Automating Drafts with Keysmith app

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I notice that Keysmith hasn’t been mentioned in the community, so I wanted to give it a plug. Note: I’m not connected with the developer; I’m just a Drafts user who likes easy ways to make things easy.

Keysmith creates macros by recording what the user is doing, including clicks on web apps and Drafts actions if they are visible in the sidebar. The macros can be assigned hotkeys, or called up by URL (which I use through Alfred). Example use case: I made a macro that creates a new Draft note from the pasteboard, applies the Drafts action that sends it to my recipes folder and trashes the Drafts note, then closes Drafts.

Yes, there are other ways of doing this, but in my experience increases in sophistication are paid for in difficulty of use (looking at you, Keyboard Maestro). At the moment, my automation needs are pretty simple, and Keysmith expands what I can do with Drafts, outside of Drafts. The demo version allows creation of 5 macros, so I encourage people to check it out.

3 Likes
2

Can you describe a few examples?

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Sure thing (sorry for the delay).

Like many people, I use drafts as a text hub and then send items on to where they belong. So the workflow is like this:

Copy the item (recipe, movie to watch, book to read), mostly from web content.

Invoke the appropriate Keysmith macro. This can be done by an assigned hotkey or by Keysmith’s own built in launcher, but I use Alfred out of long habit.

The macro creates a new draft from the copied text and then invokes the appropriate Drafts action, and returns focus to wherever I was before. It only takes a second, so I stay on task–and my Inbox stays clear-ish without me having to do any clicking.

4

Is this different from the “capture clipboard” option in Drafts preferences?

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The automation captures clipboard AND sends the draft to its final location (for me, DevonThink, but could be anywhere), without shifting my focus.