Text Note Links in OmniFocus

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Michael Schechter recently posted a macro to embed nvAlt linked files in OmniFocus. He will probably be the first to admit that it’s less than ideal. OmniFocus doesn’t recognize the links properly. I’ve played with something similar but ended up linking directly to a shared Dropbox document. That also was less than ideal.

About a month ago I updated my process to use TextDrop instead.1

TextDrop can link to a Dropbox folder of notes or to an individual note in Dropbox.

For example, my scratch pad for the Drafts app has a url like this:

:::html
https://www.textdropapp.com/dropbox/Notes/Drafts.txt

By adding that link to an OmniFocus task, I have access to the note on any platform that has a web browser, including iOS. Sure, I have to login to TextDrop occasionally when the cookie expires, but come on, it’s ubiquitous.

Following the link takes me right to the note in TextDrop:

Here’s a Keyboard Maestro macro that grabs a link from nvAlt and creates an OmniFocus task with it.

Macro Notes

  1. The ⌘-L command will select the title of the search bar from any context in nvAlt. It’s a handy way to get at the title of the currently selected note.
  2. The title of the note must be URL encoded otherwise it will not work.
  3. My Workflow is slightly different than Michael’s so my macro is more simple. I just want the URL added to the note field and then I want to get back to creating the rest of the Task detail.

  1. TextDrop is a commercial product. Right now it costs about $7 per year. ↩︎