Last week I wrote about Obsidian Quick Capture from a desktop perspective. Now let’s talk about mobile quick capture!
If you need a refresher, Quick Capture refers to the ability to quickly add a note to your Obsidian Vault.
Quick Capture is an important tool, because most of us aren’t working in Obsidian all the time. If you have an idea while checking your email, while watching a video, while making supper, you’re going to want to capture it somewhere, or you will forget it. That’s where Quick Capture comes in.
Mobile Quick Capture can be extra helpful, because your phone is with you “on the go”. You probably spend more time away from your computer than you do working on it, and if you have an idea while away from your computer, you’ll need a trustworthy place to put it.
That’s where Mobile Quick Capture comes in.
Table of Contents
- Why Not Use Obsidian Mobile?
- Let’s Talk Platforms
- Mobile Quick Capture on Android
- Mobile Quick Capture on iOS
- What if Obsidian Opens Quickly on My Phone?
- Conclusion
Why Not Use Obsidian Mobile?
In a perfect world, you could use the Obsidian Mobile app for quick capture all by itself. In theory that works, but in practice it’s not so simple.
As we’ve discussed before, Obsidian is often slow on mobile. Particularly the start up times. I’ve heard it’s not so bad on new phones, or with small vaults. But I have a big vault and a phone that is a few years old, so it often takes Obsidian 5-15 seconds to load.
That’s not the worst thing in the world—I can work around it. But it is a dealbreaker for Mobile Quick Capture. Because waiting 5-15 seconds to capture an idea is not quick.
So if you’re like me, and Obsidian takes a bit to start up on mobile, never fear. We can still Quick Capture on mobile, we just have to be a bit more creative about it.
Will Obsidian Solve This?
The Obsidian team is aware of this issue, and even now they’re working on improving it. According to their Roadmap they are, at the time of writing, working on “Mobile startup time”. Time will tell how much they are able to improve it, but if mobile startup time is improved, then that might fix our issues right there.
Additionally, the Roadmap also says that they are planning on working on “Mobile quick capture”. As soon as either of these features come out, I will update this article.
Let’s Talk Platforms
As you are likely aware, there are two big mobile Operating Systems, iOS and Android. Each one has specific problems and solutions when it comes to Quick Capture, so we’ll discuss each one. Feel free to skip to iOS or read on for Android.
Mobile Quick Capture on Android
Quick Capture for Android is both easier and harder than iOS. It’s easier because Android has a non-sandboxed file system, so you can use any app that accesses the file system. But it’s harder because, in my experience, there are fewer quality apps available for text editing on Android.
I personally have tried many options on Android, and there are only a couple that I really like. So let’s talk about them.
Goals for Android
There are plenty of good Markdown Android apps out there. But unfortunately, few of them have good integrations with Obsidian.
What does a good integration look like? Ideally we should be able to create files in our Quick Capture app, and have them automatically sync with Obsidian. We don’t want to have to manually transfer our quick capture notes, because that would add friction and make us less likely to record our ideas.
Assuming you already have a solution for syncing Obsidian with your other devices, that means we want an app that can simply place your Quick Capture notes into a folder in your Obsidian vault. Sounds simple enough, right?
Unfortunately that rules out a lot of the higher quality apps out there: iA Writer and Simplenote are nice apps, but they can’t be configured to automatically capture to Obsidian, so they are out. What does that leave us with?
Fleeting Notes
The simplest solution for Android is Fleeting Notes. This is an app that was developed specifically to fix the Quick Capture problem in Obsidian.
How does it do that? First of all, it’s fast. It starts up instantly, even on an old phone, and you can create and edit notes much more quickly than you can with Obsidian itself.
Other than that, it’s pretty barebones. It has several different sync options (but you can just use the filesystem, like I do), basic support for templates and properties, and a web app version, in case you want to quick capture from a computer.
There are a couple of strange things about it though: the app was designed to work best with Obsidian Sync. The local file sync works, but it only seems to work one way: Fleeting Notes can create notes and add them to your Obsidian Vault, but it doesn’t see your pre-existing notes, which seems odd to me. For quick capture it doesn’t really matter, but it’s something to be aware of.
It also has a web app? And extra premium sync features? This seems odd to me, but it could be useful for some people.
My biggest concern with Fleeting Notes comes down to privacy: it has a generic Privacy Policy and, if you use the web app, your notes are stored in plain text. For that reason I wouldn’t recommend the sync service or the web app, but the app with local file sync is a decent solution for Android Quick Capture.
Pros:
- Quick startup
- Supports links and default file structure
- Supports one-way file sync
Cons:
- Nebulous privacy
- Not much configurability
Zettel Notes
Zettel Notes checks a lot of boxes. If you need a more flexible solution for Quick Capture, and an open-source one at that, check out Zettel Notes.
Zettel Notes is impressively flexible and versatile. It supports Markdown, synchronization through many different platforms, all forms of media including audio and video, keyboard shortcuts, properties, templates, and much more.
If you want an app that rivals even Obsidian in features, then Zettel Notes may be for you.
With a little bit of setup, it also makes a great quick capture app. All you have to do is install it, configure it to your Obsidian folder, and you’re off to the races!
I did notice a few oddities in setting it up: it’s not set up perfectly for Obsidian, so you may have to fine tune it a bit to get it working like you want. See the documentation for details.
Zettel Notes is not as easy to set up as Fleeting Notes, but it is the swiss army knife of note taking on Android. If you’re serious about Quick Capture, I recommend giving it a try.
Pros:
- Quick startup
- Highly configurable
- Can do almost anything you could want
- Good privacy policy
Cons:
- Harder to setup initially
- More of a learning curve
Conclusion on Android Quick Capture
The two apps above are the best solutions I’ve found on Android, and I’ve used each of them extensively. My one complaint is that they aren’t very visually polished. Obsidian is more fun to use, even though it’s slow. So ultimately, I hope that Obsidian is able to speed the app up and make it usable for quick capture on Android. Until then, I will be using Zettel Notes.
Mobile Quick Capture on iOS
iPhone Quick Capture is a completely different story, because iOS has different strengths and weaknesses. Apps have to be built specifically to access files outside of their own folder, so if you want to access and create Obsidian files outside of Obsidian, you have to choose your app carefully.
That said, iOS has one of my favorite Quick Capture apps, which is called Drafts. Let’s talk about that first.
Drafts for iOS
Drafts is the best Quick Capture app I’ve ever used. It is lightning fast, powerful, flexible, and has a robust free plan. For quickly capturing an idea before it fades from your memory, you can’t beat Drafts.
The one downside, and this is true for all iOS apps, is you have to find a way to transfer your notes to Obsidian. Fortunately Drafts recently introduced a feature that allows you to automatically transfer files to Obsidian, a feature called Bookmarks.
It takes a few steps to set up, but it isn’t difficult. For all the details, see this article on the Sweet Setup.
This solution requires a tiny bit more work than I would prefer, but once it’s set up, you should be good to go. This is hands down the best quick capture solution I’ve found for iOS, once you get it set up.
Pros:
- Fastest app I’ve seen
- Good free plan
- Actions that allow you to automate the transfer of your notes
- Decent privacy
Cons:
- Takes a few steps to set up
Shortcuts for iOS
The other good option I’ve seen on iOS is to use Shortcuts.
Shortcuts are automations that are built into iOS, and they allow you to automate the creation of notes in Obsidian to a certain extent.
The good thing about Shortcuts is that you can capture ideas instantly. The downside is… it still requires launching Obsidian. So you still end up waiting for the app to fire up, you just get to write your idea before the app launches, instead of after.
Note: there may be a way to get around this limitation if you use both iCloud and ToolBox Pro. I haven’t tried it, but it seems interesting. See this article for details.
The Shortcuts solutions are nice if you’re familiar with Shortcuts and able to set up and debug these automations. They have a lot of flexibility, and you can even integrate them with Obsidian Plugins if you want. If that sounds interesting, see Five Useful Apple Shortcuts for Obsidian for more details.
Conclusion on iOS
Like Android, iOS takes some work to develop a really good system for Mobile Quick Capture. It’s worth spending some time on, but there’s no perfect out-of-the-box solution that I’ve found. That said, both Drafts and Shortcuts can be wonderful systems once they are set up.
What if Obsidian is fast on your phone? Good question, let’s talk about that next.
What if Obsidian Opens Quickly on My Phone?
If you have a quick startup time on your phone, then the world is your oyster. The whole realm of Obsidian plugins is open to you!
If you have a startup time of less than 1 second, then forget about a separate quick capture app: just use Obsidian, and fine tune it with plugins.
The QuickAdd plugin is great for Quick Capture, as I wrote in my article on Quick Capture for Desktop. This would be my first choice.
For even quicker capture, take a look at the Lumberjack plugin. This plugin adds new Obsidian URIs specifically for quick capture, which you can then automate with any number of apps.
The apps we discussed above can also be helpful, they all have features that could be useful for certain use-cases. But if you don’t have any trouble with Obsidian performance on your phone, then why not just use Obsidian?
Conclusion
Mobile Quick Capture in Obsidian is a bit complicated at the moment, and hopefully the Obsidian team will make it easier in the near future. Until then, hopefully I’ve given you some ideas how you can implement this for yourself.
Do you have a solution for your phone that I missed? Let me know! These are the best options I’ve found, but I would be tickled to find something better.
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