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

[czottmann]

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

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

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.

[czottmann]

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

[Reasder]

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.

[czottmann]

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!