Greg Morris

Shortcut: Interesting Links To Things

Wow, well this adventure into the possibility of using Things as a replacement for Todoist is proving fruitful. That is not to say I couldn’t do most of these things in other apps, but the automation seems much more approachable. It also helps that people like Federico at MacStories keep giving me inspiration for more Workflows.  This Workflow simplifies one shared with MacStories members, and allows me to quickly add webpages that I want to read later, or ones I want to write about to Things.

It takes Safari webpage links, finds the article title and webpage, prompts for a tag and due date, then puts all of that information into Things for you to look at later. The date can also be input in natural language as discussed in an older post.

2018 03 04 things article screens 1All of the information is then crammed into a URL which might look complicated but is in fact surprisingly easy. Due to the automation features packed into Things 3.4 the URL will open in the Things app and add in your desired todo item. Including article title, website information and of course the URL as a note, so you can pick up where you left off.

This simple Workflow is really easy to customise if you wish. I use one without a due date which can be deleted if you want to. You can also create a list in Things for all of these articles instead of adding a tag. Just change the long URL at the bottom to read &list= instead of &tags=.

There is a whole list of possibilities that you could build into the URL scheme if you want to take a look what Things supports head over to their support page. I will be sharing more Workflows as and when I build them so follow along.

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