Roam Research Docs · Help & user documentation

Apple Shortcuts/Speak to Roam

An Official Capture Apple Shortcut, built by the Roam team!
Link to install latest version: https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/ae1ae833cada4999b44d9ac5dda2dc6d
For issue reports or enhancement requests, please email us at [email protected]
Getting started guide
- Requirements
  - apple devices only (iphone, ipad, mac, apple watch, etc.)
  - Need an OpenAI API key for transcription & optional post-processing.
    - if you do not have one, we go through how to create one in the steps below
- Steps
  - Follow this link for the shortcut:
    - Link to install latest version: https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/ae1ae833cada4999b44d9ac5dda2dc6d
  - Click on "Set up Shortcut" & Enter your graph's name to get started
  - Get an "append-only" Roam API token
    - settings > graph > new API token.
    - In the next screen, enter a description for the token and change the scope to append-only
    - In the next screen, click on the "Clipboard" icon 📋 to copy the token to your clipboard. It will start with "roam-graph-token-"
  - insert the token in the shortcuts app
  - In the next screen, leave empty if you want to capture to the daily note, otherwise, enter the title of the page you want to ✨speak to✨
  - create your OpenAI API keys:
    https://platform.openai.com/api-keys > create new secret key
  - Enter the OpenAI API keys into the shortcut
  - Few configuration steps regarding if we want to post-process, if we want to save the raw transcript if so, and if we want to change the post-processing prompt
  - Congrats! Now you can speak to your graph!
Change Log
- small change to the behavior for capturing to Daily Note pages October 26th, 2024 - no action needed on your side!
  - It turns out that Apple broke some shortcut-related behavior in iOS 18 and that caused this Apple Shortcut to fail if it was set up to save to the daily note page.
  - We made a backend change and it should be working now (abeit with some difference in how the captured text looks like)
  - tldr; No action needed on your side. The shortcut should work for all iOS, ipadOS and MacOS versions
  - The difference in how the captured text looks like:
    - What it looked like previously
    - What it looks like now
  - We will be releasing a new version soon-ish that fixes this change (and have a few new features), but this was the only way we could make the current and older versions of the Apple Shortcut to still work on the new OS
- v1.3.0: https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/ae1ae833cada4999b44d9ac5dda2dc6d
  - Improvements
    - We now support both encrypted graphs and unencrypted graphs
      - On encrypted graphs, you can create an "append-only" token!
    - Captures to today's Daily Notes Page by default
      - Captures are stored under a block/capture group [[Speak to Roam]] Captures
      - If you do not want to capture to DNP, you can alternatively pass an input page to capture underneath!
    - More resilient to shortcut failure (If shortcut fails, you can find the recordings in Files in Shortcuts/SpeakToRoam/FailedRecordings. If it suceeds, you can find them in Shortcuts/SpeakToRoam/HandledRecordings. Behavior slightly different on Apple Watch)
    - Shortcut is now available on the Share Sheet without extra configuration
      - You can use this to share recordings from the Voice Memos app to Roam via the shortcut!
- v1.2.0
  - 1. additional optional GPT4 API post processing step after transcription (records the output in a single roam block. Later, you can easily copy paste the block contents to get a nested structure)
  - 2. The initial check of no internet should be faster (since we do a GET request to google.com now)
- v1.1.0
  - If no internet, fail immediately
  - If recording has been made and then something fails (Whisper API or Roam Backend), then save the recording to “iCloud Drive/Shortcuts/SpeakToRoam/FailedRecordings/” folder and show a proper error message to the user

markdown version · view in Roam Research · exported 2026-07-03