I started building Noterr last year and still iterating on it. I learned a lot of things, and I'm glad I did it. I'll be sharing the journey of building Noterr, and the lessons I learned along the way.

The Idea

I've been a fan of movies/webseries, and everytime I get a reel on the scene of a movie, I save it. In future when I have time, I just pick one from it, download and watch.

I've been doing this for a while, and I've saved a lot of reels, this is for fun, but the same thing goes with tech articles, some good tweets, some crazy YT videos, etc.

I've been saving them in different devices, different apps, but wasn't able to go back to them, because of a primary reason, They're scattered.

Seems like a personal problem right? Keep on reading.

The First Version

I was clear from the first day, that this can't be just a website/app. People are lazy, like me, and they won't go to a website/app everytime to save something. I would have to integrate it with their workflow.

I started with the idea of a chrome extension, I had experience of building one, so quickly built a prototype that could save pages, and auto-categorize them in some way on the web app.

Sat with ~10 friends, showed them the demo and asked what could be the improvements, and how will they use it.

Iterating on the Idea

After getting some feedback, I started working on enhancing the prototype, I added ability to save AI Chats, Images, Selected Text (with exact location), YT Videos (with timestamps), and many more.

I also gave the ability to further categorize the saved items, and search/filter them. Built a guide and video to help people understand how to use it.

Also implemented a way to share the saved items with others, so they can also benefit from it.

Going multi-device

Web and Mobile were my main focus, after sorting web, I needed to sort mobile, but didn't wanted to build a mobile app, not because it's hard, but I beleive more the apps, more hard it's to maintain, and keep momentum going.

So I decided to convert the web app into a PWA, which allowed me to share and save stuff from mobile. It's kinda scrappy right now, but soon it's gonna get polish too.

Current Version

The USP of Noterr I think right now is the ease, Just press Ctrl + Q and save anything. There is a halt of 1-1.5 months, I've been stuck with something else, and couldn't work on Noterr. I have big plans with it, and soon I'll be bringing them one by one.

Hint could be that the web app not going to be much important from now on. Chrome extension is the main focus now.

Soon you'll be able to tackle this problem, and save anything from anywhere. Sign up for the announcement here.

I hope you enjoyed reading this, and I'll be sharing more about Noterr in future. Want to chat about anything? reach me at Twitter.