for others: As Carlo pointed out in the video, you can work other filters too:

So you can specify e.g. that they are in your contacts or in a certain group (and this way you could even run different shortcuts [and saving locations in Obsidian] depending on groups).
Great stuff :rocket:

I am not sure if something has changed in the Apple Shortcuts. I have tried this on two Macs and the last step of the shortcut to create a new note shows the message “Unknown action - this action could not be found on this version of shortcuts”. I’m running OS15.1.

I have been desperate to get this to work. I had tried a couple of months ago and the shortcut was working, but not working to trigger the obsidian note. An action was being triggered, and a pop up window would ask what vault to put the note in. However, the vault was specified in the shortcut and the pop up window did not provide any options to specify a vault so I had to give up. Coming back to this to spend some more time to get it working showed this new message - weird right?

Any ideas welcome!

Hi @Nibba, welcome to the forum!

From what you describe it sounds like AFO doesn’t know about your vaults yet. If this worked before but doesn’t anymore than my guess is that “before” means pre-Release 2024.1 (macOS & iOS) – in this version, the vault handling changed. I think that’s the case because you wrote:

However, the vault was specified in the shortcut and the pop up window did not provide any options to specify a vault so I had to give up.

Just re-run the onboarding (“Link your vault”) for all the vaults you want to use with AFO. Then, check the workflow in the Shortcuts editor again, click the Create Note’s Vault parameter, and at that point you should be able to select any of your linked vaults.

Let me know how it goes!

Damn!! You are a genius - So simple in hindsight but I could not have done it without your support - Thank you!!

I have it all up and running - Superstar service!

Glad to hear that! And I’m not a genius, believe me – I just wrote the thing and answered a lot of support request, is all :joy: