I started using Obsidian and the brilliant Obsidian Tasks plugin to manage Tasks in my notes however it didn't quite work for me as I would lose track of Tasks when away from my laptop, and there are no reminders for Tasks so it's not easy to stay on top of things.
I wrote my first macOS App to solve the problem; Reminder Sync for Obsidian. It periodically scans your Obsidian Vault for Tasks and creates Reminders for them in Reminders.app! Once your Tasks are created as Reminders they are synced through iCloud so they are also visible on iOS; this solves the main problem I had with Obsidian Tasks, allowing me to keep on top of Tasks with system Reminders and Widgets on macOS and iOS.
Other features apart from the core functionality described above are:
- Creating a Reminder adds a Task to an Inbox note in your Obsidian Vault, allowing you to create Obsidian Tasks from iOS.
- Deleting/Completing a Task in Reminders app completes/deletes the Task in your Vault
The core functionality is free, and I believe the free version should be sufficient for most users. Paid features include increased automatic sync frequency, ability to delete tasks from Reminders.app and ability to generate a description for the Reminder.
The app is available on the App Store: https://apple.co/3TH1e5s
You can view a demo video at the homepage: https://turquoisehexagon.co.uk/remindersync/
I would appreciate any feedback as it's my first solo App release!
Is there a good 'starter guide' that I can use to get up to speed so I can start using Obsidian to track my notes, etc.? I'm very used to editing individual .md files for this kind of thing, but manually, and I get the impression Obsidian offers a bunch of benefits.
You don't need to use every Obsidian feature under the sun to become a productivity machine, nor have it all perfectly organised, linked and categorised in your "second brain". Take notes, label them well, and use the global search when you need something. Try a new plugin from time to time.
Using Obsidian "just" as a markdown editor is a perfectly valid use. I used VSCode with some Markdown plugins for years. I tried Typora, Coda, etc but they felt too limited and sluggish. I just wanted code-like markdown editing with a bit of fanciness, and Obsidian does just that.
I have a template for journalling, and a simplistic structure for where to place files in my knowledgebase. It's not perfect, and doesn't work for everyone, but it works for me.
If you do want an example of some of my structure (I share some of the resource/knowledge publicly), see here: https://publish.obsidian.md/thecapegreek
The only drawback I can say really is that I need to better separate public and private resources, as I'm always afraid I'll accidentally publish some private notes that live among the other files you might see in the link.
I also have a course: https://developassion.gumroad.com/l/obsidian-starter-course
And a starting point with a preconfigured vault and a user guide: https://developassion.gumroad.com/l/obsidian-starter-kit
But... I can't help but feel it will become the latest application to either pivot to something unpalatable (probably after being acquired) or become abandonware, leaving me to move to Yet Another Tool. And so it prevents me from really investing in any of it - I just use a no-frills text editor.
It's open source, so they can. But people who want forward-compatibility should probably think about what their raw markdown files look like, and how useful they'd be in another program.
And if you build on plugins, this sometimes happens even now here and there. Plugins becoming unusable because of an update is still not uncommon. Their developing stopping for whatever reason is also a bit of a problem.
There is already a growing ecosystem of tools that are Obsidian-like, and if Obsidian ever went down an unpalatable path, those tools are ready and waiting.
If a no frills editor works for you, great. But at the same time, I don’t think a future problem with Obsidian is a good reason to avoid it. In a worst case, that no frills editor will open your vault just fine. But I’d personally switch to something like Logseq, which is also coming along really nicely.
In the meantime, the value that Obsidian brings to my daily life is immense. And that’s worth the risk of eventually needing to find something new, especially when I know that the underlying data is completely portable.
That very much depends on the definition of "like". Most are very different in their concepts and abilities or even foundation. They are mostly similar, if you compare it to cloud-tools, or old commercial tools.
can you name a few? i have currently installed and enabled 65 plugins. Granted, that is mostly because the obsidian team does not know how to build a good product, leading me to use plugins. but even then, the functionality is not that bad (templater, book search, dataview, loom, custom file explorer/command palette etc)
I’ve known some folks who I believe really wanted to grow a company but when faced with an offer to buy it they didn’t feel they could survive a legal challenge arguing that they should sell.
That's actually integral to the notetaking/productivity app market. Either the app soon dies out or you get bored with it and you move on to the next one.
Just like with self-help products. Targets of the self-help market are never intended to just read one or two books and get on with their lives. They're vulnerable to seemingly unending consumption of one self-help product after another. They're endlessly sold on regurgitated feel-good crap that keeps them coming back for more.
These productivity tools, like self-help books, become the ends in themselves, rather than the means.
I used to do the same thing with productivity & learning apps and systems. Kept procrastinating looking for that One Good Tool. I had this misconception that if I didn't have that one perfect notetaking tool or productivity app, then I'd be held back.
I ultimately realized that what was really holding me back was myself.
I eliminated my dependency on The One Perfect Tool, I replaced that dependency with more practical action, lightly supported by simple pen & paper and plain text files, and now I'm more productive and more learned than ever.
I used reminders a lot earlier, but I have stopped using them these days. I continue to use Calendars and Notes. Between the two, the need for reminders has gone from my workflow. If I need reminding and have a date/time, it is calendared. If I need a Checklist (Shopping), it is in a Note or part of a Note (e.g., Shared Shopping List with your partner).
A minor bug I noticed, you don't have media controls on the demo video on your website. I had to right-click and select play, clicking the video didn't start it either.
Tried it out just now as a free user and it synced thousands of completed reminders as `- [x] ...` for each. It's hard to make the jump to pay for this when I cannot test it out fully.
I designed the App to be running all the time on my MacBook as that is where I use Obsidian; during my usage I have observed syncing working with my machine plugged in and display closed. This should be possible to test yourself with the free 6 hour sync interval.
For the issue you mentioned, by any chance did you select an existing list or create a new empty list? If selecting an existing reminder list completed Reminders will be synced to the inbox. It was an untested flow, but I think it’s correct as the program ensures the list state is synced to the vault state. I believe the setup wizard recommends creating a new list, I will add a note that completed reminders will be added to your vault if you select an existing list.
However important recomemndation though: I selected "enable syncing" in the onboard process and your app proceeded to sync every single task from my entire vault. I am watching the number climb into the hundreds. There should be some kind of warning that this will happen, and/or some way to filter which tasks sync (ie: tags, or tasks in a specific note).
I think what Obsidian with recent changes to their sorage sync fees is actually brilliant. I paid $8/month for 50GB, then they dropped the storage to 10GB. So I’m getting a great deal for the same $8 compared to new users & now they have a very low-grade $4/moonth plan that probably works for a lot of people … maybe even me. But going from 50GB to 1GB for half teh cost has me locked in to an extent.
That said $9/year doesn’t seem crazy for this one feature but I’m reluctant to install this without knowing this in advance. Still surprised Apple doesn’t require these details upfront … but these details aren’t in the app store or site as far as I can tell.
- syncing of vault tasks to reminders (once every six hours)
- completion of vault tasks in reminders (immediately when the app is running)
- creation of tasks from reminders (also immediate while running)
- manual syncing whenever you want (click a button to sync vault tasks to reminders if you don’t want to wait for the automatic sync)
If you purchase, you get access to the following nice to have features:
- faster sync intervals (I.e. your vault is checked automatically for new tasks up to every minute)
- deletion sync: if you delete a Reminder the associated Task is deleted from the vault (immediately)
- descriptions for Reminders: the reminder description includes the note name from Obsidian; soon this will also include any child elements of the task.
- ability to only sync tasks with a due date
Like I said the free version should still be useful for most people. Once installed there is also a description of premium features on the purchase screen.
I’ll add these to the App Store description; thanks for the feedback!
Apple built developers an entire framework dedicated to this, which works on both iOS and macOS. https://developer.apple.com/documentation/eventkit
I use it to sync my reminders/contacts/calendars across Thunderbird/Linux and iOS.
I can edit/update/delete items programmatically with ease without any Apple secret sauce.
I wish this were more common, but instead it’s more typical to see things like the vendor agnostic Windows Mail being abandoned for “new” Outlook which is much pushier about using MS services.
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/exporter/id1099120373?mt=12
Or use the official Importer:
https://help.obsidian.md/import/apple-notes
Btw, Shortcuts can slam things into your Obsidian vault because it's just text files. That can be as fast or faster than Notes. You might need a shortcuts helper like Toolbox Pro that can remember a path to your vault and write to it from your shortcuts:
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/toolbox-pro-for-shortcuts/id14...
That said, I’ve had many, many false starts with Obsidian, and I don’t think this is enough to tilt my workflows towards it again. The Apple Notes importer does not work with images or drawings, which kind of makes the thought of transitioning kind of moot.
Also, I can’t be trusted to not fiddle around as soon as I open my vault. Notes is much less customisable, but this is a wind for consistency and ‘stability’ when I open it up to actually take notes.
I've build two apps on top of it: 1. macOS habits tracker https://apps.apple.com/us/app/alto-computer/id6478018751?mt=... 2. small web app to publish my daily habits online https://public.me/anton/daily
It's unclear to me what happens if I run this on multiple machines. I have a few different machines that I use throughout the day but none are on "24/7" so I'd love to install this everywhere so it's always syncing. I'd love for that to be possible but I think either way it might be useful to document whether I can/shouldn't do that :)
Version 1.1.0 just shipped that allows you to specify a Global Filter; only Tasks containing the filter will be synced if that's what you're after? Or would you like to exclude notes from being included based on properties at the beginning of the document?
Side note: it looks like the support email (remindersyncturquoisehexagon.co.uk) is malformed? Gmail is refusing to send emails to it.
I guess I'm asking how fragile this is in practice.
- Deleting a Reminder that has been synced to Obisidian deletes the Task from Obsidian (if enabled in the settings menu)
- Completing a synced task in Obsidian will complete the Reminder (on the next sync)
- Completing a synced Reminder will complete the Task in Obsidian (immediately if the app is running)
- Creating a Reminder in the synced list creates a task in a note called "Reminder Sync Inbox.md"
- Editing a Task in Obsidian and syncing deletes the previously associated Reminder and creates a new one (effectively updating the text in Reminders.app)
The only known limitation (so far) is:
- Editing a synced Reminder description in Reminders.app does not update the text of the Task in Obsidian: This is hard to solve as the original Task may contain embedded links (which are stripped to just the link text for the Reminder description). Syncing those edits back to Markdown is a difficult problem that I haven't bothered focused on yet as I feel it may not be solvable.
In case of a conflict, the state in Obsidian always wins :)
> "Turquoise Hexagon Cybernetics"
Nice homage to Boards of Canada!
Shame...
