One-touch workflows

Features
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I would like to see Joplin develop more robust Brain Dump functionality on mobile in the form of quicker, more automatic input. My immediate idea is to do this with specialized Home Screen and/or Lock Screen icons or other quick actions depending on what the individual device provides (like Android's Quick Tap function).

My specific desired workflow is for me to press a button, have Joplin open with voice typing already listening, stop the recording with a second press. The note is saved automatically to a pre-defined Notebook with preset options like GPS tag or whatever. Optional third press to assign a category, but this needs to be really fast and easy. No menu navigation, no teeny buttons to aim at. Also, when the recording is done, I'm returned to the app I was formerly in.

That's just one example though. I can think of a ton of different quick workflows that would be useful to people depending on their use case. How about instant access to the drawing pad? How about the ability to instantly produce a literal voice recording attachment? Or an image attachment, either from another app or from the camera? How about my above voice typing example, but instead of creating a new note, the button appends to an existing one?

I'm being really pedantic here, but I think there's a significant demand for this kind of instant input that really isn't being satisfied by any open source/self-hosted solution out there, and pretty much every program I've found requires TOO MANY CLICKS, too many decisions to make in the moment. Using the current home screen "New Note" button, the workflow I described above requires five clicks and the navigation of a menu. Doesn't sound like a lot, right? But it quickly multiplies when you're making notes every couple minutes. LOTS of us need to be able to slam some data into a form that we can review later on a more robust device when we have the time and attention span.

It seems to me like all the pieces are there within the program right now, but what is missing is the ability to craft a specific one-touch workflow for each person's own use case. Or failing that, if it's much much more of an implementation headache than I think it is, how about just a robust set of New Note home screen shortcuts?

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We want to improve this by having a sub-menu pops up when you click on "New note", and from there you can choose to take a photo, to start voice input, to attach a file, etc. Basically shortcuts that will make certain common actions easier. In the case of voice input, the shortcut would automatically create a new note, open it, and start the voice input function.

2 Likes
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Cool, I like this. But could those shortcuts also be available as individual home screen icons? Like when you long press on the general Joplin icon, you currently have the option to create "New note" and "New to-do" shortcuts, and it would save clicks and brainpower to be able to create "New voice note" and "New drawing" etc as well.

Also, how are these quick actions going to decide which Notebook they get saved in?

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I've created an issue to track this here:

3 Likes
5

Blockquote

Each Android home screen shortcut can be set up as a separate icon, this is standard Android functionality:

This already works with the existing Joplin shortcuts "New note" and "New todo".

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This can already be selected very efficiently with the notebook dropdown selector after creation, i.e. with the following procedure:

  1. select the desired home screen shortcut, e.g. "New photo note"
  2. take the photo
  3. focus is set to title field, title can be entered (or changed if prefilled, e.g. with current timestamp)
  4. select the desired destination notebook with the notebook dropdown

The introduction of home screen note creation shortcuts specifically for certain notebooks would probably be a rather complex feature, which would probably be better solved with app widgets.

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