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Dear Hook Productivity newsletter subscriber,

Today, we are pleased to:

Hook 3.8 with Shortcuts automation and more

Following very helpful feedback from beta testers (thank you!), we're delighted to announce that Hook 3.8 has officially been released.

Hook Pro users can now create Apple Shortcuts to automatically connect and navigate their most important information! For example, you can create new items and hook them together; focus on particular bookmarks; retrieve all your bookmarks; filter out the bookmarks for a particular app, and much more!

So be sure to check out the release notes to find out more about Hook 3.8, and enable automatic software updates to enjoy the latest in Hook productivity.

๐ŸŽ Note takers rejoice! Copy Markdown Link to New Screenshot has arrived

Suppose you are taking notes about an Apple keynote presentation. You want to grab a screenshot of an important slide and comment on it in your notes. Normally that would be a pain — it's hard to refer to files, let alone arbitrarily-named screenshots you have just taken.

Well, now you can use the Copy Markdown Link to New Screenshot that we have published in our Directory of Hook Shortcuts. This shortcut lets you create a new screenshot (with the familiar mouse drag, as if you had used โ‡งโŒ˜4), and it then:

You can then simply use โŒ˜V to paste the link into your notes! When you review your notes, you can simply click on the link to the note.

Suppose you want to rename and move the linked screenshots. If you had used an archaic file:// link, you'd be out of luck. But you are in luck, because hook://file/ links are backed by Hook's adaptive file-link engine. That means the links to these images that you've pasted into your notes will still work!

This Shortcut comes in very handy when you are watching an informative presentation in Zoom or Youtube, or are participating in a mind-stretching webinar.

๐ŸŒŸ Coming soon! Preview Hook-linked images in Marked!

What's more, we're working with Brett Terpstra to ensure that when you paste links to screenshots (or other images), the images will appear when you preview them in Marked! No need to click a link to get to them. A Hook shortcut will generate links like this:

![](hook://file/ "title")

Paste the links in your notes, and Marked will show you the image inline. You can also print from Marked and get the same effect.

Other Shortcuts

We invite all automators to share their Hook-related Shortcuts. We will publish submitted shortcuts in the new Directory of Hook Shortcuts. We happen to know that one of the world's most famous Mac automators will be sharing some of his Hook Shortcuts ๐ŸŽท.

On this subject, we remind you that David Sparks has recently published the Shortcuts for Mac Field Guide | MacSparky Field Guides ๐Ÿ˜‰.

Hook is great for quickly copying and using links to almost anything. But what if you often need to insert links in your Markdown documents to webpages that you haven't even visited yet? Or, you've bookmarked something (in Hook or a web browser) and want to insert a link to it directly in your Markdown document without interacting with a search engine, or searching your bookmarks. What do you do?

Well, Brett Terpstra's SearchLink has you covered! Under the hood, SearchLink leverages web search engines, or Hook with which it now integrates, to look up the URL of the text you've typed and selected. This works well on the assumption that the top search result is what you want; and that assumption is typically correct!

It's hard to succinctly describe just how useful SearchLink is. It's a tool you have to try. So check out Brett Terpstra's SearchLink.

By the way, I inserted the above link with SearchLink by:

  1. typing Brett Terpstra's SearchLink (more precisely, I typed only 7 characters thanks to TextExpander);
  2. selecting the text; and
  3. typing โŒฅโŒ˜L (my shortcut for SearchLink expansion).

SearchLink expanded that to [SearchLink Brett Terpstra](https://brettterpstra.com/projects/searchlink/). Ballistic, non-interactive, fast.

For over a decade, I've been relying on Brett Terpstra's Markdown-related software every work day — whether it be his Marked, nvALT or nvUltra apps; or other tools Brett has created. In fact, I've been previewing this newsletter in Marked. Brett has also published an enormous amount of useful Mac software information that has informed and inspired me.

Most of what Brett has created over the years is free — donate what you want. SearchLink fits that mold. And of course, SearchLink saves you time and effort with links.

So, it is quite fitting to announce that SearchLink is our "Partner of the Month" for September! Check out our blog post on how SearchLink integrates with Hook. Or read about the integration on Brett's website.

Agenda 15 released, with support for Hook to New!

Version 15 of Agenda, Momenta's date-focused note-taking app, was published earlier this month. One of its very handy features is x-callback-url support for Hook to New! This means that you can now instantly create and hook a new Agenda item to just about anything.

For example, suppose you invoke Hook on a web page, choose Hook to New... (โ‡งโŒ˜N), select Agenda, and then hit the Return key. Hook will then:

  1. create a new Agenda note in the currently selected Agenda project;
  2. name the note according to the web page;
  3. add a link in the Agenda note back to the web page;
  4. hook (bidirectionally link) the web page to the new Agenda note; and
  5. add a bookmark inside Hook to both this webpage and the new Agenda note.

Not bad, for two keystrokes! And of course, you can do the same thing from any other type of linkable resource too (a PDF, email, photo, whatever).

Check out our help page on Using Hook With Agenda. And learn more about Agenda 15 on its website.

Keep enjoying your cognitive productivity.

Luc

— Luc P. Beaudoin CogSci Apps Corp. co-founder

Copyright © 2022 CogSci Apps Corp. All rights reserved.

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