Voice-to-Obsidian Setup (Voice MD) Link to heading

One-tap voice capture from iPhone into Obsidian. Two flows: daily note and fleeting notes straight to inbox.

What it does Link to heading

  • Double-tap back of phone -> Fleeting Note -> records -> transcribes -> new timestamped file in 0-inbox
  • Triple-tap back of phone -> Daily Note -> records -> transcribes -> appends to today’s daily note under a time heading
  • Also available as Home Screen icons for both

Cost Link to heading

Uses OpenAI’s transcription API (Whisper/gpt-4o-transcribe), $0.006/min. At ~5 min/day usage that’s about $0.90/month. New OpenAI accounts get $5 free credit, covering roughly 5+ months before any real spend.

Note: OpenAI requires a payment method on file before API calls will work, even with free credit available. Add a card and set a hard usage cap (e.g. $5/month) under Billing so it can never run away on you.

Plugin: Voice MD Link to heading

  • Obsidian Community Plugins -> Browse -> search “Voice MD” (by DenizOkcu) -> Install -> Enable
  • Must be installed separately on desktop AND mobile. Obsidian Sync does not reliably push plugin installs to iOS, only settings/config once installed.
  • Settings -> Voice MD -> paste OpenAI API key
  • Each device can use its own separate API key if needed, all billed to the same OpenAI account

iOS Shortcuts setup Link to heading

Built via the Shortcuts app, triggered by Back Tap (Settings -> Accessibility -> Touch -> Back Tap) since iPhone 14 has no Action Button.

Daily Note shortcut Link to heading

Single action, Open URLs:

obsidian://voice-md?record=true&daily=true&autostart=true

Opens/creates today’s daily note, auto-starts recording, appends transcript under a time heading (e.g. ## 14:32).

Fleeting Note shortcut Link to heading

Three chained actions:

  1. Current Date action, Format set to Custom: yyyy-MM-dd-HHmmss
    • Watch for stray colons in the custom format field (defaults to a placeholder template with colons in it). Colons are illegal in filenames and will silently break the shortcut with a vague error.
  2. Text action containing:
    obsidian://voice-md?record=true&file=0-inbox/Fleeting-[Current Date chip].md&autostart=true
    Hyphen goes directly before the inserted date variable chip, no stray spaces around it.
  3. Open URLs action, fed from the Text action’s output

Result: each fleeting capture creates its own file, 0-inbox/Fleeting-2026-07-26-143205.md. If two captures land in the same minute, Voice MD appends to the existing file rather than erroring, which is a nice bonus behavior.

Known quirks Link to heading

  • Custom date format field - re-enter it carefully; it’s easy to leave a colon in from the placeholder template.
  • Plugin sync - reinstall Voice MD manually on any new device; don’t assume Obsidian Sync will push it.

Trigger mapping Link to heading

  • Double-tap back -> Fleeting Note (highest frequency, easiest gesture)
  • Triple-tap back -> Daily Note
  • Both also pinned as Home Screen icons as a backup trigger