Personal productivity and notes
Personal note-taking apps
Apps, browser extensions and desktop tools for quickly capturing, organizing, searching and resurfacing personal notes, often minimal, local-first, markdown-based or AI-assisted, for individuals frustrated with heavier tools like Notion or Obsidian.
Built for: Individual note-takers and knowledge workers
Projects since May 04
369
Different builders
352
Last 4 weeks vs 8 before
-12%
AI is the core
19%
Projects per week
Mostly mobile app (30%), web app (28%), desktop app (22%) · from r/SideProject, r/chrome_extensions, r/ShowYourApp, r/vibecoding
Latest
- Fumi — Turns typed, spoken, pasted, or photographed captures into notes, checklists, tasks, reminders, calendar items, or saved places using AI.“Fumi — an iPhone notes app that turns messy captures into useful actions”
- Pith — Takes and stores notes in an Android app.“How else have a Vibe Coded Note Taking Android App?”
- Records timestamped notes during a live session so the user can review them later.“I built a quiet timestamped notes app after a live-coding interview trick”
- Buildsheet — Lets users build cheat sheets by arranging markdown, chart and LaTeX blocks on a grid and exporting them to PDF or Markdown.“[For Sale] Buildsheet.one: 25 paying customers, $0 spent on ads, $20/year to run”
- Tetr — Lets users handwrite notes on iPad or iPhone and get AI answers placed on the page next to circled questions.“Tetr”
- Memodo — Takes notes offline with AI assistance and no subscription or ads.“[Self-Promotion] I built Memodo — a free, offline AI note taker with no ads or subscriptions”
- Brain Cache — Captures quick thoughts and tasks through a global hotkey and stores them locally for later search and organization.“My first open source project! Brain Dump - Dump all your thoughts into one place”
- Sprout — Turns books, videos and other learning resources into actionable notes and an interactive skill-tree map.“Built a tool to break resources down into actionable notes and a visual skill tree. It's cleared up a lot of confusion about how I learn.”
- sidepad — Stores daily todos and notes locally on the user's device.“I built a Notes app like notion and actually started using it”
- Sunmemo — Manages daily tasks and quick notes in a local-first Windows desktop app.“[Tool] Sunmemo: Local-first Windows task & note manager, one-time purchase”
- Remora — Saves notes attached to a particular context, such as an app, project, or task.“Remora - another notes app....”
- Cirrus — Captures quick notes through a global hotkey, a notch or screen-edge peek panel, with markdown, wiki-style links, tags and inline math.“Cirrus - a notes app that lives in your MacBook's notch”
- Notely — Turns the browser new tab page into a notebook for writing notes, capturing web content, and summarizing with AI.“I turned my new tab into a notebook instead of another empty page”
- SKATE — Captures live workshop observations, questions, and decisions and links them with cause-and-support relationships, stored as Markdown files with local transcription.“I got tired of AI meeting apps and somehow ended up 3D printing a microphone”
- HushNotes — Shows floating notes over all apps that stay hidden from screen shares and recordings, with color themes, a quick-capture hotkey for selected text, and read-only MCP access for AI tools.“I built Mac notes that stay on my screen but invisible to screen share”
- Driftto — Captures typed, spoken, or photographed thoughts and routes them to apps like Notion, Todoist, Asana, and Apple Reminders.“Driftto - Type or say a thought once, and it lands in Notion, Todoist, Asana and more”
- Atomic Notes — Stores notes locally and syncs them to the user's own Google Drive.“[DEV] Atomic Notes: a local-first notes app that syncs to your own Google Drive. No AI, no ads, no trackers”
- TheStudyOS — Lets users take and store simple notes privately, with sign-in via a Google account.“A Very Simple Note Taking App”
- Scrib — Provides a Windows notepad that turns lines under keyword prefixes into checklists, totals, tables, timers and split bills, with screenshot text capture and offline plain-text notes.“Scrib: the notepad for Windows that keeps up (beta waitlist open)”
- Combines note-taking and PDF handling in one productivity app.“I built a notes + PDF productivity app — looking for honest feedback”
Most discussed
- Risorgi — Stores ideas from many sources as linked knowledge objects that connect directly to other ideas.“I've been building a platform for interconnected knowledge”
- Runs a local AI assistant that talks, listens, sees the screen, remembers notes and documents, and completes tasks, shown as a 3D galaxy of notes.“I built a local AI second brain, it talks, sees my screen, remembers my work, and finishes tasks”
- Hold my notes — Displays sticky notes as dots along the edge of a Mac screen that expand on hover and sync via iCloud.“Hold my notes: Sticky notes that feels real and you will actually love using!”
- LifeNotes — Combines notes, gamified tasks, habit and goal tracking, a pomodoro timer, and local or cloud backups in one offline-first mobile app.“Just hit my first 20 users with no marketing”
- Spark — Lets users quickly dump unfinished ideas into a low-pressure place to store them.“made an app nobody wanted lol”
- Provides a personal knowledge management system with Android and desktop versions that share a common database.“How do I give away apps that need a database?”
- instantnote — Provides a website for taking quick notes, based on the name and URL since the post does not describe it.“Roast my site”
- Saves and syncs research notes for copywriters and content marketers privately to their own Google Drive.“Got my first user 🔥”
- Pilcrow — Provides a note-taking app designed to work well for people with ADHD.“Just got my first signup for someone I don't know!”
- Ingat-in — Stores quickly captured text and photos and helps the user find and recall them later.“I built a "second brain" app because my actual brain kept losing important stuff”