notes from /dev/null - captee

Announcing Scrim - An Org Protocol Proxy for Emacs on macOS

2025-04-28T05:00:00-07:00

Org mode celebrates its ability to export to a multitude of formats. However, lesser known is its ability to import content. One of the ways to import into Org is through a custom URL scheme. This scheme is referred to as Org Protocol (scheme name: org‑protocol://). The motivating idea for using a URL scheme was this: any app outside of Emacs could construct and make an org‑protocol:// URL request without needing any security permissions.

Regrettably, the original implementation of Org Protocol presumed that emacsclient would do the work of making the actual URL request to Emacs. This thinking did not consider the notion that app sandboxing would become widespread practice, preventing other programs from calling emacsclient. So it is with recent releases of macOS: its default policy is to only allow an app to access programs within its prescribed sandbox.

That said, I ❤️ Org Protocol, so much so that I provided support for it in a utility called Captee that lets you share links and text clippings from the macOS Share Menu. I wanted Org Protocol to work on macOS, but for years it was broken due to its dependence on emacsclient. The only workaround was to use the Mitsuharu Yamamoto fork of Emacs which implemented native support for org-protocol:// URL requests. For a number of years, the Yamamoto fork was my daily driver. Unfortunately though, it seems to have succumbed to bit-rot as it has not kept track with recent releases of GNU Emacs (in particular 30.1). I made the switch over to GNU Emacs 30.1, but in doing so I had to give up Org Protocol support.

I missed Org Protocol, so I decided to do something about it. I wrote an app.

Scrim is a macOS utility to act as a proxy to take an Org Protocol request from any app and relay that to Emacs. In effect, Scrim is a native macOS client for Emacs server.

Learn more about Scrim at its website.

Scrim is now available for purchase on the Mac App Store.

As Scrim and Captee compliment each other so well, you can get them both at a discounted price.

Making an App, Looking for Beta Testers

2025-04-14T14:50:00-07:00

Nearly two years back I wrote a utility called Captee that uses the native macOS Share Menu ( ) to share a link or text clipping in either Markdown or Org format. The idea was that any macOS app that supported the Share Menu could take advantage of this. Among the features that Captee supported was the ability to share content via Org Protocol, a custom URL scheme devised to import content into Emacs.

However, for Org Protocol to work, it required that there be a way to transport the org-protocol:// URL request to Emacs on macOS. Org Protocol’s original implementation presumed that emacsclient would do the lifting here, where the sharing app would be able to call emacsclient with the org-protocol// request as its argument. This was however a regrettable design decision made over a decade ago as recent versions of macOS now have a default sandbox policy that prevents an app from calling an executable like emacsclient outside of its sandbox.

The Mitsuharu Yamamoto fork of Emacs got around this restriction by supporting the Org Protocol custom URL scheme natively, where it would directly accept the URL request, bypassing emacsclient. Unfortunately for users of GNU FSF-published Emacs, Org Protocol was viable only if emacsclient was enabled, typically by relaxing macOS security permissions.

To address the above for GNU FSF-published Emacs, I set out to build a proxy utility that would accept the org-protocol:// URL request and transport it to Emacs in a way that conforms to macOS security policies. In effect, I made a macOS client app for Emacs server.

This app is named Scrim and is now in BETA test. I’m looking for testers, especially for those of you who already have Captee. If you’re interested and willing to provide feedback, please add yourself to the Beta test group on TestFlight, an Apple tool for distributing code-signed apps. At current I’m most interested in the following feedback:

Sanity check - Does the app work as advertised?
Were the instructions to setup Emacs server easy to follow? If not, then what was missing?
Are you a user of Captee?

If you do sign yourself up for this, please provide answers to the above via the mail feedback in the Scrim app.

Thanks!

YES, I WANT TO BETA TEST SCRIM

Captee 1.1.0 update now available on the App Store

2023-05-22T13:55:00-07:00

There's a big update to Captee (v1.1.0) now available on the App Store. This is a major release for the app, with significant improvements to its user interface and support for converting formatted macOS text to Markdown and Org markup.

If this is your first time hearing about it, hello and welcome! Captee is an app that makes marking up a link (both URL and title) to Markdown or Org a one-step operation straight from the macOS Share menu. Results are stored in the system clipboard for pasting into your favorite editor.

Learn more about Captee at http://yummymelon.com/captee.

Captee available on the Mac App Store

2023-04-10T15:04:00-07:00

At long last, Captee is available on the Mac App Store.

Learn more about it at http://yummymelon.com/captee

Introducing Captee alpha, looking for testers

2023-03-10T14:31:00-08:00

This past February, I started building a macOS app to help me work with Org mode for Emacs It lets you share links and content from another app (typically Safari) via the macOS Share menu and format it in Org markup. It can also support Markdown links so you can work with other editors too. The app is called Captee and here’s a video that demonstrates it at work:

Note that Captee is very much in an alpha/proof-of-concept/bleeding-edge state of polish right now. You’ll get the best results for Captee if you use the macOS Yamamoto Mitsuharu port of Emacs (MacPorts, Homebrew). It supports Org Protocol out of the box, otherwise you will have to use the system clipboard to share content.

To capture selected text via org-protocol you’ll need to define a capture template on the Emacs side first before you use Captee. Here’s an example capture template that uses the placeholders described in the Org capture protocol.

(setq org-capture-templates
      '(
        ("a" "Captee Capture" entry
         (file+headline "~/org/captee.org" "Captee Captures")
         "* %:description\\n%:annotation\\n%i\n%?" :empty-lines 1)
        ))