How to automate sending transcripts of recordings from JustPressRecord to Omnifocus?

I’m bilingual (English and French) and I use both languages all the time. I speak to Siri in English and when I’m away from my Mac I tell Siri to remind me of this or that in Omnifocus. No problem there.

But sometimes, for various reasons, I want to send a reminder or task to OF in French. It is a pain to change the language for Siri, and then change it back. So I looked for something else and found the app JustPressRecord that works very nicely. I record my message either on my iPhone or my Watch and then, after opening the app on the phone, I can send the transcript to Omnifocus (and even set up the info for the action before sending). The integration is already there. Great! But it is a bit of a hassle to do all this when the whole point is to get the task into my inbox without thinking much about it, and there is the risk that I might even forget to do it. So I’m looking for another way, a fast and simple way, to send the transcript of my recording to OF.

I use Shortcuts a bit for very simple things and I mostly copied them from the gallery. So I’m wondering if this is the way to go. And has anyone already done this? Or is there a better way?

1 Like

There is a Dictate text action in Shortcuts that will capture (and transcribe) what you say. You can also set the language for this action on a per action basis.

What you could do is have a Choose from menu action to select the language you’re going to use, then enable dictate text for each choice, and then the text from either go to OF inbox.

The catch is that you wouldn’t be able to invoke this from Watch.

Good luck!

ScottyJ

1 Like

I was beginning to think I’m the only person in the world with this problem :)

I’ll look into your suggestion. Thanks.

Ellen

I managed to set up a Shortcut using the “dictate text” action that I didn’t even know existed. It looks very simple when it’s done. At first, I thought it was necessary to use the clipboard to send the transcript to OF but realized the text could go directly without passing by the clipboard.

I didn’t need to set up anything to choose the language because, for English, using Siri directly to add items to the OF inbox works fine. Now I tell Siri “French for Omnifocus” and it brings up a recording widget. I just have to remember to switch to French in my head. The text of the transcript is then sent to my OF inbox and OF opens so I can check if all went well.

On Watch, I still have to use JustPressRecord and then send the transcript manually to OF. To make sure I don’t leave stuff there and forget about it, I have added a daily routine in OF to check if there is anything recorded that I should send to my inbox.

I’ll try to learn a bit more about Shortcuts after this first very small step.

I achieved this using Just Press Record and a combination of Hazel and Automator. When I make a recording in Just Press Record on any of my devices, Just Press Record creates a new dated folder inside the Just Press Record folder, within which is the actual recording. Hazel watches the Just Press Record folder and triggers an automator workflow that moves the contents of any dated folder within it (I.e. the mp3 recording itself) out of the dated folder to another folder (which I called “JPR2”) and renames the mp3 as well. It also then trashes the dated folder that contained the mp3 recording. Hazel is watching that other folder too, and when it sees the new file appear in the second folder, it creates a new OmniFocus inbox item with the Just Press Record mp3 recording attached. It works well. I can record anything in Just Press Record on any device and it automatically shows up in OmniFocus’ inbox. The only downside is that this only works when my Mac is on, because obviously automator and Hazel run on the Mac. But if I record a Just Press Record recording when my Mac is off, as soon as I wake my Mac later, the item appears in OF.