- Sharing links to pages in Notion.
How do you do it?
Almost everyone who uses Notion knows
that you can easily copy a link to pretty much any page,
by going up to the context menu over here
and clicking this Copy link button.
Or by using the command or Control L keyboard shortcut.
And then in a different app, maybe your Slack,
you can easily paste that link
and share it with a friend.
But here's the problem,
what if I wanna open that Notion link directly
in the Notion app?
Well, on mobile platforms,
on iOS, on Android,
that happens automatically.
But, when they click it,
on desktop platforms by default,
it's gonna open up in Chrome,
or in your default browser.
And usually, that's not what you want to happen.
You wanna have it open in the native desktop app.
And luckily, the Notion devs have provided a way to do this.
It's called the Notion URL protocol.
Essentially, when you copy a Notion URL,
if you replace the https right here with Notion,
and you share that,
then it's going to open directly in the desktop app.
So, what would you really want,
is to be able to come into an app like Slack
and paste that link, with that Notion URL handler,
send that to a friend.
And when they click it,
they're going to open the page directly in the Notion app.
There's just one problem,
what I just did
is not really possible currently,
without editing and recopying that link.
You would need to paste into something like TextEdit
and make this change,
or if we copy the link again from Notion.
You'd have to come into Slack, paste it,
come in here,
go over to the https, delete that.
Go over and type Notion, save it,
and then share it!
Which is kinda tedious.
Especially when you're sending Notion links
back and forth with Slack or other messaging apps
all day long.
So, today what I'm gonna teach you is how to do this.
Because, while there currently isn't a way
within the native Notion app to copy that
Notion app specific link,
there are some workarounds that I've discovered.
And hopefully, at some point in the future,
this video is going to be obsolete,
because Notion will add this feature to the apps.
But until then, buckle up,
because we are about to learn how to do this,
both on macOS and on Windows.
So, the general principle here,
is that you want to modify the contents of what's
on your Clipboard,
doing essentially a find and replace operation
to find https, and replace it with Notion.
You can do this on both platforms.
On Windows you're gonna use an app called AutoHotKey,
which is a very powerful and free utility,
that can do all sorts of stuff,
including defining custom shortcuts
that can run little scripts.
So, download the AutoHotKey app from their homepage,
install it, and then open up any text editor,
it could be NotePad it could be Atom,
which I'm gonna demo on here,
and paste in a script like this.
So, we've got a little up arrow sign
with a exclamation point and a V.
Essentially in AutoHotKey
you've got different modifier keys
that represent keys on the keyboard.
In this case, this little up arrow represents Control,
and the bang symbol, the exclamation point,
represents Alt.
So, what I'm doing here
is defining a Control Alt V keyboard shortcut.
And then what happens is whatever is written down here.
In this case, we're looking at the Clipboard,
and we're using a function called String Replace,
or StrReplace, targeting the Clipboard,
looking for any instance of https,
and replacing that with Notion.
The one here is a limit.
So, we're only gonna do this once,
because we really only want to target
the first part of the URL.
Lastly, it's going to use the Send Input command
to essentially act like it's pressing keys
on your keyboard.
In this case pressing Control V, which is the paste key.
And then finally, this return thing
just ends the script.
So, essentially once you've hit Control Alt V,
it takes whatever's on the Clipboard,
replaces https with that Notion
and then pastes it.
Exactly what you want.
Once you have that script pasted in,
go ahead and save the file with .ahk file extension,
then find it in file explorer and double click it to run it.
Once you see it running in your task bar,
you know it's running,
and at that point you can go ahead and copy
any link from Notion,
and use your keyboard shortcut to paste it
with that Notion URL handler.
So, now let's move on to macOS.
On Mac there is no AutoHotKey,
much to my chagrin, I do love me some AutoHotKey.
But, there are still ways to accomplish this.
In fact, there are two
that I'm gonna show you in this video,
because one of them is free,
but it's kind of a pain.
And the other one is paid,
but it is super easy,
and the app that you have to buy to do it
is very, very useful for many other things.
But, we're gonna start with the free method,
which uses an app called Automator,
which is built into macOS.
So, if you go ahead an launch Automator,
the first thing you're gonna see here
is this file dialogue,
with this New Document box near the bottom left corner.
So, go ahead and click that.
We're going to get this screen,
and we're gonna wanna go with Quick Action,
and then hit this Choose button here.
So, here is where we're gonna build our automation
using these tools on the left panel.
And what you wanna look for is AppleScript,
and you're gonna Run AppleScript.
So, just grab that,
and drag it into this main window here.
And you're gonna get this scripting window,
where you're gonna paste some code
that I'm gonna have the article version of this video,
along with the code for the AutoHotKey function as well.
So, if you go ahead and paste this script in here,
which I do have to credit mostly to a user
on Stack Exchange.
I'm gonna link to his answer in my blog post
for this video.
This essentially does the exact same thing as
the AutoHotKey script.
It takes your Clipboard contents,
it looks for any instance of https,
in which there should only be one,
and replaces it with Notion.
Once you've got that pasted in,
go ahead and hit command S to save our script,
and lets just call it Paste Notion Links Beautifully,
and hit Save!
And we are onto the next part of the operation.
So, we've got two different things we have to do
in System Preferences.
First, you gotta go to System Preferences
and find the Keyboard option.
And I'm always really bad at finding
things that I'm looking for,
without typing for them.
Here it is, Keyboard.
And then there is a Shortcuts tab right here,
and you're gonna find Services on this left pane.
If you scroll down to the bottom,
you should see
your brand new Automator link.
Paste Notion Links Beautifully.
All you need to do is click that, and hit Add a Shortcut.
So, if the first time I did this,
I did command option B.
Let's just go ahead and
set it as command option J.
You can set this as whatever you want,
it literally doesn't matter.
But what does matter
is that Mac OS's security features are gonna prevent you
from running this script,
until you do one other thing.
So, now you need to go to System Preferences,
and Security & Privacy.
And over on this Privacy tab,
there is going to be an Accessibility option.
Click that, and then if you click this lock
to make changes.
Go ahead and put my fingerprint in there.
Don't copy my fingerprint from watching this video,
please and thank you.
Here, you're gonna see a list of every app
that's able to control your computer,
but this is also a list of every app
that's gonna be able to run this shortcut.
So, this is where this is kind of a pain in the butt,
for any app where you wanna paste these nice,
beautiful Notion links,
you have to come into these Accessibility Settings,
and enable the app to basically
work with Automator.
So, I've already done it for Slack,
I've already done it for TextEdit.
If you wanted to add another app that isn't listed here,
just go ahead and hit this add button,
and search for the app that you want.
Once that is done,
if we go back to Notion,
we can hit command L to grab the link for this page,
and then maybe head over to Slack and then we can use our
brand new keyboard shortcut.
Which if I remember correctly
was command option J.
And now we have that beautiful Notion link
that will open directly within the app.
Now, I did say
there was a much more convenient way to do this with
an app that is paid.
You've actually seen me use it once already
in this video.
It's called Alfred and it is one of my
absolute favorite productivity apps for macOS,
not least of which because I can hit command space,
which is my Alfred shortcut.
And I can do calculations,
I can Google things, I can open files.
But I can also execute complex workflows.
So, if we type in Alfred,
to go to the Alfred preferences,
I can actually show you how this works.
Now, Alfred itself is actually free,
and there's a lot you can with it.
But there's an add-on called the Power Pack,
I think it costs about 30 British pounds.
I'm not sure what that translates into dollars.
I bought it many, many years ago.
But that allows you to do a lot more stuff.
Including Clipboard history, Clipboard snippets,
which I'm gonna talk about more in depth
on my main channel later on,
I think next week.
But there's also a Workflows feature,
where you can create essentially,
complex scripts, that hook into all parts of your system,
and do pretty much whatever you want.
And this does not require you
to go into those privacy settings and enable the shortcut
for every app that you wanna use,
it just works.
So, this Paste Notion Link Workflow,
I'm actually gonna have this linked in the blog post
companion for this video,
so you can actually download it,
and import it if you want.
But it's very, very simple to build.
So, let's just go ahead and build it,
so you can see exactly how it works.
In this Workflows area, if you click the plus sign,
we can go with a blank Workflow,
and let's just call it Paste Notion Links 2,
'cause I've already got one called
Paste Notion Link.
You can fill in these things if you really want to,
but if you're not sharing your Workflows like I am,
you really don't need to.
Let's go ahead and hit Create.
And we're gonna have this blank canvas here.
So, by right clicking,
you get a bunch of options.
And the first one we wanna go for is uh, Hotkey.
So, this is where you're gonna define your Hotkey.
I believe I'm going with command option V,
for my normal one.
So, let's go with command option M,
just for our demo.
And really important here
with this argument area,
you need to go in and select macOS Clipboard Contents.
This is going to hook into the Clipboard.
So, if we hit Save,
now we have our first node, and we can drag out
into another one.
This time we wanna go to Utilities,
and we're gonna go to Replace,
typing in https, for what we're looking for,
and Notion for the replacement text.
Save that, and we've got a couple more nodes to build.
First off, we're gonna go to Outputs,
and go to Copy to Clipboard.
So, this can be left as is.
This query parameter is essentially
going to hook into the Clipboard and replace
whatever's on it
with the find and replace function we have done.
So, hit Save there.
And finally, one last node.
Go to Outputs, and hit Dispatch Key Combo,
typing in command V
to use the normal paste function.
So, once we've used that,
this Workflow is now in operation.
So, going back to Notion,
we can hit command L
to go ahead and grab the regular https link.
I'll show you it on my Clipboard
as https right there.
And if I go ahead and hit my command option M shortcut,
it's gonna paste the Notion link.
Click that, and the page opens right in Notion.
Of course, there is a lot more you can do with
all three of these solutions.
So, if this is something you find useful,
play with these apps.
There is a heck of a lot more you can do.
I do all kind of different text snippets,
text replacement.
Stuff that essentially lets me,
who is kind of a slow typer,
type a little bit faster
than I naturally should be able to.
Like I said, there is going to be a download link
for the Workflow,
at the blog post version of this video,
along with a full write up
and some extra details.
So, check that out.
I have a link in the description down below.
And if you want more cool Notion tips,
and all kinds of stuff like that,
you can go over to ThomasJFrank.com/Notion,
where I've collected basically
all of the stuff I'm working on regarding Notion.
I'm also working on a course
for people who run their own businesses,
or creators like me
who want to take Notion to the next level,
and use it as a sort of all in one productivity system,
for their business.
So, if you're interested in that,
I'm gonna be running a beta version of the course
at some point very soon,
and then launching the full version after that.
I'll have a link in the description down below
for that one as well.
And beyond that, if you're enjoying this channel,
hit that like button.
Show the YouTube algorithm what's up.
Subscribe to get new videos when they come out.
And if you have questions about Notion,
or about other productivity apps,
leave 'em down in the comments below.
Your questions help me decide what kinda content
I'm gonna make in the future.
So, thank you if you do that.
Thanks for watching, as always.
And I'll see ya in the next video.
(upbeat music)