Enhance Your Note Taking with Bear, Shortcuts, and Alfred - Revolutionize How You Capture Ideas

[@ekinox3438]

I just discovered your channel and i'm stunned by the quality of the videos and their content. Keep up the good work ! I would love to see more videos about Productivity and Organization ;)

[@afadingthought]

Thanks! I do have some more videos coming up along those lines 👍

[@CaptainCreate]

This tutorial was amazing and really helped me grasp some new concepts. Thank you for taking the time to put it together and share it.

[@afadingthought]

Thanks for watching and glad it was helpful!

[@kellylam1768]

Thank you for this video! It inspired me to explore shortcut integration for bear and raycast. Took a bit of time and messing around, but I figured it out and my workflow is so much nicer now

[@afadingthought]

Glad it was of help! There's also another video more up-to-date which could offer more insights: kzbin.info/www/bejne/Znm8mKeaZ9Sdf8k

[@AlexanderMrly]

Damn good looking beard bro! Keep it up!

[@sapham171]

Thanks for sharing! This is exactly what I was looking for! Very informative !

[@afadingthought]

Thanks for watching and glad it was helpful!

[@sapham171]

@@afadingthought Could you share the shortcut when you copy and it sends to bear! thanks

[@afadingthought]

@@sapham171 Hi! I have this as a separate setup as an Alfred workflow, mentioned on 24:12. If you don't want to use Alfred for this and only use the Shortcut App just follow the instructions but on 04:11 select "Get Clipboard" instead of 'Ask for." That way it will capture your clipboard contents (whatever you copied). Sorry I haven't figured out exactly how to share shortcuts with variables for a personalized setup and there's so many customization options and specific note IDs that if I only share the shortcut I'm sure it won't run as expected, but hopefully this and the video can give you some direction.

[@BoscoSoler]

This is gold! Thanks, Robert 🤜🤛

[@afadingthought]

Thanks for watching! Glad to help!

[@afadingthought]

It's been a few months since the creation of this video and I found an even better way to capture text into my Inbox Note using the built-in shortcut actions of Bear. This is just for capturing in the background, but it doesn't have the limitation I mention at 21:00 AND it also works on iOS in the background. On Mac I continue to trigger this with Alfred and it just works perfectly. Everything else I mention in the video on using the x-callback-url method still applies and gives you many more options, but for capturing without opening the app this may be better. Sharing the shortcut with you guys! EDIT!!!! A new video with a totally updated shortcut and workflow is up: kzbin.info/www/bejne/Znm8mKeaZ9Sdf8k

[@loonloozook]

Would be great!

[@loonloozook]

By the way, sometimes using the shortcuts from this particular video the text won’t show up in the INBOX. Although the message appears that the text has been captured. I haven’t figured out the reason yet. I’ll try the shortcuts from your new video. Thanks a lot for your work! These shortcuts are an indispensable part of my set-up.

[@afadingthought]

@@loonloozook check out the updated version in the new video. Some bugs in the previous version (this video) have to do with the x-callback url scheme and url encoding, but I rebuilt the latest version using more of the shortcut actions that Bear itself provides. Should work better.

[@Cheremisincouk]

Thank you man! Precious knowledge. I like your approach on what you do.

[@afadingthought]

Thanks for watching! If it was useful I'm glad to be of help!

[@JackiePrime]

Epic. Subscribed.

[@RogerGregoryMcLeod]

Nice explanation 👍

[@rocklee_lr]

Great video, thank you. May I ask where you learned all these codes or commands in the Shortcuts app?

[@afadingthought]

Thanks for watching! For the most part I’ve learned with Google and a lot of experimentation. Before doing this in the shortcuts app I did it all inside Alfred, using JavaScript, and that one was truly a nightmare to figure out. I had to go on Alfred forums a few times for help - I guess I also learned a lot from that. The Shortcuts app is just much more simple and convenient.

[@lloydkeijzer]

Thanks for sharing

[@GeniusUnleashed]

Is there a way to have it add a Todo instead of new text inside the same note?

[@GeniusUnleashed]

I figured it out. In the first text box I deleted everything and replaced it with this: - [ ] Text (- space [ space ])

[@hedginghedgehog1181]

Thank you so much for this video! When you have time, could you also share how you created shortcuts for copying text to bear (with links)? I know they are more advanced, and I am excited to learn!

[@afadingthought]

Hi! Glad you found it useful! I am not sure if I'll be working on a detailed video of that shortcut soon but I think I finally found the way to share it, so I can give you a link and hopefully you can figure out what I'm doing there. Actually, what I do is get the link to to either website or email using Applescript (I also copy the selected text triggering cmd+C with applescript). It varies depending on the app. Since Bear also provides links to their notes you could even add that in case you want to cross-reference notes with links. This shortcut won't run on the phone, and it will probably ask you for permissions on your Mac: www.icloud.com/shortcuts/3c8ad57043bf4bcf841cce7ecb8358ee

[@hedginghedgehog1181]

​@@afadingthought Thank you so much for sharing!!! I will study the shortcut and keep adjusting. Everything I copy now shows that it was copied from App Shortcuts. Must be some setting I didn't adjust correctly. Again, thank you for your kindness!!!

[@afadingthought]

@@hedginghedgehog1181 no problem! I’d suggest to check that issue you could even just make a separate shortcut to test that first AppleScript block. It should throw back the name of whatever app window is in the front, and everything else depends on it. I must mention that I trigger it with Alfred.

[@hedginghedgehog1181]

@@afadingthought Thank you for pointing me to this direction! I will test it and let you know! Not a power user of AppleScript yet. :)

[@hedginghedgehog1181]

Thank you!!! It worked nicely once I changed the set up with Alfred!

[@riccardotosi578]

thanks! one problem I am facing is when I create the Alfred workflow the workflow opens the shortcut but I then have to enter the text in the shortcut pop up, it doesnt come in my inbox note directly from the Alfred prompt... any idea?

[@afadingthought]

It probably means you are not sending the correct input to the Shortcut with the Applescript in the Workflow, or you are sending an empty input. You can check this on the Shortcuts side yourself by setting it to "if there's no input" to "continue" and as the first action, showing an alert that tell you the actual Input... that should tell you what you are actually sending (or not) to the Shortcut from Alfred. I do have an updated version of the Shortcut and workflow so you may want to check that out if you haven't already, and it does a few more complex things: kzbin.info/www/bejne/Znm8mKeaZ9Sdf8k

[@jakewindram-ashby4309]

Could you please provide some more context around the Chrome Copy Shortcut? Great vid btw!

[@afadingthought]

Hi! I answered to another user with the actual shortcut, so you can download it and try it out by yourself. It will ask for some permissions when running it for the first time, and I trigger it with Alfred (as I explain in the video). Wasn’t working well for the other user, so I’m sorry if I can’t help with troubleshooting. It uses AppleScript to get the name of the front app and any other details to pass into Bear. This version of the shortcut captures the selected text into my inbox note inside Bear, but you could modify it to copy the result to your Clipboard instead. www.icloud.com/shortcuts/3c8ad57043bf4bcf841cce7ecb8358ee

[@leshall]

And.. with that business of the Bear window coming to the front, which you don't like... Couldn't you add a line or two to your Shortcut that closes the Bear window at some stage? Either after you have done the Bgnd text insert or before it?

[@afadingthought]

You can. I used to have a couple of lines of code for that, actually, but then it would often mess with my opened bear windows and stuff, like if I had a note I was working on and by accident was in the back it would close it without me expecting it. I guess I just found it easier to either close Bear myself or have it in a separate workspace.

[@leshall]

@@afadingthought Gotcha.

[@leshall]

I got it to work in Shortcuts - haven't integrated into Alfred yet. Either it's my old man brain or... But I found it a little hard to follow and had to keep rewinding and playing again as you were clicking stuff without an explanation why. If you have never used Shortcuts, like me, it's not obvious what is going on. But, as I said, I did get it work and I'm grateful for putting my toe into Shortcuts. What about Photos? It would be great if there was a shortcut that allowed me to select an image and then it got 'put' into a particular album, or albums, in Photos. Any tips for a DAM using what you have learned? Have you looked at Hazel? Cor blimey! (Fake Dick van Dyke cockney accent) there are so many apps etc. to do Mac automatization now. Merci beaucoup. Lez

[@afadingthought]

Thanks for the feedback! Sorry for going a bit too fast. This video could have easily been an hour long (or more) and I tried to compress a lot of information in a short time so it wouldn’t feel like dragging. I may have gone a bit too far, but I’m glad to you got the Shortcut to work! I haven’t done any shortcut for photos, I actually try to keep my photos app empty on iOS because it easily gets out of control, I just manage everything in Lightroom… but a quick look at the shortcut app shows me there’s a “Save to Photo Album” action so I guess what you said is doable. ... sorry what's a DAM?... I do have Hazel for automation of some folders, and I also have Keyboard Maestro, Bettertouchtools, plus Alfred and the native Shortcuts app. All of them have different uses and I'm still figuring out a lot of stuff myself but it's fun and all of this saves so much time.

[@leshall]

@@afadingthought Kudos to you for working it all out though, you obviously spent some time on that. It didn't look like the most user friendly app, but I guess when you look at what it's doing it's probably as user-friendly as it can be. DAM = Digital Asset Manager(ment?) Lightroom is a D.A.M. I used to use Lightroom, but now I use Photos and RAW Power as a Photos extension. I just have a problem with the subscription concept that seems to be getting more popular. One soon ends up with $10 here and $5 there and it all adds up :)