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WorkFlowy is an organisational tool that makes life easier Enjoy! *** ## Use Apple Shortcuts on the Mac to pre-populate Quick Add pop up with projects, dates etc. **Last updated:** ***19 July 2024*** ### Background Something that I see mentioned often on [r/todoist](https://www.reddit.com/r/todoist/) is **the desire to pre-populate a task entry with, say, a specific date, project etc., when working with Todoist on a Mac**. You may wish to avoid defaulting to the Inbox, or, ensure every entry is due today etc. If you use any of the text expansion apps out there, this is relatively easy to do by configuring a snippet with, for example, `#Testing tomorrow p1`. You'd therefore just enter your task details and fire your snippet to input the natural language string and Todoist will recognise the attributes, highlighting them before submission. However, not everyone needs/chooses to pay for a text expansion app. On a Mac, you could use Apple's own built-in [text replacement](https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/mac-help/mh35735/mac) to do this. The downside is you have to remember the "replace" text for your snippet. Dedicated text expansion apps such as Textexpander have [inline search](https://textexpander.com/learn/using/searching-snippets/inline-search) functionality which makes it easier to recall the snippet, meaning you are actually more likely to use it. But we need not abandon hope of a free solution. Once again, we can turn to our old - much-neglected? - friend [Shortcuts on the Mac](https://support.apple.com/en-gb/guide/shortcuts-mac/apdf22b0444c/mac) to help us out. Todoist doesn't have direct integration with Shortcuts on the Mac in the same way that [Things](https://culturedcode.com/things/support/articles/2955145/) has. I suspect this is because the Todoist app is one of those pesky Electron apps. Let's not go there! But, it does have a [URL scheme](https://developer.todoist.com/guides/#desktop-app-url-schemes) which we can utilise to open the [Quick Add pop up](https://todoist.com/help/articles/use-task-quick-add-in-todoist-va4Lhpzz) of Todoist's [Mac Desktop app](https://todoist.com/downloads/mac) pre-populated with our projects, dates, priorities etc. ### The solution If you add [this Shortcut](https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/6af5bf32ecaa479783fdaa093a348369) which I've put together, all you need to do is follow the included instructions and change the template to meet your own requirements as per below. When running the Shortcut, you will be asked to enter the task in the pop up window. Press Return/click Done. Next, if you want to add a description for your task, enter it here, or alternatively, just leave it blank and Press Return/click Done. You should now see the Todoist Quick Add pop up appear on your screen, with the task name/description populated, **along with any parameters you set in your Shortcut**. If everything looks OK, just press return to submit to Todoist as normal. And here's our task in Todoist. ### Conclusion I hope this starting point shows you how easy it is to work with Todoist task templates when using Shortcuts on the Mac. You could set up multiple templates/Shortcuts, each invoked by their own keyboard shortcuts. You could even, by making some changes, have one Shortcut but select from a list of templates that you've input into the Shortcut. And remember, Shortcuts can be run easily from other apps such as [Alfred](https://alfred.app/workflows/alfredapp/shortcuts/) or [Better Touch Tool](https://docs.folivora.ai/docs/6_2_shortcuts_integration.html) amongst others. ### One more thing... For those of you comfortable with working with APIs, you could of course bypass the Mac app's Quick Add pop up altogether and integrate Shortcuts direct with [Quick Add an item](https://developer.todoist.com/sync/v9/#quick-add-an-item) in Todoist's Sync API. This [fully-documented Shortcut](https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/99cc41188c634728be379a794fe30d96) will do just that. It works great with Apple Watch, on iOS and on the Mac. You can find more of my [Todoist tips and tricks listed here](https://www.leightonprice.com#todoist) *** **[Go to www.leightonprice.com](https://www.leightonprice.com)** for more Todoist goodies!