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Journalling Workflow: Getting notes from Telegram to OneDrive

In the previous post I talked about my journalling workflow and how I use jrnl and jrnl-launcher to quickly take notes on my PC and keep them in sync across devices.

The missing bit was getting notes from my phone to the same place.

This has now been solved using a telegram bot!

I can send messages to the bot from my phone, which is polled by my DigitalOcean droplet that uses rsync to sync the files and text to the same OneDrive folder that jrnl uses on my PC.

It works well! And it was surprisingly easy to set up (took a couple of hours this morning).

Limitations:

  • You need to grab the messages from the bot within 24 hours, otherwise they are lost.

    This meant I had to run this on a persistent server rather than my local machine, which is a bit annoying.

  • There’s a maximum file size of 20MB for files sent to the bot.

    99% of the time this isn’t an issue, though it does mean I can’t send long videos or large pdfs etc using this method.

Pros:

  • An intuitive interface

    Adding images, voice notes, videos etc is super easy. Accompanying media with notes is the main feature I want.

  • Incredibly easy to set up

    Took very little time and the telegram bot API walks you through everything.