Notes.app links - this method works across computers and platforms

Please make Hook work with Notes.app. Creation Date is the key - not note ID.

This method has been updated and now works on Catalina and Big Sur. The links even work across computers and in iOS.

Thanks for asking about this, @john.catalano. We’d love to help users (ourselves included!) link Apple Notes, and had a solution in place for pre Catalina. However, there’s a bug in Apple Notes AppleScript. It also applies to methods that rely on the date to which you refer. We wrote about this in Apple Notes App and Hook – Hook, and elsewhere. As you can tell from that we raised this with Apple (through their bug tracking system). Apple has not gotten back to us regarding this, unfortunately.

We discussed this with the author that post you shared, Artem Chistyakov, who confirms the problem with Apple Notes – i.e., that the solution is not reliable due to Notes automation being broken.

We do hope that Apple will expose a reliable Copy Link function via both the UI and automation. We have tried quite a few solutions. We have not given up, however. And we are working on other enhancements to Hook. We’ve gotten many requests on this forum and elsewhere for various features, which helps inform our product road map. And we will do a survey soon to help us prioritize.

Hi @LucB. I understand that you have identified a bug, but does it prevent you from creating a solution that works around that bug, in the interim?

My point is… Artem has a solution that works, now. Why not implement that?

Artem’s solution does not work.

I am using it. It does work.

last we checked it does not work reliably, and he confirmed that to us in emails, as I recall. Meaning the AppleScript returns errors in some conditions. We need something that works across the board and reliably.

I am actively using his solution. He updated it about 9 days ago so that it works on Catalina.

Fine… there are errors. And yet his solution generates links that work across computers and platforms, even.

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ah, that I did not know. We will definitely have a look! thanks for the pointer.

I read your original post too quickly and didn’t notice you said he’d updated it !

:slight_smile: Thank you.

btw, @john.catalano, what threw me regarding this (apart from misreading your original post) was that Artëm’s Linking to Apple Notes blog post is dated Feb 2020 (the one we at CogSci Apps had earlier read). Is there another document, apart from the GitHub link you shared, where Artëm discusses his recent change? thank you.

Hi, @LucB,

No - I don’t know of any updated blog post. In fact, the link in his blog post to GitHub is broken. I found the script by browsing his GitHub repo.

-John

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@LucB - Artem updated, again, his GitHub repo. I had an email conversation with him and he gave me the OK to post this updated link. This is confirmed working on Big Sur.

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Thanks for this. We’re a testing an in house modification of an earlier version. we’ll look at that update.