I usually click insert date action when I enter drafts in the main Drafts window. I also use the quick capture (in Mac) a lot and it does not seem to support actions at this moment. Am I missing some settings to enable this?
Otherwise, I can only think of using text expansion software if I want to have a timestamp in quick capture.
Another option would be to trigger a shortcut to capture the content and create the draft.
It seems I can’t turn off macOS built-in text replacement (General Settings-Keyboard-Text) in Drafts and so now, I have Alfred’s Snippets conflicting with macOS text replacement. Normally I blacklist Drafts in Alfred, so only macOS text replacement is working but if I need the time date in Alfred, I have to turn off macOS instead. Sigh…
As noted above, you could build your own capture that saves to Drafts with a prefix of the date/time in whatever format you desire.
https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/40dcacb637f646a8a21496d030a119ec
If you needed to build it out to let you select a draft to append to or tag things specifically, you could.
If you desperately need the functionality that the existing capture window offers and as such need to get the date/time into it in an automated fashion, the it is possible.
If you are unable to use Alfred because you are blocking Drafts for typical use, then you could consider alternative tools. Now, I am assuming that you don’t have TextExpander, aText, Typinator, etc., but if you have Keyboard Maestro or Better Touch Tool for example, both of these support keyword triggers tied to specific apps. And if you are a Mac user who likes customising and automating stuff on your Mac, these are a couple of tools I would jeartily recommend.
I did test writing a snippet workflow in Alfred, but the snippet feature level block list applies to those explicit workflow triggers too, so there’s no way to work around that one without working around it for all snippets through a workflow; which is not an efficient way to do things unless you are just at the stage where you only utilise a handful fo snippets.
Failing the availability of other automation tools capable of utilising snippet/typed triggers, the next option would be to switch the trigger. For example, you could switch to a key combination.
Here’s an example of how you could achieve this in Shortcuts once again.
https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/dda796c356ce4c3099cf6dda368dd66b
Press the key combination and the text appears like this, but again you can tailor it from the default output format.
You could acheieve the same thing with other tools, but the usual suspects would also allow you to do it with a snippet trigger, so I didn’t think there was any mileage in demonstrating how you could do that.
When you capture the created draft has a timestamp you can use later. Is there a reason you always want to add it to the text?
See this thread about the merging.
The alternative to including the stamped text is a custom merge.
You gave me the idea of using KM for this! Brilliant. I am going to build a macro specifically for Drafts to add the timestamp. While your Shortcut example look easy, I think it’s better for me to have this automation in KM, mainly for having everything in one place. Thank you.
Mainly for when I merge multiple meeting notes about the same customer, it would be useful for my own reading to have the timestamp, so I know the date/time when the discussion happened.
Mainly, the reason is for legibility when reviewing the many disparate drafts when clearing the Inbox. I have a habit of needing to look at the date when a discussion took place and so, the timestamp I used is in this format: Sat, 9 Apr 2022, 5:28 PM
I guess, I could edit the Merge action to add the dates when merging. Another idea to explore. Thanks for tipping me to the right direction/idea.
