Default tag for new Drafts in a workspace

[bookercodes]

For example, I have a workspace Journal.

It would be great if, when I press ⌘+N, a new Draft is created with the tag journal.

As a user, my instinct would be to configure this in the Manage Workspaces…. interface:

It would be an optional opt-in property.

Other (albeit more frictional) ways to do this at the moment:

1. (on macOS) Go to File > New in Workspace > Journal
2. Create an action New journal and use Assign tags
3. Use the New Draft with Template action and assign the tag journal to to the template Draft (in addition to the template tag)

[sylumer]

The thing you need to keep in mind are that tag filters for workspaces are not inclusive of all tags.

I have workspaces that include one tag and exclude another. My social media workspace includes a variety of platform and user IDs as tags - I’d never actually need or want to tag a draft with all of those.

You should be able to override the standard ⌘+N (but not the buttons), or apply your own alternative keyboard shortcut to craete a new draft.

If you really just wanted to create a draft based exactly on the existing tags defined in the tag filter, and your tag filter only uses inclusive tags, then you could get away with this action.

Drafts Directory: New Draft in Current Workspace

If you want to take things further and define your own templates for a particular workspace, then I would propose an alternative I’ve just whipped up. I’ll explain what I’ve done as there is a bit of prep work.

First of all I created a workspace for managing my workspace templates.

I have set a (nested) tag of workspace as the filter.

In the workspace I can then keep my template drafts for each of the workspaces. It can specify initial draft content and tags. The workspace it relates to is given by the workspace/... tag. in this case, the tag is workspace/blog, so it relates to my “Blog” workspace.

My blog workspace includes the “blog” tag, but excludes the “workspace/blog” tag - so the template won’t show up in my Blog workspace.

Note also that the template is not limited to the exact tags of the workspace. Above the template includes personal to indicate that typically most of my blog posts are also going to fall into my categorisation of “personal”.

On that basis, here’s an action that will look at the current workspace, determine the workspace/... tag to use, to find the template draft. It then duplicates the content and tags of the draft (minus the workspace/... tag), and loads it into the editor.

Drafts Directory: New Template Draft in Current Workspace

Adopting this approach menas you don’t have to deal with explicit tag omissions, or what tags to choose when the tags in the workspace filetr are OR’d. You simply set up the template the way you want it for each workspace.

Hopefully, that gives you some options that meet your needs that utilsie existing functionality.

[bookercodes]

Good point about workspaces having multiple tags.

In terms of the alternatives you suggest, these are really wonderful, thank you.

I “hard-coded” an action to create a new draft with a tag and template but your New Draft in Current Workspace action takes this a step further by making it dynamic.

I like the idea to override ⌘+N. I tried that before but it said the combination was reserved. Any ideas?

[bookercodes]

Although I admit my ideas around implementation are a bit naive, I think the feature request has merit.

When I think about workspaces, I think of modes - “I am in blogging mode”, “meeting notes mode”, etc.

In those modes, if you create a new draft, the intention is probably to assign at least one tag (and, as an aside, probably adopt a template as well)

The native experience with Drafts could be great but I also acknowledge this would take a great deal of thought to fit within Draft’s extensible philosophy.

Happy to note the idea in case a theme occurs or someone else wants to add to the conversation with their scenario and request in the future. This might be useful if Drafts ever consider the feature?

[sylumer]

@bookercodes

I like the idea to override ⌘+N. I tried that before but it said the combination was reserved. Any ideas?

I’m not sure. I did do it in Drafts previously (by accident), but I think that would have been back in 2019. It may be possible that it can’t be over ridden now in which case, apply an alternative keyboard shortcut.

[agiletortoise]

You are not wrong about the “modes” idea, but also don’t immediately try to make Drafts like other notes apps. One of the nice things about Drafts is you don’t have to have the overhead of “switching modes” - you don’t have to go find the right folder to create a new note. You don’t have to abandon the “mode” you are in to quickly create a new note, capture a quick idea, etc., that should belong in another “mode”. Just make a new draft with the right tag for the other mode, then go back to what you were doing (navigate to last draft). It’s a bit of a different way of thinking, but pretty productive.

[sylumer]

@bookercodes

I like the idea to override ⌘+N. I tried that before but it said the combination was reserved. Any ideas?

This was still drifting through my mind today, so I tried it out.

I was able to quickly change the keyboard shortcut using a feature of KeyCue.

Just in case it was a KeyCue only thing, I also repeated this change subsequently with the more tedious keyboard shortcut settings in system settings - so you don’t need a special app to do it.

After that, while the warning mesaage on the action still shows up on the action’s properties, Drafts does then assign it to the action (as can be seen in the menu entry for the action - below), and I can confirm, does run it on pressing ⌘+N.

Personally I would not choose to override the new draft keyboard shortcut, but if you really wanted to, then you could.

… and I’ll be able to sleep peacefully tonight now I’ve got that niggly question out of my head.

[BWT]

I went to do this exact same thing too and was disappointed to find out it doesn’t exist!

While I understand multiple tags, I do think makes sense for a lot of flows to maybe allow a certain template to be set for a workspace or have a script run at draft creation. I want a certain tag added by default if I’m in my work focus, and intuitively that would be done by setting it at the workspace level.

+10 for this as a feature

[agiletortoise]

I encourage you to look at the New Draft with Template tip. If you assign that to a keyboard shortcut, and setup templates, it can handle most of these type of needs, including more than just tag assignment.

[BWT]

Eh it’s still an extra button press or two away on iOS. While I do think it works, it adds an extra step to certain workflows. I think you’d give a lot of people more efficient workflows with this feature as suggested.

But thank you for the response and suggestion!

[agiletortoise]

I hear you for sure, don’t take this as a “you’re doing it wrong” type of comment, not meant that way at all…I will say that I use it by having that “new draft with template” action on a widget. Launches straight to picking the template for when I know a draft is going to be created for a certain purpose.

[BWT]

Hmmmm. I actually missed you can reassign the widget to actions.

I’m at least going to make a new draft action that sets the tag based on workspace context. Then probably use the template code in one form or another.

But I think that might be a little more difficult for non-scripting users.

As a side note, the one place you can’t remap the new draft action as far as I can see is the long press on the icon. Being able to do that would make this a full workaround!

[FlohGro]

Maybe a Shortcut could be a solution for you, too:

You could check for the name of the current focus mode and create a new draft with predefined tags based on the focus mode.

I created a small example that creates a draft with the tag „work“ if your current focus has the name „Work“ otherwise it creates a draft with the tag „private“.
After creating the draft it opens it in drafts

https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/f86a37c4035046c8a930344a24505671

[BWT]

Appreciate the effort! Scripting definetly the more efficient way on this one. And it is down to how this gets triggered.