The Plugin Obsidian Had Been Missing For a Very Long Time

A great addition to your quick capture workflow

Obsidian is one of the best note-taking tools. The community plugins library makes it even more incredible. Plugins can help add more functionality to the app to improve your workflow. 

One thing that I hated is how hard it is to quickly jot down new ideas. I’ve to open the Obsidian app, go to my vault, create a new note, and then jot down the idea. 

Pretty tiring, I know. 

And another problem is, When I’m on my phone, I have to wait 5–10 seconds for Obsidian to load before I start using the app. 

In the past, I used different solutions like the fleeting notes app, Obsidian webhooks, and others. But none of these were making a good workflow. 

It always induced friction in my workflow. 

But, recently a new plugin addition has solved this problem for me. 

Telegram Sync Plugin

Telegram sync is an Obsidian plugin that allows you to transfer messages from Telegram to your Obsidian vault. You can not just save texts, but also images, and other file types.

This plugin can be a great addition to your workflow for quick capture. You can quickly jot down ideas in telegram. And they will be synced to your Obsidian vault within split seconds. 

To set up this plugin, you will need to create a telegram bot and configure the telegram sync plugin. 

This article will show you how to set up the plugin and seamlessly capture new ideas. 

Create a new Telegram Bot

The first thing you need to do is create a new telegram bot. All of the conversations you have with this bot will then be synced to Obsidian. 

To create a new telegram bot, here’s what you need to do:

• Search for Botfather in telegram

• Click on Start

• Go to the menu to see all the available options

• Go to create a new bot

• Name your bot(the name should end with _bot. For e.g. Captureqbot)

After you have finished creating a bot, copy the API token and go to the bot link. Click on start, and your telegram bot will be fully operational. 

You can also add more details to your bot like description, profile, and more. We’ll not go into that detail now. 

Configure the Obsidian Plugin

Once you have finished setting up the bot on Telegram, it's time to configure the plugin in Obsidian. 

Install and enable the plugin first. Once installed, here are the three main things that need to be configured:

• Bot token: This is the API token that we copied previously from Telegram

• Allowed chat from usernames: Here you need to put in your telegram username. Only messages from this username will then be synced to Obsidian. If you want to sync from multiple telegram IDs, you can add usernames separated by commas.

• Main device ID: The device ID that you enter here will be prioritized for syncing. If the device ID is not entered, and you are using Obsidian on multiple devices, this may cause conflicts. 

There are different ways to save quick capture ideas. First, you can assign a folder where you want all of the notes to be saved. 

Another option, you have is to append all new messages to a note called Telegram. I think the second option is better because you are going to process these notes anyway, so why not have all of them in one place? 

There is also another option that allows you to delete messages from your telegram bot conversation once the message is synced to Obsidian. 

If you want to save new messages as individual notes, you can also create a template for that note. You can see the template variables here. 

So this is how you set up and configure the telegram sync plugin.

Bottomline

Telegram sync can help you enhance your productivity and knowledge management with seamless integration to jot down ideas. Also, you can not just capture texts but also various types of file formats. This makes it easy to access the information and avoids the need to switch between different apps.