I used Strflow today with OmniFocus, which is pretty good for an interstitial journal. I can quickly bring it up and leave a status update about projects. It is handy when making a phone call and logging what we discussed.
I made two shortcuts, which work on the selected action’s project:
Journal About Selected OmniFocus Project: ask for a quick status update, then it automatically tags the note with the project name converted to a hashtag.
Open Selected OmniFocus Project Timeline: opens the timeline based on the project name.
I created a journaling shortcut for OmniFocus a couple of months ago, but it is built on top of DEVONthink. It doesn’t automatically get the project, and storing these entries in DEVONthink will make my status updates get mixed with project-related assets, which I don’t like.
By the way, I can also add pictures to Strflow entries, which is kind of hard to do in DEVONthink.
These days, I’m using TaskPaper for “brainstorming,” not journaling. TaskPaper is a pretty cool outliner, so I can quickly create session notes related to the selected OmniFocus action. But these are just fleeting notes… I’m using TaskPaper as a temporary thinking tool.
I can also share Strflow notes with other apps, like Day One, or add them to Drafts, where I can process and export them to other places, transforming Drafts into a tool that migrates text-based information between apps.
Also, I like how the Strflow timeline was made to look like a chat app. In a way, it feels like the old Twitter feed, where we posted random thoughts to get them out of our heads. It is a private version of that.
2024.09.01.
Maybe I should try Setapp. My Hookmark subscription is expiring soon, and it would be cheaper to use Setapp than just trying to subscribe to Hookmark directly.
From a UX point of view, Hookmark has this weird and confusing licensing behavior. I have to pick a specific license file, which I always mix up, and I don’t know… It’s just confusing…
I assume on Setapp, it works as long as I pay for the subscription.
A lot of folks use Obsidian for managing a system like this; I’m here to provide an impassioned and perhaps overzealous argument for my tool of choice, The Archive (macOS). Because what’s life without fighting for what you love?
I was in the habit of trying to find the perfect Zettelkasten app lately, but I’ve come to the conclusion that there is no app like that, so I’ll just keep using what I have, which is The Archive, iA Writer, and my Zettelkasten website.
Vim Mode for macOS. The mode you love in your favorite editor, now in your favorite OS.
I want to use something like this, but I don’t like that it is automatically enabled in every text view. Also, a subscription for this?
I remember the QuickCursor app from Hog Bay Software, which lets you select any text by pressing a keyboard shortcut, which would open the text in your favorite editor. Saving the file in the editor would update the text view. Sadly, it is not developed anymore.
These days, I select the text in the text view and use the “New MacVim Buffer With Selection” service. This opens the selected text in MacVim, although I have to paste the text manually back.
We’re releasing a huge upgrade to iA Writer’s integration with Apple Shortcuts today. With 18 built-in actions and 22 ready-made shortcuts, iA Writer 7.1 makes it easy to automate common tasks.
Sonar is a beatiful (and native) Mac app for managing Github and GitLab issues. I used the beta in the last couple of weeks for managing GitHub issues and it’s really good. The high-level outline view changes how you manage issues.
Managing time during a busy day can be a challenge. Focusing on your free time between your meetings or appointments helps you navigate through this stressful day more calmly.
From the makers of Tyme, my time tracking app of choice.
It feels like talking to myself, which helps me to externalize my ideas, and find solutions quickly to problems. It’s like a pre-thinking phase for capturing ideas in a timeline format, then organizing them later in a mindmap or an outline.
Slack has a similar idea of why you should start to message yourself. When you open your profile and press the Direct Message button, the following message appears on the top.
This is your space. Draft messages, list your to-dos, or keep links and files handy. You can also talk to yourself here, but please bear in mind you’ll have to supply both sides of the conversation.
Others also wrote about this idea in more detail. It is the modern version of emailing ourselves.
Messages is actually a pretty cool candidate for this workflow. It is available on all my devices, I can pin messages for reviewing them later, and it is still the best way to share information between my devices when AirDrop and Handoff farts themselves.
How to set it up?
Texting with ourselves in Messages is a bit weird since every message will be sent back in the same thread duplicating everything. We can avoid that by registering a new iCloud account and sending messages to there.
I have a sparse iCloud sandbox account which I use for testing. I logged in from my old MacBook Air, then I started to write thoughts for myself over iMessage.
We have to log into a separate iCloud account at least once, otherwise, Messages won’t pick up the account as a proper recipient.
This is yet another version of the capture step in GTD
This idea was cool, but for me it quickly fell apart. People get the idea of writing stuff down, but they forget that it needs to be processed later.
When I had to pull out data from Messages, it was hard to mark my processed position in the timeline.
I started to use a marker message by typing 5 equal signs which is similar to how I mark my processed position in my notebook using a double line.
This is a very important note about something.
====== ← This is my “processed” bookmark. Anything above this line is processed and I don’t need to see it again.
When I process, I usually reference information between apps, which means that I like to link to the source or at least copy the text out into a place that I can link to.
There is a hidden URL scheme in Messages, but it is really hard to link to messages.
sms://open?message-guid=UUID
If there is a data detector visible in your message (like the text of “tomorrow 9:00am”), Messages will underline it, and you can create a new event or a reminder by clicking on it. Creating a new reminder will also add the link to the message which you can copy.
Getting links or text out of Messages is actually bit convoluted.
I just found a unique new app today called Strflow, which mixes note-taking with a messaging interface. It works exactly like I wanted to use Messages.
Why it is better than Messages?
There is a “Copy Note Link” command for every note.
Notes can be edited after they are created.
There is a minimal Markdown-like syntax available, which lets me have the right amount of formatting for quick notes like these.
I love unique apps like this one – that’s one the reasons I love the Mac, since you can always find interesting tools like this – although it still has some missing pieces.
iOS version (the developer mentioned that he’s working on it).
Spotlight integration: it just feels right to index and search snippets of information in Spotlight.
Better export: we get a JSON file on export, but since the app uses Markdown for formatting, why not export proper Markdown notes?
It would be even better if I could define a date range for exporting, so processing information can be done outside of Strflow.
Although there are unique links for each note, getting them is a bit hard. I have to ⌃Click and choose the “Copy Link to Note” command from the context menu which is not available in the app’s menubar.
strflow://show-note?id=UUID
Selecting notes can be done using the trackpad, but having keyboard shortcuts for navigating up and down would be useful to select one or multiple notes.
Tofu was designed to help you read text on your Mac.
Text is often very wide, making it hard for your eyes to jump from the end of one line to the beginning of the next. That’s why newspapers have narrow columns: it makes them faster to read. Another problem is that vertical scrolling can be disorienting, as lines of text all look pretty much the same and are hard to track as they move.
Need to quickly learn or recall Markdown syntax? Our Markdown Dictionary is here to help. It’s a standard macOS dictionary built for the Dictionary app, so it’s compatible with iA Writer, iA Presenter, and other Mac apps too.
It is more than funny (and sad) that Electron apps are so bloated now that they can’t even offer a proper universal binary. You have to pick the CPU family on download.
I updated my Reminders/Hookmark integration script recently to make it faster on Sonoma. I also made sure that I have a “New Item” part too, so I can create reminders directly from Hookmark.
The “Get Address” script uses the backing SQLite database to find the ID of the selected reminder by title.
There are some caveats to keep in mind:
We have to replace the remindersDatabasePath property with the proper database path which is different for everyone.
Reminders are matched by title, so if we have multiple reminders with the same title, the script may fail to link the proper one.
Here are the scripts updated for Sonoma:
Get Address
use AppleScript version "2.4" -- Yosemite (10.10) or later
use scripting additions
-- Replace this with your Reminders database path.
property remindersDatabasePath : "/Users/yourusername/Library/Group Containers/group.com.apple.reminders/Container_v1/Stores/Data-some-UUID.sqlite"
tell application "System Events"
tell its application process "Reminders"
tell its window "Reminders"
tell its splitter group 1
tell its UI element 3
tell its UI element 2
tell its UI element 1
set reminderOutline to first UI element whose selected of UI element 1 is true
set theReminderName to value of UI element 2 of UI element 1 of UI element 1 of reminderOutline
end tell
end tell
end tell
end tell
end tell
end tell
end tell
set theSQLCommand to "/usr/bin/sqlite3 \"" & remindersDatabasePath & "\" \"SELECT ZCKIDENTIFIER from ZREMCDREMINDER WHERE ZTITLE = '" & theReminderName & "'\""
set theReminderIdentifier to do shell script theSQLCommand
set theURL to "x-apple-reminderkit://REMCDReminder/" & theReminderIdentifier
return "[" & theReminderName & "](" & theURL & ")"
New Item (this one can be a bit slow unfortunately)
tell application "Reminders"
set theName to "$title"
set theBody to "$user_link"
set theReminder to make new reminder with properties {name:theName, body:theBody}
set theReminderURL to the id of theReminder
set theReminderURL to do shell script "echo \"" & theReminderURL & "\"|sed 's/x-apple-reminder:\\/\\//x-apple-reminderkit:\\/\\/REMCDReminder\\//g'"
activate
end tell
theReminderURL
I just started using Sonar which is a new GitHub/GitLab issue tracker client available as a TestFlight beta.
I found that the app has a URL scheme, so asked developers if it was implemented, and they were kind enough to give me a brief documentation, just enough to create a starter script for myself.
Sonar is a new native Mac app for viewing and editing GitHub/GitLab issues. It’s lightning fast and stores your tasks locally so viewing, searching, and editing is instant (even offline).
I was looking for something like this for a while now.
On my 13” Intel MacBook Pro, the icons reached to about halfway across the screen. On the 14” M3 MacBook Pro, ironically a machine with a larger display, at least 3 icons get hidden.
This “design” (or lack thereof) is so dumb. It is utterly ridiculous to me that this is still how it “works” two years after the introduction of the redesigned MacBook Pro with a notch. How hard could it be to add an overflow menu with a “«” (or should it be “»”?) button that shows the remaining apps and icons that can’t be displayed? This entire situation with the notch is ironic, because the iPhone notch and “dynamic island” are so thoughtfully designed with zero compromises regarding the functionality of iOS. In fact, they actually provide a better user experience. Yet on the Mac, how the notch interacts with macOS is laughably incompetent. It is shockingly lazy regarding attention to detail, and results in an outright disruptive and confusing user experience.
Here’s my current menubar:
I try to keep my less frequently used icons (like Hookmark) on the left because I mostly invoke them from the keyboard anyway. But I hate when Docker gets stuck behind the notch, and I have to quit other apps on the right to get Docker back to the screen.
Apple should do something about this behavior because it’s really annoying. And no, I’m not going to install a 3rd-party app to fix these issues, even if I love its icon.
I just recently discovered that you can select and drag multiple Safari tabs by holding shift or command, just as you would to select and drag multiple items in Finder.
I’m sure it has been added recently or was hidden in the system for like 15 years.
Sadly it’s Safari only, so it doesn’t work on other system tabs like Finder or iA Writer.
My use case is to select those tabs I want to save as a group, right click one of those tabs to add them all to a new Tab Group (to keep things neat and tidy).
Little things like this have me thinking more and more about the control I have over my music library. I love having access to any song at any time. But, at the same time, I want more control. Apple could easily allow for smart playlist stacks to exist on the cloud. I’d have nothing to write about at that point. But, as we’ve seen with Sony lately, Apple could take away content at any point, even if you paid for it in their store. It would be a much more expensive route to maintain a physical CD collection that I then rip into a media library.
I still maintain my local music library in the Music app and buy music from the iTunes Store, Beatport, and sometimes CDs from Discogs (which I rip later).
At one point I even turned off iCloud Music Library and synced my music locally, which is still pretty cool, since it’s free and completely peer-to-peer. On the other hand, your music library turns into read-only mode, so I can’t edit my synced playlists on the device, which sucks (if I remember correctly, I can edit new playlists on the device).
I currently have iCloud Music Library turned on, but I always archive music files separately before importing them, and I also keep my library backed up by Time Machine. The problem with this approach is I have 3 Macs, so I have to pay attention to which one is holding the original song since iCloud Music Library doesn’t upload the original file but rather fetches the song from the iTunes Store. To avoid this problem, I basically keep a master library on my 16-inch MacBook Pro since I use that the most; all other devices are using the iCloud Music Library directly.
The iTunes Music Library and cloud streaming destroyed all of this, primarily because it wouldn’t allow syncing of smart playlists built off other smart playlists.
I tried this, and smart playlists based on top of other smart playlists are not synced to iOS devices. I couldn’t check if it syncs between Macs, which I want to know.
I started using iA Writer a couple of months ago for my Zettelkasten writing, and having it as a backbone of my Jekyll site turned out to be great. On the other hand, I still kept my writing workflow in Ulysses, especially for long-form writings. I just wrote about how I use Ulysses projects in my writing workflow.
I wonder if having iA Writer as my only writing app is beneficial. I start to think it is, so I’ll discuss that in this post.
Keeping my writings in a Git repository
Git should be used by more people, not only by developers. It is a powerful system for keeping track of changes in a project, and it’s easy try out new ideas by creating new branches.
Git is made for text, so keeping writings in a repository is a natural workflow. For me, it’s new, though; I always used some form of library-based app for managing my writings where you can export the final product, but the raw material is usually kept in a proprietary database or file format.
iA Writer, on the other hand, uses standard text files – specifically Markdown files – and keeps them in the file system, so we can store our files in Git repositories, which can be edited directly as folders in iA Writer. I use Tower on the Mac and Working Copy on the iPad to manage all my Git repositories and to commit my changes.
The beauty of keeping my writings as simple text files is that I can work on them using multiple apps (even in Ulysses). I like the idea that I can write in iA Writer and edit my documents later in MacVim/ iVim or BBEdit. Different text editors are made for various purposes so that I can use the best one for the task. There is no one-size-fits-all.
Keeping my Markdown files simply in the filesystem, I can also capitalize on other tools like Tmux for managing Vim sessions; using it, I can even write in the Terminal (the original distraction-free writing environment) and have access to multiple panes.
Git is also an open system so I can push changes to any standard Unix-based server over SSH. Keeping my writings up-to-date between devices is not automatic but pretty straightforward to do.
I kept groups where all sections were sheets, then duplicated these groups before significant edits and assigned version numbers for each group, like v1, v2, etc. These names had no meaning other than having a version number for the group.
The triggers for duplicating groups were the following:
Collected and sorted my Zettelkasten notes.
Finished the first draft.
Checked the grammar with Grammarly (which is just another form of editing).
The final version before publishing the post.
Since I can use Git directly with iA Writer, I no longer need to duplicate groups manually. I can use Git to keep the history and mark important milestones.
Keeping history in Git is pretty straightforward: I can commit my changes and have a version history on every file. I can create branches for each writing project, so my main branch only includes finished and published content. This is not that important since all of my posts are siloed into separate folders, but I still keep pull requests open for each article to comment on and see the history of changes in a nice interface.
Pull requests also mark a project’s start and end at the point of opening and merging. This is more of a psychological benefit I like to have: I feel a sense of accomplishment when I finish a project and merge it into the main branch.
Managing milestones is done through Git as well: I commit in Git that I "Published XYZ v1" or "Published XYZ v2", and then optionally, I tag these commits to mark the end of a milestone.
iA Writer can also publish my writings directly to my blog; this can be used as a marker when I reach a writing milestone. There is no need to duplicate anything locally, but I can export a manual version and keep it published as a hidden post on my blog if I want to return to a previous idea I removed.
I call these posts seedlings, and they aren’t visible in any listing, but they have a direct link, which I can use to preview how the final post will look on my blog.
I created seedlings as a tool primarily for gathering feedback from others on a document. It is my homegrown collaboration feature, which uses my site, where I’m entirely in control of my content. I can publish a hidden post, and then people can leave comments as feedback so we can collaborate without external tools.
But most of the time, I "collaborate" with myself, so I’m leaving comments on my seedlings as notes, which can be migrated back to the actual draft.
Creating pull requests for writings
GitHub pull requests are powerful tools, not just for coding but for writing, too. As I develop my writings, I can keep track of them in separate branches and associated pull requests in my Writings repository.
Pull requests allow me to annotate my text files with comments, which can serve as a built-in to-do system for my writing projects. There is a similar feature is built into Ulysses, where I can have annotations and notes on a sheet, which is one of the benefits of having a library-based app backing my raw content.
On the other hand, using open formats makes using different tools for different jobs on the same content possible. So, in this case, pull requests can be used as an annotation and journaling system around the post I’m writing. When I’m done, I can merge the PR into the main branch as I do in my software development workflow, then publish the final article on my blog.
Writing in the Terminal
Using Vim in the Terminal for writing is a new experience for me. I usually work all day in the Terminal, but I have yet to consider it a writing environment. Technically, it is the original "distraction-free writing app."
My primary text editor is Vim; next to iA Writer, I started using Tmux to keep my writing sessions open with Vim inside. It is my favorite place to do development work and works well for writing projects, too.
The beauty of plain text is immediately apparent in the Terminal. My eyes love the nice Gruvbox Dark theme, and more importantly, all of my CLI tools are just a couple of keyboard shortcuts away.
I’ve started to use my Mac more for writing-related projects lately. It is one of the most flexible environments (alongside my iPad) for managing my blog and my Zettelkasten. I spent a lot of time optimizing my Terminal environment for development, so having it available for writing is beneficial since the command line is the best place to work on any plain-text project – the two just pair really well since the UI is also text-based.
I can also jump into a running Tmux session from my iPad using Blink and continue my writing session from where I left off.
Section-based writing
In Ulysses, I used sheets for every section. I don’t have sections in iA Writer, but I can have separate Markdown files and include them as content blocks. Content blocks are not a standard Markdown feature, but they are so easy to work with that I’m fine if other apps don’t support them.
Sections are numbered and represent a sequence. When I want to create a new section, I add a unique number in the sequence. I name my sections 001.md, 002.md, 003.md etc. This workflow is similar to how Stephen Wolfram manages his notebooks in project folders: he creates a new file in the folder and starts writing.
I have a bunch of other conventions too. When I’m doing designs, I’ll typically keep my notes in files with names like Notes–01.nb or SWNotes–01.nb. It’s like my principle of not having too many file categories: I don’t tend to try to categorize different parts of the design. I just sequentially number my files, because typically it’ll be the most recent–or most recent few–that are the most relevant when I continue with a particular design. And if the files are just numbered sequentially, it’s easy to find them; one’s not trying to remember what name one happened to give to some particular direction or idea.
A long time ago I started always naming my sequential files file–01, file–02, etc. That way pretty much any sorting scheme will sort the files in sequence. And, yes, I do often get to file–10, etc. But in all these years I have yet to get even close to file–99.
I see this workflow being similar since writing projects can contain other types of assets, not just Markdown. Markdown files in iA Writer can also include code blocks, which can be stored as separate files. Think about that for a second.
Separate code snippets mean I can run these files directly in the Terminal using Ruby, Swift, or any other CLI tool. This gives me an interactive thinking space for code, like outlining, journaling, or mind-mapping. We have interactive notebooks in different environments, but I can make my writing projects similar with automation. It can be a great way to test and document code.
Let’s say I’m working on a new software project: I can have a docs folder that contains Markdown files linking to external sources in the actual code. Additionally, I can use iA Writer to embed source files as content blocks. When exporting the final version, source files are converted to Markdown code blocks in the output document.
Section-based writing also allows me to work on any part of the text at any time. This is a more natural bottom-up approach that is better than trying to fit my writing into a linear flow, where I start my post with the intro and then write the rest from top to bottom. Writing is the act of trying to fit random ideas together into a final story arc.
Using iA Writer Authorship for marking Zettelkasten notes
One of the main reasons I want to keep all my writing in iA Writer is their new Authorship feature.
It was intended to mark content pasted from other authors or generated by AI, but I want to hack around its intended purpose by marking text that was added from my Zettelkasten differently.
Since I mainly edit my Zettelkasten notes in iA Writer, using the same app as an end-to-end workflow for my final writing projects makes sense. I can switch between my notes and writings and copy and paste text into my drafts. Here’s where the Authorship feature comes into the picture. Since I can paste my Zettelkasten notes as text acquired from other sources, iA Writer would mark these paragraphs in a different style. I actually like this since edits are clearly visible over my original Zettelkasten text.
I have a global Authorship setup in my iA Writer settings, where my Zettelkasten is marked as "Other." This feature was intended for text copied from text-related AI apps, but if you think about it, my Zettelkasten is a "thinking partner," according to Luhmann, so in that sense, marking it as authored by "Other" sources makes sense.
Zettelkasten provides a system that, much like GTD, outlines the necessary physical steps for learning about something, generates new ideas from that knowledge, and links concepts to write a cohesive long-form text.
Creating a story is like developing a skeleton. We will add our precise thoughts on top of this skeleton. These thoughts can come from our heads, or if we use an active note-taking system, our notes can serve as a basis for them.
When we use these notes, we still have to form them in a way that makes sense in the context of the current story. The Authorship feature lets me highlight the differences between a piece of text that is just a source of a draft and the actual text I edited.
Since most of my articles contain notes developed in my Zettelkasten, I want to see these differences. Visually getting a difference between the original note and the edited version makes sense. It lets me visualize the differences between texts from other sources or texts I’m actively writing.
Using iA Writer as an end-to-end writing app
As I mentioned, I’m editing my Zettelkasten in iA Writer. I’m also editing my writings in iA Writer. How about including AI in the same app as well?
I developed a tool a few months ago called RubyGPT, a Ruby gem that lets me use ChatGPT in the Terminal. I also integrated it into iA Writer using Apple Script so I can have an ongoing ChatGPT chat session saved into a Markdown file. These chat sessions are stored in my ~/Documents/Chats folder, which is also added to my iA Writer library. Sadly, this tool only works in macOS, although I can export ChatGPT chat sessions from Drafts, too, where I’m using this action to have a similar workflow.
All my writing-related plain text lives inside iA Writer, so I consider the app an end-to-end tool for all my writing needs. In theory, I can do this with Ulysses, too, which can also work on external files, but iA Writer doesn’t hide the Markdown syntax, so I can see the original text as John Gruber intended.
With the Authorship feature, I can also see the changes I made to externally generated text, regardless of whether it’s coming from an AI source or my Zettelkasten. I still have to do the work and edit this text into a proper post.
I love this integrated workflow of starting with reading, having highlights processed into notes, getting these notes under control, and then using them as the building blocks of my posts. This workflow lets me naturally develop ideas and use them in places where they make sense.
No need to force anything.
I can write about whatever I feel like at the moment.
But the truth is, unless you’re a longtime Mac user who has integrated your personal collection of utilities into the way you use your Mac, you might not need all that much. So that’s my advice for people getting new Macs who don’t carry that legacy with them: Start with what’s there and then explore when you find where the built-in tools can’t meet your needs.
Since web apps can’t just use the components provided by the operating system, they have to recreate everything from scratch. And this creates a lot of burden for developers and, I think, lowers the quality floor. Creating beautiful, compelling apps is possible, but it requires so much work. People building native apps get it all “for free”. In fact, this could be one of the reasons Apple still has such a vibrant ecosystem of great artisanal apps since developers can build most things out of nice ready-made components.
