I’m curious what you’re doing with Actions for Obsidian. If you want input or a code review of sorts, let me know!
1 Like
Daily Startup
I have a Daily Startup workflow shortcut that runs automatically every day at 8 AM. It creates my Daily Note, and several related daily health logs (diabetes, meals). It also creates a separate Daily Journal that I’m exploring to encourage more journaling (rather than just a Journal section in my Daily Note). I use Templater templates for the Daily Note as well as the other Notes. I currently open the Daily Note in Obsidian, but not the other health notes (they’re linked from the Daily Note anyway).
Currently, this is triggered with a Calendar alert using an Automator script that runs the shortcut. I have also created a Keyboard Maestro macro that has a timer trigger to run the shortcut. I’m exploring how to exploit Keyboard Maestro workflows for my shortcuts (and also have experimented a little with Alfred workflows too).
I’m using Data Jar to store my common Obsidian variables for my vault name as well as several paths such as Templates. I also had to create several date utility shortcuts to get today’s ISO date (“yyyy-MM-dd”) and create a month path (“yyyy/MM”) for my Daily Note file path in Calendar/Daily. I call them from my other shortcuts and return the text in the shortcut result.
I also have Daily Startup pinned to my Shortcuts menu bar, in case it doesn’t get triggered automatically for some reason. I have to make sure I check “Allow Running When Locked” under Privacy. It took me a little while trying to get these all working correctly with lots of trial and error experimentation (while also learning more about shortcuts).
1 Like
That sounds pretty cool! As a software dev, I do love the redundancy angle (alert + KM macro + menubar) 
These are utility workflows, like subroutines in Keyboard Maestro? Great idea.
I have also created a Keyboard Maestro macro that has a timer trigger to run the shortcut.
I use those a lot myself. For some of them I call them via an “on wake” trigger in KM which asserts a timeframe, as in: when the Mac wakes, run the macro but quit immediately if it’s after 10 AM or so.
I wanted to create my Daily Note in a date-based folder hierarchy like I do using the Periodic Notes “format” option where I have the syntax reference: YYYY/MM/YYYY-MM-DD. So that’s why I needed to create those date utility shortcuts since there isn’t a similar option in Actions for Obsidian when you create a Daily Note or Note, where you always have to specify the file path (which I have to generate in a Text action). Actually, I also need to provide a folder prefix to the dated path; right now, I’m using a different folder for each of types of calendar notes (Daily, Health, Journal, etc.). Also, currently I’m including a file name prefix for each type of note before the ISO date name (but I may eliminate this since it’s identified by the enclosing folder already).
I LOVE the idea of using Data Jar for the vault name and other constants. For some reason, Data Jar never comes to mind when I’m looking at Mac OS automations, probably because I’ve grown accustomed to using other mechanisms. But it would solve a problem with doing things on the Mac which are incompatible on iOS. Thank you for this!
Welcome, @Creed! I agree, DataJar is 
, yes.
That said, I also think about the way AfO handles vault connections so all of those (clever) workarounds might not be necessary anymore. I need more time to ponder this topic more thoroughly, tho.
Log Diabetes Event
I am really excited that I now have a shortcut that I can use to log a diabetes event throughout the day from my iMac menu bar (or widget), iPhone widget, or Apple Watch (including voice prompts via Siri). Wow, this is so cool! It uses Actions for Obsidian to append a customized formatted log item under headings for Night (Sleep), Morning (Breakfast), Afternoon (Lunch), and Evening (Dinner) with appropriate tags for tracking. It’s working, but I still need some additional testing and refinement, but it’s looking real good. I’m updating one of the health logs I mentioned earlier that’s created with my Daily Startup. This makes it so much more consistent and less error prone than constantly directly trying to keep that log note updated.
2 Likes
@czottmann , I have to admit I haven’t yet put Actions for Obsidian to work yet, although I have been experimenting with it. I HAVE used the Actions URI plugin for capturing some notes from Drafts and for appending one-line entries to the “What I did today” section of a daily note. Great work on that plugin!
As to DataJar, I do use it to log some data on my phone. Very handy.
w00p, getting some Actions URI love never hurts, either. Glad to hear it’s useful to you! 