I’ve been struggling with something that sounds simple but is surprisingly annoying:
capturing content quickly across devices in a self-hosted environment.
On Android there’s share, on iOS shortcuts, on desktop copy/paste… but everything feels fragmented.
I often end up losing things or postponing them just because capturing isn’t frictionless.
Curious how others handle this.
Syncthing functions as a sort of decentralized Dropbox or Google drive, by keeping folder content synchronized across any number of devices. I haven’t tried the iOS clients, but android, Linux, and windows work great.
Yeah Syncthing solves the “where does the data live” part really well.
What I kept struggling with is the step before that — actually capturing something in the moment, from whatever context you’re in.
Even with sync in place, I always felt like I still had to decide where to put things and which tool to use.
That’s where it starts to break down for me.
Edit: disregard
Good question 🙂
For me it’s mostly the small, in-the-moment things:
- a link I want to check later
- a quick thought or idea
- a snippet of text or code
- something I see on my phone that I don’t want to lose
- sometimes even just a reminder or “I should look into this”
Not really structured notes — more like “things that appear during the day” that I don’t want to think about organizing right away.
That’s also why tools like Joplin or OneNote never quite fit for me in that specific moment — they work great once you sit down to write something, but not as much as a quick, frictionless entry point.
Right on. I actually saw your response to the other person down lower right after posting this 😂
I’m curious to see how you tackle this puzzle. I usually just text myself with this kind of thing, but I know that doesn’t work for everyone…
Yeah exactly — that’s pretty much the pattern I kept falling into too.
“Texting myself” works, but it still feels like you’re bending a tool to do something it wasn’t really designed for.
What I was trying to fix was that exact moment before that — when something appears and you either capture it instantly… or lose it.
So instead of choosing the tool each time, I tried to make the entry point always the same, and push the “what is this?” decision later.
Curious if that resonates with how you use it day-to-day.
On my phone, my Screenshot folder is syncthing’d to my desktop, so most of the time, capturing something in the moment is as simple as dragging three fingers down my screen. My Camera and default Download folders are also syncthing’d, so just taking a picture or saving something from a browser has it captured across my devices.
I also use Tududi, which has Telegram integration, for the quick note. Taking the note is just a matter of sending a message in Telegram, which is available on all my devices. Signal’s “Note To Self” feature is also useful; I trust it more than Telegram for sensitive data. In Firefox on my desktop, I have “Automatic Tab Opener” (Browser extension) pulling up my Tududi inbox every hour, reminding me to actually deal with the notes I have previously taken.
That’s actually a really solid setup.
What always got me personally is exactly that — over time I’d end up with multiple “entry points” depending on context (screenshot, chat, browser, notes…).
Each one works, but I’d still need to mentally switch between them depending on what I’m capturing.
I kept wishing for something where the entry point is always the same, no matter the context.
What always got me personally is exactly that — over time I’d end up with multiple “entry points” depending on context (screenshot, chat, browser, notes…).
So long as you’re manually processing everything, screenshots work for all of that. You can take a note in any text box anywhere, and screenshot it. Chat message? Screenshot. Browser? Screenshot. Notes? Screenshot. You can even take a photo and then screenshot it to capture it into your workflow.
I have Shutter (apt install shutter) on my desktop, and I’ve changed the Print Screen key to shortcut to “shutter -s”. This lets me capture an area of my screen with one button (and a mouse drag). Bam, more screenshot.
The downsides of screenshot are obvious, of course: Extracting the text from the screenshot is a bit of a pain in the ass. If you really want to keep the same entry point, though, you could setup a script to OCR newly captured screenshot/photos to extract the text. An OCR-friendly font might make that pretty reliable.
Now I want to improve my setup…
That’s actually a really interesting direction — using screenshots as a universal entry point.
It kind of shows how strong the need is for a single capture flow, even if it means bending everything into one format.
What always stopped me there is exactly what you mentioned — once you need OCR, scripts, post-processing… it starts adding friction again.
I kept wondering if the entry point could stay just as universal, but without needing to transform the content first.
The screenshot folder itself is certainly not limited to just screenshots. Any file you can save can be kept in there. To my mind, the “entry point” is “saving a file to this particular folder”, regardless of the specific method used to do the saving. The screenshot is just an extremely convenient way to do that.
I just thought of a way to improve this technique with Tasker. Tasker can work with the clipboard, edit files, and take a screenshot. So, you could set up a gesture to trigger a task in Tasker. Tasker can then take the screenshot, dumping it into the folder. Tasker can then check the clipboard; if there is text in your clipboard, it can prepend it to a single “TODO.txt” in your screenshot folder.
Linux could be configured much the same way, using shutter and xclip to capture the screenshot and clipboard, respectively.
Yeah that makes sense — treating a folder as the universal entry point is a clever way to unify things.
I think that’s exactly the direction: trying to reduce everything to a single “drop zone”.
Where I personally kept feeling friction is that you still need something in between to get things into that folder (scripts, gestures, automations, etc.).
So the entry point becomes “save to this folder”, but the way you get there still depends on context.
That’s the part I always found hard to make truly uniform.
Self hosted Standard Notes?
I dunno if it would help, but between my phone and my computers (and one of my local servers) I use KDE Connect. Read about whatever I’m working on with the phone, share > kde > device, boom the clipboard is filled with whatever, or the link is automatically opened. Then proceed with the thing on my computer. Need to think or read about something but need to step away from the computer? Just copy it on the desktop, and again the clipboard is filled on the phone.
And of course sharing tabs on Firefox/derivatives.
Yeah KDE Connect is great for device-to-device flow, I’ve used it too.
What I always found tricky is that it works really well once you’re already “in the flow”, but not so much as a quick capture entry point.
Like, it helps moving things around — but not necessarily deciding to capture something instantly in the first place.
That’s where I always felt something was missing.
What exactly do you mean by “capture”?
Good question — I don’t mean organizing or saving things long-term.
I mean that moment when you see or think something and don’t want to lose it.
Like:
- a link you want to check later
- a sentence you read
- a quick thought
- something you copied
- a small piece of info you might need
The problem for me is that if capturing that takes more than a second, I often just don’t do it — or I postpone it and forget.
So “capture” is really just that instant: taking something from wherever you are and storing it somewhere with zero friction.
You probably want linkwarden: https://github.com/linkwarden/linkwarden
I’m not sure if it handles non-link content like a random thought. Maybe a note-taking app for that; plenty of previous discussions on those if you search.
For this I just send a message to myself on Signal (or sometimes WhatsApp). I know, it’s not a perfect solution, but for these simple things it’s good enough and pretty much content agnostic.
Yeah I used that too for a while — it works surprisingly well, but I always felt it’s more of a workaround than something designed for capturing.
I use silverbullet for that. Its like Obsidian but completely online/in browser. Also very much expendable with plugins and scripts
Only thing missing is file sharing.
I think a second brain service, like maybe Trilium that you can host, could be a solution. Capture, tag, link, analyse, find back
Yeah I tried going the “second brain” route too (Trilium, Obsidian, etc.)
What I kept running into is that they’re great once something is already in the system — but capturing still feels like a separate step where you have to think about where it belongs.
I started wondering if capturing should be completely independent from organization, and almost “context-free”.
More like a thin layer you can hit instantly from anywhere, without deciding anything upfront.
I haven’t seen anyone mention Readeck. I use Readeck for those ‘read it later’ articles, etc. It has a Firefox extension. I’ve found it works very well. You can highlight a paragraph of an article, and save that to Readeck as well. In fact, when I consult with AI, I’ll highlight the entire page and shoot it to my Readeck instance, otherwise it will just link the AI platform and not the content.
Lowest common denominator: Plaintext / Markdown files?
They’ll work with Logseq, web browsers, notepad, your phone… and maybe sync it all via syncthing?
That’s what I use.
I also write up my system notes in Logseq with the intention that I’ll just sync in my ansible files too… one day…
This, in combination with ‘copyparty’ as a Docker container with a volume mapping to my files. Edit locally, and edit from anywhere.
If it’s text, I move everything to obsidian which is installed on multiple devices and uses my self hosted minio server to sync.
If it’s links, most go into my linkding setup. If they’re read later, to Instapaper.
Files, I tend to use minio directly to drag and drop. If it’s genuinely use and throw, like moving memes, I use Tailscale Drop (or Send, or whatever it’s called) to move between devices.
Yeah that makes sense — I ended up with similar setups at some point.
What always bothered me a bit is exactly that fragmentation: different tools depending on what you’re capturing and from where.
It works, but it feels like you’re constantly switching “mode” depending on context.
I keep wondering if capturing should really depend on the destination at all, or if it should be something more uniform.
The problem with that to me at least, is that there’s no one uniform way to capture things. Notes and videos and images and files all need different contexts and views. I hate Pocket and similar services for this reason - it feels too “media” friendly, too focused on videos and links and PDF files. When most of my read later is text - articles and such.
Yeah — that’s exactly the feeling I kept running into.
At some point I stopped trying to adapt existing tools and ended up building something around this idea of “uniform capture”.
It’s basically a very minimal layer where you can send anything (text, links, quick notes, etc.) from any device in one step — without worrying about where it goes or how it’s structured.
Still early, but it’s been working surprisingly well for me in daily use.
Tell me more!
Sure 🙂
What I ended up building is basically a very minimal “capture layer”.
The idea is simple: no matter where you are (phone, browser, desktop), capturing something should always be the same action.
In practice:
- Android → share
- iOS → shortcut
- browser → bookmarklet
- desktop → just paste
Everything goes into the same place instantly, without deciding upfront what it is or where it belongs.
No tags, no structure, no “mode switching”.
Just capture first, decide later (or never).
I built it mainly because I was tired of stitching together different tools depending on context.
If you want to take a look: https://github.com/oldany/dropmind
That looks cool! And… I think we can extend it to iOS and android apps. The benefit being drag and drop simplicity and sharing sheet access, instead of shortcuts, which have always felt wonky to me.
I’ll play with it first. Thanks for the link!
Yeah I get what you mean 🙂
Shortcuts work (that’s what I’m using on iOS right now), but they can feel a bit “indirect” compared to something more native like share sheets or drag & drop.
Curious to hear how it feels once you try it — especially what feels frictionless vs what doesn’t.
@oldany @frongt second linkwarden for the links. I’d suggest note discovery for the quick note. https://github.com/gamosoft/NoteDiscovery
I have linkwarden set up for this.
On Android I share to the linkwarden app to save, on pc i use the Firefox addon.
Sure it’s fragmented but I’m already used to doing things different between mobile and pc anyways.
I have started using nextcloud talks
note to self, your chat app of choice will have something similarYeah I tried similar approaches too (notes to self, chat apps etc.)
They kind of work, but I always felt they weren’t really designed for this use case — more like a workaround.
What I was missing was something more “frictionless”, where capturing is basically instant and doesn’t depend on context.
what sort of stuff are you looking to capture? images, text, code, thoughts?
Pretty much everything 😄
- links from browser
- selected text
- quick notes / thoughts
- sometimes even just a sentence I don’t want to lose
The problem (for me) wasn’t what to capture, but how fast and from where.
I tried things like Linkwarden too — great tool, but still feels tied to specific entry points (browser extension, app, etc.).
What I kept missing was something more “universal”, where capturing is always one step away regardless of device or context.
I find that just texting myself does the trick for things like this. But that’s how I operate. I’m curious to see how you tackle this puzzle.
Yeah I used the “message to self” approach for a while too — it works surprisingly well 🙂
What I ended up building is basically a very minimal “capture layer”, where no matter the context (share, paste, shortcut, etc.), everything goes into the same place instantly, without deciding upfront what it is or where it belongs.
It’s not really a note-taking tool — more like a universal entry point.
If you’re curious: https://github.com/oldany/dropmind
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters DNS Domain Name Service/System HTTP Hypertext Transfer Protocol, the Web IP Internet Protocol TCP Transmission Control Protocol, most often over IP UDP User Datagram Protocol, for real-time communications VPN Virtual Private Network
6 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 9 acronyms.
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use a lemmy community that only you can post too?
Yeah that’s actually what I tried at some point too 😄
But I always felt it’s still a workaround — you’re adapting a tool that wasn’t really built for capturing.
The friction is lower, but it’s still there.
I keep thinking there should be something more “native” to this use case, something that sits between devices and apps rather than inside one of them.
