Obsidian QuickAdd: Automate the Boring Stuff

It makes your life easier

QuickAdd is one of the most downloaded plugins for Obsidian. It’s also one of my favorites. Let’s see why, and how to use it.

What is QuickAdd

QuickAdd is a plugin used to quickly add new pages and new content into your Obsidian vault. It may not sound like much, but once you start using it, you can’t get enough of it.

Some examples of things you can do with QuickAdd are adding notes into your vault in specific folders using a shortcut, fill in in YAML front matter using prompts, capturing text in notes or in kanban boards under specific sections, fetching data from an external API in your vault, etc…

QuickAdd works using four “choices”. A choice is something used to define the actions to do with QuickAdd.

I’ll explain each of these choices. If you want to understand better, I advise you to download and enable QuickAdd in your vault, so that you can see all the things I’ll explain by yourself.

Template

The template choice allows you to quickly create new notes using templates.

You can specify things such as the template to use, the format of the file name, the folder where the note should be created, etc…

How do I use it? As a trader, I need to keep track of my trades to review them and understand them, to improve. The template choice allows me to quickly create new trades whose names are like “Trade1”, “Trade2”, etc… in a specific folder, and to quickly fill in the YAML front matter with prompts.

To create those prompts, QuickAdd uses a system of variables. It looks in your template for specific variables, and if they were not filled in before, it asks you to fill them.

Here is how you can create a variable in a template:

{{VALUE:price}}

When you will create your new note with QuickAdd, it will display a prompt where you can enter a value that will replace the associated variable.

Here is an example:

---
aliases: 
tags: trading-journal

entry-date: {{VDATE:entryDate, YYYY-MM-DD HH:mm:ss}}
exit-date: {{VDATE:exitDate, YYYY-MM-DD HH:mm:ss}}
symbol: {{VALUE:symbol}}
entry-price: {{VALUE:entryPrice}}
exit-price: {{VALUE:exitPrice}}
side: {{VALUE:side}}
lot-size: {{VALUE:size}}
risk-reward: {{VALUE:riskReward}}
profit: {{VALUE:profit}}
---

When I will create a new note using QuickAdd and this template, QuickAdd will create a prompt for each value.

Note: there are specific variable formats, such as VDATE that allow you to enter a date and format it properly. You need the Natural Language Dates plugin enabled to do it.

You can use this concept of variables in templates as well as in the QuickAdd fields where it asks you to enter a “format”. For example, in the picture below, I use {{VALUE:File Name}} instead of using a real file name, so that QuickAdd will display a prompt asking me for the file name when I create a new file using this template.

That’s all about the template choice. You can explore the other fields by yourself, some of them are really interesting.

Capture

The capture choice allows you to capture text into notes.

You can capture using a specific format, allowing you to create QuickAdd prompts asking you for things, or you can also capture tasks if you use the Obsidian Tasks plugin.

How do I use it? Sometimes, when writing into my Obsidian vault, Medium stories ideas come through my mind. To don’t lose them, I capture them using QuickAdd and store them in a Medium note. I specified a format so that I also capture the actual date and time in addition to the text.

You can specify a section where the capture should be added. For example, I chose to add my Medium ideas below the “## Ideas” section in my vault.

Here is an example of the capture format I use to store my ideas:

- {{DATE:YYYY-MM-DD HH:mm}} - {{VALUE: Idea}}

{{DATE:FORMAT}} is converted into the actual date when I capture an idea. And using {{VALUE: Idea}} , it displays a nice prompt.

When capturing tasks, the format can be quite different. For example:

{{VALUE: Task Name}} {{VALUE:⏫,🔼, ,🔽}} {{VDATE: Due Date, 📅 YYYY-MM-DD}}

Using {{VALUE: A,B,C,D,E,F,...}} you can display a dropdown instead of a prompt, but the value is not stored in a variable.

Macro

The macro choice is the most powerful choice. It allows you to do very complex things.

You can combine several actions, add Obsidian commands or editor commands between them, run your own scripts, etc…

How do I use it? When I finish a book, I have a lot of things related to it to do. First, I have to create many tasks such as “review the book”, “change the book’s status on Goodreads”, etc… Then, I have to add an event to my Obsidian calendar to plan the date on which I plan to publish the book review on Medium. To automatize these things, I use a QuickAdd macro.

This macro is composed of 4 capture choices.

You can also do more complex things using JS scripts. For example, I use a QuickAdd macro to sync my vault with my Goodreads account, to fetch all the books logged on Goodreads in a folder in my vault. I’ve done this using 2 JS scripts, 2 Obsidian commands, and some delay commands.

I won’t talk more about this as I guess a lot of people reading this story don’t know JS, but for these interested, you can find the doc here.

Multi

The last choice is “multi”.

It just allows you to create folders to group your choices as you want. Check the picture below for an example.

Shortcuts

For every single choice, you can add it to your Obsidian shortcuts list. It allows you to bind a shortcut to it so that you can be even quicker!

To do this, you can just click on the lightning icon on the right of a choice, and then you can bind it as you would do for any Obsidian shortcut.

Final Note

There’s nothing much to say about QuickAdd. It’s a plugin that is hard to understand, I hope I would have made it easier.

For more details, or if there are things you have not understood, feel free to leave a comment or check the QuickAdd documentation.

Find all my Obsidian-related stuff here: Use Obsidian like a Pro

To explore more of my self-improvement stories, click here! You can also access all my content by checking this page.

If you liked the story, don’t forget to clap, comment, and maybe follow me if you want to explore more of my content :)

You can also subscribe to me via email to be notified every time I publish a new story, just click here!

If you’re not subscribed to Medium yet and wish to support me or get access to all my stories, you can use my link: