In this post, you’ll learn a simple way to save article links from any Apple device into Obsidian using the Drafts Share Extension.

This allows you to create to create an effective “read it later” workflow, so that when you sit down to read, or work on your own content, all your saved links are in one place waiting for you.

Obsidian is an incredible tool for note taking and personal knowledge management, however saving links and bookmarks from the web on the go is not its strong suit.

After trying several different methods, what I’m about to share has been the best option for me.

It is much faster than copy / paste, and it also creates just enough friction that I can take a pause and determine if something is really valuable enough to save in my PKM.

For more of a high-level overview on why I use Drafts, check out this article.

Unfortunately, in several communities I’m part of, Linking Your Thinking for example, a lot of people struggle getting a workflow like this working.

I thought it would be valuable to break it down step by step.

Note: This tutorial requires upgrading to Drafts Pro in order to take advantage of custom action steps.

Alright, let’s do this!

Let’s Build the Workflow Step-by-Step

1. Add a “Saved Links” header to the bottom of your daily note template. This is where your saved links will be appended.

2. Open Drafts Pro and click “Actions”

3. Click “Manage Actions” from the sub-menu

4. Click on one of your action groups (Basic is fine to start).

5. Click the “plus” to add a new action.

6. Click “Add Action”

7. Name your action something that will be easy for you to remember what it’s for.

8. “Save Link to Obsidian”, for instance.

9. Add a description, so you’ll remember what it does. “This will append your link to your daily note in obsidian”

10. Select the dropdown for “Add Steps”

11. Select the “File” option from the menu.

12. Click the “+” to confirm your selection.

**13. I’ve saved the required snippet to a simple text note for easy copy and paste.

[[date|%Y-%m-%d]].md

14. First, you’ll want to grab the file name snippet, and copy to your clipboard. Your file name needs to match exactly to the naming convention of your daily note so it appends correctly instead of creating a new note.

15. Clear out the default value of the File Name.

**16. Press [[cmd]] + [[v]] to paste the new snippet. **

17. Do the same thing for the “Template” Section:

[[date|%Y-%m-%d]]
[[tags]]

[[draft]]

---

18. remove the default value in the “Template” box with the provided snippet.

19. Select “Append” for the Write Type

20. Select “Bookmark” for the Destination

21. Click into the input for Bookmark.

22. Type “Link to Daily Note” and hit [[enter]]”

23. Close out the action setup windows and get back to your main Drafts view where you have saved a link.

24. Choose a link you’d like to send into Obsidian.

25. Click on your new Action you created, I called mine “Save Link to Obsidian”.

26. The first time you run this, it is going to ask you to verify your bookmark permissions, by linking a folder to the bookmark that you created in previous steps. Click “OK”.

**27. Navigate to your Obsidian Vault, and find your Daily Notes Folder. **

28. Click “Select Folder”.

29. That’s it! Navigate back to Obsidian to confirm success.

30. You should see something that looks like this appended to your daily note.

And that’s it! Make sure you’ve added the Drafts share extension to iOS share menu, and you’ll be able to quickly save links.

I then process these into Obsidian once a day using the Drafts action that I’ve shared with you here today, after asking myself 5 key questions about what I’m saving.

P.S. This tutorial was Made with Scribe. If you often find yourself making web-driven “how to” content, this new tool allows you to document workflows & processes, and generate easy to understand step-by-step guides in minutes.

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