Hook allows you to overcome the limitation of apps that fail to respect your right to properly formatted links to your data.
For example, Apple’s Podcasts, Music and App Store apps have a Copy Link share function. The command should honestly be called Copy URL not Copy Link, because it does not even give you a properly formatted link. The link’s title is not even set. Moreover, you need to click (or touch) 2-3 times in the UI to get the link. Not very convenient.
For example, here’s Podcast’s “link” for Mac Power Users: The Obsidian Deep Dive on Apple Podcasts: `https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/mac-power-users/id458066753?i=1000516856453`.
Where’s the link title? It’s not there. It’s just a URL (a web address)…
Hook solves this problem. Once you’ve copied a URL, use Hook’s Focus on Link in Clipboard, and rename the link from Hook’s Title menu. Thereafter, you will get a nicely formatted link to that address. In this case: ‎Mac Power Users: The Obsidian Deep Dive on Apple Podcasts. Later, you can access the full link by “feeding” the URL into Hook (Focus on Link in Clipboard), using Hook’s search, or accessing a hooked item.
For instance, here I have searched for obs* deep and found the bookmark:
Notice that I can now use all of Hook’s handy functions ( Copy Link, Copy Markdown Link, etc.) on this bookmark.
Control your links to pages anywhere: Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.
When you copy a link to a post in Facebook, you’ll get a generic name, “Facebook”. Not helpful. You can easily customize that with Hook’s rename function.
So if you want to bookmark a Facebook post with Hook, you can give the post a meaningful name that will make it easier to find later. Of course, you can hook Facebook posts to just about anything. If you’re using Facebook for corporate reasons, you probably want to keep a local copy of everything you post there. That is for legal reasons. And also for marketing convenience, because in Facebook it is very hard to access your prior work.
Also, don’t you hate the fact that URLs to items in Twitter and LinkedIn often have a notification number? That number is ephemeral, but bookmark names are not.
For example: I copied a link to ProjectWizards’ Frank Blome’s Twitter page, and got (4) Frank Blome 🇪🇺 (@fblome) / Twitter. The (4) is a number of notifications. Totally spurious. LinkedIn did the same:
Hook’s Rename feature lets me delete the spurious information. So whenever I copy that link (aka bookmark!) in the future, I get Frank Blome 🇪🇺 (@fblome) / Twitter.
Thereafter, when I get the bookmark, it will be well-formed:
Notice that I have deleted the (2). So, when I paste these links in my notes, or email them to people, the names will make sense.
Merlin Project
While we’re on the subject of Frank Blome, I should note that Frank is the CEO of ProjectWizards, that develops Merlin Project. Version 8 of Merlin Project, released earlier this month, is fully compatible with Hook. It uses AppleScript automation. That means regardless of the language in which you are using Merlin Project, you should be able to use Hook with it.
You link your Merlin Project tasks to whatever information is relevant to them, as explained here.
Bookmarking 1Password links to entries
1Password also has a Copy Link function, but it does not set the name of the link. That is understandable, because you don’t necessarily want even the name of a password entry to be exposed in a link. However, if you do want to bookmark a link to a 1Password entry, Hook has you covered there too.