A Mac app for visual bookmarks with voice tags and natural search.
Ciao r/macapps! I'm Anton and I have a problem. PROBLEM I have this problem where I remember the thing, but not where I saw it. I remember what it was: A pricing chart. An error message. A useful thread. Some design reference. A weird message. A hotel I wanted to book. A task for the next day. I just have no idea where. Too many apps these days. After a few searches I either find it or it joins the graveyard of useful things I was absolutely sure I’d remember. At first I wanted to solve it with a “proper” version: a kind of memory layer for my Mac, so when I get distracted or switch context, I can pick work back up again. For about an hour this sounded elegant. Full speed. Then I realized it'd be basically a full-time screen recorder. Years ago I already had one at work, never again. So I decided to leave that kind of thing to Palantir. What I built instead is much more boring: visual bookmarks with voice tags. When something is worth coming back to, I hit a shortcut, capture what’s on screen, and add a quick voice or text note like: “pricing page to compare later” “auth error from Sunday” “nice onboarding UI” “that thing Ivan sent about analytics” Then later I can search by what I remember (I use "that thing" in search a lot). I could put all of this in Obsidian, but keeping Obsidian tidy is already a part-time job. It doesn’t watch everything in the background. It only saves the moments I choose to save. I’ve been using it for basically everything: paused projects, research, UI/product references, error messages, tickets, links that I know I’ll lose if they just sit in browser bookmarks. Could I use something else? COMPARISON The closest things are probably Raindrop, mymind, Obsidian (ofc), and plain screenshots. Cairn is narrower: hit a shortcut, capture the visual context, add the words, then search by meaning. You don't have to do a post-processing, hit and forget, later search by natural language. That's the key difference. PRICING It’s a paid, buy-once Mac app: 14.99$ + tax. English only for now. App Store link: https://apps.apple.com/app/id6772269434 Learn more: https://cairn.software Privacy Policy: https://cairn.software/privacy
Collected discussion
good concept , bit pricey
Fair. What price do you think would feel reasonable for this kind of a Mac utility?
good concept. and very lighthearted written. chapeau! i will purchase because of both
Thank you, really appreciate it. If you end up using it for a bit, would you mind if I DM you later for feedback?
let me save that for when i have time. what do u expect in onboarding time?
Great idea, my feedback for the app store page is that the screenshots aren't the highest quality and I like on-device section in the landing page
thanks for the feedback! Regarding the screenshot, I think this is appstore web UI problem, as this happens with any of the app in the store.
Ah, I see. Awesome, congrats btw
Its Like The Google Feature to Search in Screenshots?
Similar, but the difference is the tag/context + a bit in how it's organized. Google can search what’s visible in the screenshot. With Cairn, you add the context you have in your head at that moment by voice. That context is often not actually written anywhere on the screen, but it’s what is remembered later.
Ok thank you
Fair Price for that
The manual-capture boundary is what makes this credible to me. It avoids the surveillance tax and gives every item clear provenance. For long-term trust, I would make each bookmark independently exportable with its screenshot, original URL or app, capture time, typed note, voice transcript, and search tags in a plain folder or sidecar file. Search results should also show the exact saved words or image region that caused the match; otherwise semantic search eventually feels like another opaque pile.
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thanks! Sure, I use ScreenKite – a free version of ScreenStudio. I've used them both, the free version is quite good.