Plug-Ins for The Archive

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Take control of your workflow with customizable plug-ins for The Archive:

• Automate repetitive tasks: Plug-ins can perform common actions for you, like assembling a list of links, or extracting a new note from selected text.
• Review your notes: Plug-ins can access all your notes and offer statistics, or help find lost notes and mis-typed tags.
• Speed up your work: Run plug-ins with a single shortcut, or even invoke them from other apps!

The plug-in system has been added to The Archive v1.8.0.

Plug-Ins and Safety

We developed the plug-in with your data safety as the top priority:

• Plug-ins need to declare what they access; there’s no way to bypass this.
• Plug-ins cannot delete notes.
• Plug-ins cannot connect to the internet to steal your data.

All plug-ins we share are a safe addition to your workflow.

How to Work with Plug-Ins

Start by picking Plug-Ins ▶ Manage Plug-Ins … from the main menu to enable plug-ins that you want to try!

• Any plug-in can be run from the main menu.
• Plug-Ins that operate on selected text can be run from the contextual menu in the editor, by right-clicking on text in the editor.
• Plug-Ins that operate on notes can be run from the contextual menu in the search results, by right-clicking on notes there.

💡 Pro Tip: Assign shortcuts to plug-ins (after enabling them) to speed things up and save mouse clicks!

Install New Plug-Ins

Plug-ins are shipped as .thearchiveplugin bundle files. Double-click or open in Finder to install a plug-in.

They can be shared, and you can find community plug-ins in our forums:

Discover Community Plug-Ins

Invoke Plug-Ins from Other Applications with the URL Scheme

Ever found yourself in a situation like this?

When I go through my daily review routine, I want to obtain a list of notes created this day to add them to my journal and create tasks for the next day to continue some of these notes.

The solution is this:

1. Launch a plug-in directly from another app with the URL scheme!
2. Have it put the result directly on the clipboard (with output.pasteboard.content = "...")

You can launch plug-ins from e.g. browser bookmarks, links in your Mind-Maps or Reminders, or apps like Alfred and Keyboard Maestro.

The URL scheme’s link format is similar to one of these examples:

thearchive://plugin/PLUGIN_ID/run
thearchive://plugin/PLUGIN_ID/run?param1=value1&param2=value2

• PLUGIN_ID is a placeholder for the actual plug-in ID, like de.zettelkasten.extract-note. Copy it from the plug-in list in the app’s preferences.
• The ?parameter=value part is optional. If you need to provide it depends on the plug-in: Most don’t need it, but some may require you to pass values there to perform their actions at all (or otherwise require your input when being run, making execution semi-automatic).

How to Create Your Own Plug-Ins

Start with the Developer Tutorial.

Check out the plug-in help pages: Plug-In Help Overview