Dictate and send audio notes to Capacities with Shortcuts (iOS)

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I’m currently using Capacities as my daily note-taking tool. There are a lot of things I like about capacities. One being, that it has a daily note feature that makes it easy to journal and to write down random thoughts.

The other day, I was thinking it would be nice to be able to do that with audio. I know that Reflect has a feature like that, but Capacities unfortunately not. After a bit of looking around, I remembered that Capacities has a API that allows you to append things to the daily notes.

On iOS there is the Shortcut app, that’s actually quite powerful. There are many actions in shortcuts, but the two that where interesting for my use case are:

Dictate text (Listens to audio, transcribes it and saves the text as a variable)

Get contents of URL (Let’s you send a HTTP request to a website or API)

Using both actions – and a bit of tinkering and testing – I was able to put together exactly what I was looking for. A button that I can press, that allows me to speak into my phone to make that appear in my daily notes.

I'm currently using Capacities as my daily note-taking tool. There are many things I like about Capacities, one being its daily note feature that makes journaling and jotting down random thoughts a breeze.

Recently, I found myself wishing I could do this with audio. I know Reflect has such a feature, but Capacities doesn't—at least not yet. After some digging, I remembered that Capacities has an API that allows you to append content to daily notes.

And on iOS, there's the Shortcut app, that’s actually quite powerful. Among its many actions, two are interesting for my little use case:

Dictate text (listens to audio, transcribes it, and saves the text as a variable)

Get contents of URL (sends an HTTP request to a website or API)

Combining these actions—with a bit of tinkering—I created exactly what I wanted: a button that, when pressed, lets me speak into my phone and have that appear in my daily notes.

While you are dictating, iOS shows a nice preview which makes it easy to see how well it’s capturing the content

This is how the transcribed text appears in Capacities

Currently, there's a minor issue when using the outliner mode: bullets from iOS shortcuts aren't collapsible. I've raised made a small post the Requests & Idea board and hope the team considers it.

If you'd like to set up this shortcut yourself, you can copy my implementation here:

Capacities Audio Note (iOS Shortcut)

There are only two things you to change in the "Get contents of URL" action to get it running yourself:

Add your authentication token under Header → Authorization. Check out the Capacities API docs to learn how to generate your own token.

Add your space id in the under Request body → spaceId. You can find your space ID in Capacities under Settings → Space settings.

For a visual guide, I've included a screenshot of my implementation below:

If you don't need the timestamp, you can simplify the process even further. Just remove the "Current date", "Format", and "Text" actions. Then, simply pass the dictated text directly into the mdText field in the "Get contents of URL" action.

Also, you can easily add the shortcut to your lock screen, as a widget or in the control center.