Things 3 Quick Entry with Autofill

Sticky

Things 3 by Cultured Code is one of the most popular To-Do Apps on the Mac (like Todoist, Omnifocus). One of its great features is the ability to create a new to-do based on what's going on in another app, which is particularly useful in browsers as it will save the URL and the title of the page by default.

For example, this is what one of those entries would look like for this page (made in Safari):

My request is to allow that functionality to work with Orion. Currently, no information is found, so the entry is blank. Based on the link I included in my first post, it may have something to do with AppleScript:

The app needs to have an AppleScript interface so that Autofill can access a selection within it. Specifically, the developer needs to support linking to objects in the app via URLs: for example, Mail uses message:// and Safari uses http:// or https://.

I just searched the public issue tracker and it seems like there are many suggestions regarding Applescript, so perhaps one of those will solve this as well? Sorry my first post wasn't more clear! Thanks.

Vlad

Sticky Ok so you can ask the developer what concrete apple script commands they need so we can implement that.

That would make for a concrete feature suggestion. 'support app X' is not one, as it requires significant effort on our end to research and figure out what exactly which is not likely to happen any time soon given 1,500 other open (and well documented) issues

Sticky

Hello again. I apologize, I do realize you are very busy and it was not my intention to waste your time. If I make other reports in the future I will be more thorough. I'm not a coder though, so I often have no idea how or why something works, or doesn't. :-D

I reached out to the developers and they said they "only require very basic AS commands" for that function to work and then linked me to their AppleScript guide. That document only seems to describe how to interact with their app via AppleScript, not how their app interacts with other apps. So I found their response somewhat frustrating, but hopefully it provides some useful information because that is all they were willing to provide. I updated my original post with that information as well.

Keep up the great work! I've been using both Orion and Kagi the last couple of days and have been very impressed so far—thanks!

Vlad

Sticky Yep that is definetely not substantial. AppleScript is a combination of many commands, we have already implemented some and we implement others on demand - but we can not implement them all at once (although that will happen eventually)

eirk

perhaps contact the devs, ask for what is required for functionality, and work together to add support?

imperial_banana

Hi, Vlad.
Orion is super fast and great. Thank you for the browser.

I face the same autofill issue as the TS.
I do not want to sound arrogant or stupid, but is this info from Things3 developers useful:

Specifically, the developer needs to support linking to objects in the app via URLs: for example, Mail uses message:// and Safari uses http:// or https://.

It was previously posted by other user, but you didn't reply, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed, that you just missed it and that this part of Applescript is super easy to implement and will help.

Thank you.

Vlad

Orion already supports opening such links as illustrated here

It could be that we do not support a specific apple script command used by the app, and we would appreciate if you would contact the develper and ask them to pinpoint the cause (without understanding how their app works, we are not able to).

If it is a case of a missing apples script command, we can easilly add that.

imperial_banana

Vlad, thank you.

I've mailed Things 3 developers with this problem and link to this page.

Thank you.

mazil

what is the current state of this suggestion? are you still waiting for the developers from Things to provide additional information? @Vlad @imperial_banana

ismi

Just came here to open this exact issue. Turns out it's been around for a while... I did some research on what Things 3 needs for Quick Entry with Autofill to work. Based on Cultured Code's documentation, Orion needs to expose these AppleScript properties/commands:

Required AppleScript interface:

URL of current tab of front window - returns the URL of the active tab
name of current tab of front window - returns the page title
do JavaScript command - to execute JS in the current document (for getting selected text via window.getSelection().toString())

When a user triggers "Quick Entry with Autofill," Things 3 queries the frontmost app for the page URL, title, and any selected text using these AppleScript commands. Safari exposes these in its scripting dictionary.

Reference docs from Cultured Code:

The Things devs mentioned they "only require very basic AS commands" - it's really just exposing these three properties. Hope this helps move things forward!