The Dynalist toolkit

The “craft” of knowledge work requires good tools for storing and manipulating information. Outliner software can be very useful for this by creating hierarchies. Of these, I recommend Dynalist, which has a dynamic and responsive development team.

One of the best features of Dynalist is the community it fosters. The developers are very responsive to their community of users and generous in enabling them to create new tools for everyone to use. In recent years, many useful tools have been developed to enhance its functions, particularly for importing information from the Internet.

Chrome extensions

Dynalist Companion Clipper

Source: A Dynalist official extension

This offers a quick way of inserting a bookmark into the Dynalist Inbox. It automatically puts the URL as a note, but it can also insert text if it is highlighted.

Clip To Dynalist

Source: Rawbytz

This is an essential extension for inserting links while browsing. It automatically opens up the Dynalist page for insertion. This creates an item with the markdown syntax [title](URL).

Clip To Dynalist Note

Source: Rawbytz

This does the same as above but places the link in a note.

Dynalist Bookmarker

Source: Shadowfax Apps

A dialogue appears on the web page where text can be copied and pasted. You can select which document it then goes to.

Dynalist Highlighter

Source: Daniel Wirtz

A dialogue appears on the web page and you can highlight text which is automatically saved as sub-items when sent to Dynalist

Dynalist Allstar

Source: Jerry Factory

Enables right-click action for opening a document in a new side window

Powerpack 3

Source: Piotr

This is an extensive suite of tools available as a script that can be loaded on Tampermonkey. It enables the use of side and popup windows, workspaces, agendas and much else. It is no longer maintained, but mostly still works.

Copy +

But sometimes I want to copy a selection of text on the page as well. I found Copy URL+ 21 Chrome extension, which allows you to grab details of the web page into the clipboard.

The format I chose was:

<body><outline text=”[${title}](${URL})” _note=”${text}” /></body></opml>

IFTTT

IFTTT is useful for creating Dynalist items when not using the app.

Add to inbox via IFTTT

This enables you to type in an item from a web page address: https://dynalist.io/api/v1/inbox/add

Google Assistant

This enables you to create an item by voice command.

Apps

Besides the Dynalist Android app, there are others that help with item entry.

Quick Dynalist

Source: Louis Kirsch

This is a wonderful app that enables quick entry, creation of widgets and voice entry items.

Dynawrite

Source: Marumi

Reflecting their useful Evernote app, Everwrite, this helps with entry to Dynalist and provides templates for items.