I built an app to stop losing my own thoughts (I have ADHD and it was genuinely affecting my life)
I've lost count of how many good ideas I've had that just evaporated before I could do anything with them. The pattern was always the same. I'd get an idea or remember something important, then spend n seconds figuring out where to put it, then my brain would…
I've lost count of how many good ideas I've had that just evaporated before I could do anything with them. The pattern was always the same. I'd get an idea or remember something important, then spend n seconds figuring out where to put it, then my brain would get hijacked by something else. Thought gone. It sounds small but when it happens it not only makes you feel stupid but it has real consequences. I tried everything. Apple Notes, Voice Memos, digital note takers, a physical notebook. The problem wasn't the tools, it was the friction. By the time I'd opened the right app or found the right page, I'd already lost the thread. So I built Olly. The concept is simple: tap your Lock Screen, speak the thought, done. Olly processes it on-device using a natural language processing pipeline (no AI, no cloud, nothing leaves your phone) and hands you back a clean, structured tidy note with a title, all the ums and ah's removed, and filed in the right place. It also works from Apple Watch, which turns out to be the lowest-friction capture surface I've ever used. A thought captured from your wrist in under five seconds, before you've even reached for your phone. A few honest things I learned building it: The hard part wasn't the recording. It was everything after. Getting the NLP pipeline to handle the weird, rambling, half-formed way people actually speak was way more difficult than I expected. Privacy also ended up mattering more than I anticipated. A lot of people don't want their raw thoughts going to a server somewhere. On-device private processing turned out to be a high demand feature, not just an architecture choice. The people who connect with it most aren't always who I expected. Yes, ADHD users get it immediately. But so do founders, sales people, parents, anyone who lives in a state of constant mental load. Olly is live on the App Store if you're curious.
Collected discussion
this is actually really clever. the lock screen tap to just speak and have it clean itself up solves the exact friction that makes me abandon every note app i've tried i spent 3 months trying to make a shortcut that did even half of this and gave up when i realized i was basically trying to build a whole pipeline myself. the on-device processing is what would sell me, i get weird about voice stuff going to servers
Exactly! I did the same with shortcuts and workarounds. Nothing worked. TBH, making something frictionless has not been easy.
Sounds great. Is this for Android too?
I love this idea and have make attempts to bring as low of friction as possible for idea capture. Well done.
I love this idea. It's exactly what I've always look forward and notes app.. except that I've been looking for it on Android. Any hope in the future?
What is the advantage over saying “Hey Siri, take note”?
the on device part sells reliability more than it sells privacy. no round trip means the watch still captures in a lift, on a plane, or anywhere with no signal, which is exactly where a thought arrives and exactly where a cloud note app fails quietly. worth putting that on the listing, because a server based competitor cannot copy it.
Android version? This is something I've been looking for for a long time. Either app or hardware based and it would remain on my hardware at all times.
Link?
That is amazing. Curious, can you share some input on the on-device natural processing pipeline? What tech is used? If you want of course, I totally understand if you want to keep info on it for yourself.
i saw this ring thingy note taker but it’s like no battery in it so you’ll have to purchase again & again seems like a cool thing, see if you like that
Those projects usually have a better chance of sticking because you already understand the pain point. Have other people been using it the same way you do?
I have a weird issue. I’m trying it right now and during the first step, I have to say something like “at the super market, I have to take some cauliflower for the next meal” but it doesn’t work and says “no audio” even if I allowed the app to access the microphone and I even see the ring around the recording button while I’m talking. Second point, I think the pricing is quite high, at least compared to other services. 10€/month is the same as Notion which offer way more, Raycast that genuinely helps me gain a lot of time everyday on Mac, … An iOS shortcut capturing the audio then transcribing it is not offering AI to sort the note but it’s free and adding it into Notion (even the free version) could be done directly in the shortcut. Do you capture the conversion rate? If you lose too many people at this screen, like me, then maybe you could lower your price.
amazing idea sir have a good one
How did you discover what kinds of people connected most with it, beyond ADHD users?
Clean and structured how?
Also interested in the Android Version.