Show HN: macOS Reminder Sync for Obsidian Tasks (turquoisehexagon.co.uk)
I started using Obsidian and the brilliant Obsidian Tasks plugin to manage Tasks in my notes however it didn't quite work for me as I would lose track of Tasks when away from my laptop, and there are no reminders for Tasks so it's not easy to stay on top of things.
I wrote my first macOS App to solve the problem; Reminder Sync for Obsidian. It periodically scans your Obsidian Vault for Tasks and creates Reminders for them in Reminders.app! Once your Tasks are created as Reminders they are synced through iCloud so they are also visible on iOS; this solves the main problem I had with Obsidian Tasks, allowing me to keep on top of Tasks with system Reminders and Widgets on macOS and iOS.
Other features apart from the core functionality described above are:
- Creating a Reminder adds a Task to an Inbox note in your Obsidian Vault, allowing you to create Obsidian Tasks from iOS.
- Deleting/Completing a Task in Reminders app completes/deletes the Task in your Vault
The core functionality is free, and I believe the free version should be sufficient for most users. Paid features include increased automatic sync frequency, ability to delete tasks from Reminders.app and ability to generate a description for the Reminder.
The app is available on the App Store: https://apple.co/3TH1e5s
You can view a demo video at the homepage: https://turquoisehexagon.co.uk/remindersync/
I would appreciate any feedback as it's my first solo App release!
110 comments
[ 2.1 ms ] story [ 154 ms ] threadI use it to sync my reminders/contacts/calendars across Thunderbird/Linux and iOS.
I can edit/update/delete items programmatically with ease without any Apple secret sauce.
I wish this were more common, but instead it’s more typical to see things like the vendor agnostic Windows Mail being abandoned for “new” Outlook which is much pushier about using MS services.
Makes it really hard to forget those tasks.
With TickTick you're storing / sharing your data with a commercial company...
Apple built developers an entire framework dedicated to this, which works on both iOS and macOS. https://developer.apple.com/documentation/eventkit
But... I can't help but feel it will become the latest application to either pivot to something unpalatable (probably after being acquired) or become abandonware, leaving me to move to Yet Another Tool. And so it prevents me from really investing in any of it - I just use a no-frills text editor.
But at least they should give some guarantee to Open Source it if there were no significant update in a while, similar to how Qt and KDE have their agreement. Or at least they should make the source available, so people can contribute or move away easier in case of problems.
And the plugins are all OSS, on GitHub.
What do you imagine is more open with less lock-in?
It's open source, so they can. But people who want forward-compatibility should probably think about what their raw markdown files look like, and how useful they'd be in another program.
Personally I do avoid add-ons that create special syntax in the md files so that if Obsidian ever goes shitty I’ll have an easier time migrating to whatever alternative.
If it ever comes to needing an Obsidian replacement I'd hope it can aim for compatibility with the plug-in ecosystem, at least initially. No idea how difficult a target that would be. Either way, I certainly worry about my data in Obsidian less than I worry about Evernote, OneNote, or Apple Notes, even with a couple of non-standard markdown additions.
Since it's not VC backed I'm hopeful about Obsidian building a long-term sustainable business without having to turn shitty, but who knows. I should sign up for Sync and give them some money.
The metadata is YAML frontmatter. Works with any frontmatter aware tools, which includes, for example, most static site generators.
It's all just markdown, the plugins layer on top of Markdown.
Your site basically works if you shove it in GitHub pages. With a touch of config matching, you can open an Obsidian "vault" in the VSCode plugin called Foam (like Roam but for a local folder structure of Markdown files).
Most add ons, like, say, Excalidraw for charting, are themselves tools with plugins in GitHub Pages, Hugo, MkDocs, etc., so are portable for static site gen (SSG).
The only thing it seems to be "missing" is the CRDT style multiplayer live editing of tools like Notion or Craft.
And if you build on plugins, this sometimes happens even now here and there. Plugins becoming unusable because of an update is still not uncommon. Their developing stopping for whatever reason is also a bit of a problem.
I’ve known some folks who I believe really wanted to grow a company but when faced with an offer to buy it they didn’t feel they could survive a legal challenge arguing that they should sell.
People’s perception regarding the CEO is telling the truth or not is largely irrelevant at that point.
If the offer is big enough their hands are often tied due to their obligation to the rest of the owners.
[1] https://stephango.com/vcware
I subscribed on the Plus plan for 8 years at $35 / year. Now the personal plan is $130 / year. I used it maybe once a week so for me that would be $2 every time I launch it. It just isn't worth it.
https://x.com/fedesimio
You'll see that they are working on many improvements, some of them are already in the app.
There is already a growing ecosystem of tools that are Obsidian-like, and if Obsidian ever went down an unpalatable path, those tools are ready and waiting.
If a no frills editor works for you, great. But at the same time, I don’t think a future problem with Obsidian is a good reason to avoid it. In a worst case, that no frills editor will open your vault just fine. But I’d personally switch to something like Logseq, which is also coming along really nicely.
In the meantime, the value that Obsidian brings to my daily life is immense. And that’s worth the risk of eventually needing to find something new, especially when I know that the underlying data is completely portable.
can you name a few? i have currently installed and enabled 65 plugins. Granted, that is mostly because the obsidian team does not know how to build a good product, leading me to use plugins. but even then, the functionality is not that bad (templater, book search, dataview, loom, custom file explorer/command palette etc)
I'm currently using 1 community plugin and have only enabled a handful of the core plugins.
I personally wish they would stop adding features to Obsidian. It feels complete to me.
and core features should be in core (dataview for example). what is most shocking though is that sync and publish are horrendous implementation of said features. i would kind of get it for other stuff but together they are 20 bucks plus tax per month. just now sync has 'merged' a note on my iphone (no changes on iphone though) and completely scrambled the note. same with another 3 notes. if i did not check the note by chance now, i would have missed it.
the entire UI around a sync feature is bad.
Roam Research is also conceptually similar but I’ve spent less time digging into the tooling.
I’ve also been keeping an eye on Zettlr and Joplin, but these are not as flexible and their usefulness would depend on how you’re using Obsidian.
I misplaced the link to the repo right, but there was a “universal markdown notes migrator” project I found on GH back when I was evaluating Obsidian that looked promising and the goal was to facilitate movement between tools.
- [0]https://github.com/logseq/awesome-logseq
That very much depends on the definition of "like". Most are very different in their concepts and abilities or even foundation. They are mostly similar, if you compare it to cloud-tools, or old commercial tools.
With that said, there are a few key tools that are extremely similar conceptually, e.g. Logseq/Roam. Logseq in particular feels like “Opinionated Obsidian”. And this is where most of the tooling growth has been occurring through plugins.
That's actually integral to the notetaking/productivity app market. Either the app soon dies out or you get bored with it and you move on to the next one.
Just like with self-help products. Targets of the self-help market are never intended to just read one or two books and get on with their lives. They're vulnerable to seemingly unending consumption of one self-help product after another. They're endlessly sold on regurgitated feel-good crap that keeps them coming back for more.
These productivity tools, like self-help books, become the ends in themselves, rather than the means.
I used to do the same thing with productivity & learning apps and systems. Kept procrastinating looking for that One Good Tool. I had this misconception that if I didn't have that one perfect notetaking tool or productivity app, then I'd be held back.
I ultimately realized that what was really holding me back was myself.
I eliminated my dependency on The One Perfect Tool, I replaced that dependency with more practical action, lightly supported by simple pen & paper and plain text files, and now I'm more productive and more learned than ever.
That said, I’ve had many, many false starts with Obsidian, and I don’t think this is enough to tilt my workflows towards it again. The Apple Notes importer does not work with images or drawings, which kind of makes the thought of transitioning kind of moot.
Also, I can’t be trusted to not fiddle around as soon as I open my vault. Notes is much less customisable, but this is a wind for consistency and ‘stability’ when I open it up to actually take notes.
I guess I'm asking how fragile this is in practice.
- Deleting a Reminder that has been synced to Obisidian deletes the Task from Obsidian (if enabled in the settings menu)
- Completing a synced task in Obsidian will complete the Reminder (on the next sync)
- Completing a synced Reminder will complete the Task in Obsidian (immediately if the app is running)
- Creating a Reminder in the synced list creates a task in a note called "Reminder Sync Inbox.md"
- Editing a Task in Obsidian and syncing deletes the previously associated Reminder and creates a new one (effectively updating the text in Reminders.app)
The only known limitation (so far) is:
- Editing a synced Reminder description in Reminders.app does not update the text of the Task in Obsidian: This is hard to solve as the original Task may contain embedded links (which are stripped to just the link text for the Reminder description). Syncing those edits back to Markdown is a difficult problem that I haven't bothered focused on yet as I feel it may not be solvable.
In case of a conflict, the state in Obsidian always wins :)
I still feel Logseq is still a better outliner (although I don't use it), Obsidian is better at handling the other use cases.
I used reminders a lot earlier, but I have stopped using them these days. I continue to use Calendars and Notes. Between the two, the need for reminders has gone from my workflow. If I need reminding and have a date/time, it is calendared. If I need a Checklist (Shopping), it is in a Note or part of a Note (e.g., Shared Shopping List with your partner).
Is there a good 'starter guide' that I can use to get up to speed so I can start using Obsidian to track my notes, etc.? I'm very used to editing individual .md files for this kind of thing, but manually, and I get the impression Obsidian offers a bunch of benefits.
You don't need to use every Obsidian feature under the sun to become a productivity machine, nor have it all perfectly organised, linked and categorised in your "second brain". Take notes, label them well, and use the global search when you need something. Try a new plugin from time to time.
Using Obsidian "just" as a markdown editor is a perfectly valid use. I used VSCode with some Markdown plugins for years. I tried Typora, Coda, etc but they felt too limited and sluggish. I just wanted code-like markdown editing with a bit of fanciness, and Obsidian does just that.
I have a template for journalling, and a simplistic structure for where to place files in my knowledgebase. It's not perfect, and doesn't work for everyone, but it works for me.
If you do want an example of some of my structure (I share some of the resource/knowledge publicly), see here: https://publish.obsidian.md/thecapegreek
The only drawback I can say really is that I need to better separate public and private resources, as I'm always afraid I'll accidentally publish some private notes that live among the other files you might see in the link.
I also have a course: https://developassion.gumroad.com/l/obsidian-starter-course
And a starting point with a preconfigured vault and a user guide: https://developassion.gumroad.com/l/obsidian-starter-kit
A minor bug I noticed, you don't have media controls on the demo video on your website. I had to right-click and select play, clicking the video didn't start it either.
However important recomemndation though: I selected "enable syncing" in the onboard process and your app proceeded to sync every single task from my entire vault. I am watching the number climb into the hundreds. There should be some kind of warning that this will happen, and/or some way to filter which tasks sync (ie: tags, or tasks in a specific note).
https://supernotes.app/faq/
Shame...
It's unclear to me what happens if I run this on multiple machines. I have a few different machines that I use throughout the day but none are on "24/7" so I'd love to install this everywhere so it's always syncing. I'd love for that to be possible but I think either way it might be useful to document whether I can/shouldn't do that :)
I've build two apps on top of it: 1. macOS habits tracker https://apps.apple.com/us/app/alto-computer/id6478018751?mt=... 2. small web app to publish my daily habits online https://public.me/anton/daily
> "Turquoise Hexagon Cybernetics"
Nice homage to Boards of Canada!
Side note: it looks like the support email (remindersyncturquoisehexagon.co.uk) is malformed? Gmail is refusing to send emails to it.
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/exporter/id1099120373?mt=12
Or use the official Importer:
https://help.obsidian.md/import/apple-notes
Btw, Shortcuts can slam things into your Obsidian vault because it's just text files. That can be as fast or faster than Notes. You might need a shortcuts helper like Toolbox Pro that can remember a path to your vault and write to it from your shortcuts:
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/toolbox-pro-for-shortcuts/id14...
Version 1.1.0 just shipped that allows you to specify a Global Filter; only Tasks containing the filter will be synced if that's what you're after? Or would you like to exclude notes from being included based on properties at the beginning of the document?
Tried it out just now as a free user and it synced thousands of completed reminders as `- [x] ...` for each. It's hard to make the jump to pay for this when I cannot test it out fully.
I designed the App to be running all the time on my MacBook as that is where I use Obsidian; during my usage I have observed syncing working with my machine plugged in and display closed. This should be possible to test yourself with the free 6 hour sync interval.
For the issue you mentioned, by any chance did you select an existing list or create a new empty list? If selecting an existing reminder list completed Reminders will be synced to the inbox. It was an untested flow, but I think it’s correct as the program ensures the list state is synced to the vault state. I believe the setup wizard recommends creating a new list, I will add a note that completed reminders will be added to your vault if you select an existing list.