Clickable link to a reminder?

[john.catalano]

I understand that with Shortcuts.app it is not currently possible to grab the unique information required to generate a tappable link to a given Note in Notes.app or Reminder in Reminders.app. I dont want to have to manually copy anything from the Content Graph; running the script, everything should happen without further manual interaction.

How can this be done with Scriptable.app?

For context, I’m sending selected text in Notes.app to Reminders.app. The resulting reminder contains, in the notes section, the title of the originating note. I’d like to also have a hyperlink back to the originating note.

Likewise, I’d plan to have a link to that resulting reminder item appended to the originating note in Notes.app.

I don’t know or understand JavaScript; I can sometimes copy and modify other people’s apple scripts or simple shell scripts.

Thank you in advance for your help.

[sylumer]

If notes isn’t passing out a link when you share from it, then Scriptable would need to access the note directly to figure out something to allow it to build a link back to the note.

Searching for “Notes” on the Scriptable documentation site doesn’t yield anything useful for this.

However, let’s revisit Shortcuts as that seems to be something you are more familiar with.

The issue seems to be that Shortcuts is also unable to get a hyperlink for a note. But what we an do is find and open a note using Shortcuts.

For example we could build a shortcut like this:

• Search for Note Titled.

When this shortcut is passed a note title, assuming the title is unique, the shortcut will find just one match and open the note. i.e. Shortcuts can act as an intermediate for opening a note.

Shortcuts is something we can have a URL scheme trigger for.

Therefore if I have a note in Notes like this:

And I am using the shortcut described above, I can construct a URL that will launch Shortcuts, run my shortcut, and search for the title I pass to it:

shortcuts://run-shortcut?name=Search%20for%20Note%20Titled&input=Search%20for%20a%20Test%20Note

If that URL were embedded in the reminder in the notes section like this:

Now I’m not wholly convinced that URLs in reminders’ notes fields are currently actionable, but I know they are using GoodTask which, in effect, rides atop the Apple reminders infrastructure. I’ve just given it a try with both and it worked fine with GoodTask, but not with Reminders. i.e. your mileage may vary.

Anyway, I hope that gets you that final step you’re looking for.

[sktrekkie]

Just long press on the reminder notification and there will be an actionable link.

[john.catalano]

Wow. That does get me where I need to be. And, yes, I do use GoodTask (and Fantastical, BusyCal, etc. etc.) and the link to the note is tappable.

Cheers!

John

[simonbs]

@sylumer

Searching for “Notes” on the Scriptable documentation site doesn’t yield anything useful for this.

Unfortunately Apple doesn’t expose an API for accessing notes to third party developers. Now that Shortcuts has an integration with Notes, I’m crossing my fingers this will be opened up to third party developers in iOS 13 That would be really useful.

[sylumer]

@sktrekkie

Just long press on the reminder notification and there will be an actionable link.

I’ve just tried that on my iPad. The long press gave me a menu and displayed the link in the notes. When I tapped on that link, it took me to the reminder rather than opening the Shortcuts link.

Perhaps I’m pressing the wrong thing? Any ideas?

[Tony]

Not tried it on an iPad, but it definitely works on an iPhone…

The forum won’t let me upload the screen recording I just did, so a screenshot instead:

Tapping the blue link, for me, runs the Shortcut.

The down side of the Reminders method is that it seems to give you the option to run the Shortcut OR mark the Reminder complete, not both at the same time. The app Due allows the option to complete the reminder AND run the Shortcut via the link.

[sylumer]

Thanks. I got a very similar looking menu on my iPad … but not the same result. I’ll try and give it another spin later