Web Clipper

Ever been browsing the web and thought "this is a keeper!" 📎 The Web Clipper is what neatly tucks that page away as a Markdown note in your vault. If Export is about sending your writing out into the world, the Web Clipper is the magic that brings great material back in!

← Home: ObsiKO 101

What can you clip? ✂️

• A whole page: pulls out just the body of the webpage you're viewing and tidies it up into Markdown (automatically stripping out clutter like ads and menus!).
• Just a selection: drag-select your favorite paragraph and clip only that part.
• A link: clip right on top of a link, and it fetches and saves the full body content of the page that link points to.
• Region screenshot 📸 (desktop extension): for charts, images, or layouts that are hard to capture in text, drag to mark a region and capture it as an image! The captured image is saved to the vault's assets/ folder and dropped into the note along with a source link.

Tables become Markdown tables and code becomes code blocks — everything is converted as nicely as possible. Details like the title, URL, and author — plus the publication date, lead image, and summary when the page provides them — are automatically added to the top of the note (frontmatter); anything missing is simply left out. The names it uses (source · author · published · collected · image · description) are exactly the same ones AI transcription and book lookups use, so material gathered from anywhere can be collected together one way. → Frontmatter Properties

It asks you when you clip 🤔

Once a clip lands in ObsiKO, it briefly asks where to save it.

• New note: saved as a new .md file in the Clippings folder (default).
• Insert into body (at cursor): if you have a note open for editing, the clip drops in right where your cursor is. Perfect for slotting material into a specific spot in your writing! (To append it at the end, just place your cursor there.)
• Grab URL only: saves just the link address, with no body content. (This button doesn't show up when there's no address — like when you clipped selected text.)

Filled in and flagged, automatically ✨

• Source info is recorded for you — the top of each clipped note (properties) gets the title, address, author, site, and publish date. On papers and academic pages, the DOI, journal name, and authors are filled in too, and solid scholarly sources get marked type: source (it reads the standard tags that journals, arXiv, and most academic sites embed).
• Clip the same page twice and ObsiKO asks first — "Already clipped this page" — so you can open the existing note or clip it again anyway. Tracking tails (utm_…) and #section differences still count as the same page.
• Every clip also records a read status (read_status) starting at unread — that's the fuel for the Source Box below.

Source Box — did you actually read what you saved? 📥

Create one from the sidebar ＋ ▸ Source box (or the command palette, "Create source box") and everything you've clipped gathers on an Unread → Reading → Done board. Drag a card to the next column and the read status is written right into that note. A gentle way to break the "collect but never read" habit! → Bases

Find Sources — books and papers in one panel 🔭

• The Find Sources panel in the right sidebar (the "Find source info" and "Search papers" palette commands open it too) searches books and papers side by side from a single box. Pick a result and choose [Create a new note / Fill the current note] (except when the panel opened by itself because you set type: book on a note — then it fills that note straight away, no questions asked, since the destination is already decided) — books become book notes with cover, intro, and reading status; papers become source notes with authors, journal, keyword tags, the abstract, and the cover image from the paper's page (your own values are never overwritten; sites that only offer a logo get no cover). Covers also show up as thumbnails in the search list, and since they use the same cover property as books, they appear on the Library bookshelf too.
• Korean-only papers show up too — on top of DOI-registered works (CrossRef) it also asks a broad scholarly index (OpenAlex), so domestic papers without a DOI (DBpia-hosted articles, conference papers) appear with abstracts. Theses only on RISS are one click away via "Search on RISS ↗" under the results.
• One identifier is enough 🪄 — paste a DOI, arXiv ID, or ISBN into the same box and it looks that source up directly instead of searching; the kind is detected automatically.
• Paper PDFs too — open a PDF in the reference view and press the Biblio button: it finds the DOI on the first page, looks it up, and (after you confirm) fills the companion note — the same note your highlights collect into.
• Copy citation (command palette) — builds a Korean-report-style or APA citation from the note's source properties and copies it. Missing info is never invented — it's listed as "Missing" instead. Great for reference lists!
• Import RIS (command palette) — turn a references export file (.ris) from academic databases into source notes in one go. Already-collected DOIs are skipped.
• Offline copy (Settings ▸ Web Clipper) — when on, clipping downloads body images into your vault and saves the paper's open-access PDF next to the note, so your material survives dead links.

RSS subscriptions — new posts clip themselves 📡

You don't have to visit your favorite blogs, news sites, or journals to clip them anymore. Register a feed address once, and ObsiKO clips new posts into notes automatically (no AI involved — zero cost).

• In Settings ▸ Web Clipper ▸ RSS subscriptions, paste a feed address (rss.xml, atom.xml, …) and hit Subscribe. The name is filled in from the feed title.
• When you subscribe, existing posts are not clipped (so dozens don't flood in) — only new posts from then on. If you like, pick "Also clip the latest 3 now" for a taste.
• While the app is open it checks every hour, and tells you "Clipped N new posts" when something arrives (silent otherwise). In a hurry? Use the Check now button or the command palette's "Check RSS feeds for new posts now".
• Clipped notes behave exactly like regular clips — they land in your Source Box (unread), carry a feed property showing where they came from, and academic feeds even get DOI/journal info filled in. Posts you already clipped or already have as notes are never clipped twice (even if you delete the clipped note, the same post won't come back).
• Each feed can be set to Clip full text / Link only — "Link only" is cleaner for paywalled sites where the full text can't be fetched.

💡 Subscribe to arXiv or journal RSS feeds and paper collection becomes automatic — new papers pile up in your Source Box, with bibliographic lookup and offline copies (open-access PDFs) flowing right in.

How do I use it? (by device) 💻📱

Pages the browser draws — Notion, Google Docs 📝

Services like Notion don't put the text in the address; the browser draws it. So anything that only hands over a URL (share sheet, RSS, pasting a link) saves the link but no body text.

Clip with the browser extension and the body comes along — the extension reads what is actually drawn on screen.

• Open the Notion page in your browser → click the ObsiKO toolbar icon (or right-click ▸ Clip page to ObsiKO)
• Private pages work too while you're signed in — you're saving what's on your screen
• Select part of a Notion page and use Clip selection as well

💡 Turn on Settings ▸ Web Clipper ▸ offline copy before clipping Notion. Notion's image URLs expire, so without it your pictures break later. With it, images are saved into the vault's assets/.

💡 When only the URL was available, the note tells you why just a link was saved — clip it again from the browser and you're set.

💡 Right-click a Notion link ▸ Open in Notion app and the Notion app jumps to that page (shown on desktop only, and only when the app is installed). Handy for a split screen next to ObsiKO.

Desktop browsers — Chrome · Edge · Firefox

Once you install the ObsiKO browser extension (a one-time setup), you can use it like this:

• Click the ObsiKO icon in the toolbar → clips the current page in its entirety!
• Choose from the right-click menu:
• Clip page to ObsiKO — the whole page
• Clip selection to ObsiKO — when you've selected text
• Clip link to ObsiKO — on top of a link (fetches that link's body content too)
• Clip region capture to ObsiKO — the screen dims slightly, so drag to select the region to capture (Esc to cancel). The moment you release, the image flies over to ObsiKO! 📸
• The first time you use link clipping, it asks once for "access to all sites" permission (you need to allow this to fetch the body content — if you decline, only the URL gets saved).

💡 Can't install extensions (a work PC, say)? There's a bookmarklet too — enter the host address in Settings ▸ Web Clipper and drag the bookmarklet to your bookmarks bar, and in any browser, one click on that bookmark clips the page (requires an HTTPS deployment; region capture is extension-only).

macOS Safari

Turn on the ObsiKO extension in Safari, and you can clip pages, selections, and links the same way, via the right-click menu. (Due to Apple's policies, Safari extensions need a one-time build-and-enable setup.)

macOS Share menu (from any app!)

You can also add ObsiKO to the Mac's Share menu. That way, not just Safari but any app — Notes, News, and more — lets you clip a URL or selected text straight through Share ▸ ObsiKO.

📱 iPhone · iPad · Android — right from the share sheet

Tap Share ▸ ObsiKO in any app and a small card appears right there — no jumping over to the app. Just pick where it goes! 👇

• 📝 New clipping — as a new note in your Clippings folder (the default)
• 📅 Add to today's note — straight onto the end of today's note (created if it doesn't exist yet)
• ⭐ Add to note… — pick a note and append to it. Type in the search box to find any note in your vault; leave it empty and your bookmarked and recent notes come up first.

Sharing a web address? You can choose [Fetch full text | Link only] (new clippings default to the full text, the others to link only).

A preview of what you're sending sits above the card 🖼️ — for a web page you get its image, title, and even the opening lines of the article, so you never have to wonder whether you grabbed the right page (photos and PDFs show a picture preview). On short screens, or while you're searching for a note, it politely folds into a single line.

There's more you can clip now 🖼️ — beyond page addresses and selected text, sharing photos, PDFs, and files saves them into your vault's assets/ folder and drops them into the note (several at once is fine too). On Android, 'ObsiKO Clipping' still lives in the menu (⋮ more options) that appears when you long-press to select text.

💡 The app doesn't even need to open. The share sheet just says "Saved" and closes, and everything you stashed makes its way into your notes the next time you open ObsiKO (it waits safely even if you haven't opened a vault yet). You'll get an "Added N shared item(s)" note when it does.

Wondering what's still waiting 🗂️

Open 'Share queue' from the command palette to see items that haven't been filed yet (mobile only). You can apply them right away, or delete the ones you don't need.

Good to have ready ✅

• To clip on desktop, the ObsiKO desktop app needs to be running with a vault (folder) open. The clip wakes up the desktop app via obsiko:// to save it.
• On iPhone, iPad, and Android, the share sheet stashes it without opening the app, and it lands in your notes the next time you open ObsiKO.
• If you're on pure web (browser only) with no app to receive it, the Web Clipper is a feature meant to be used together with the desktop or mobile app.

Changing the save folder ⚙️

• The default save folder is Clippings.
• You can change it to any folder name you like in Settings ▸ Web Clipper. → Settings & Themes

Gather good material as you go, and it becomes so much richer later when you weave it together with wiki links and look at it through Graph View. On desktop, don't forget you can also ask the AI Agent to "organize this for me!" 🤖

← Previous: Export · Home · Next: Activity Log →