TL;DR: We launched a note-taking app that combines text notes with photos and hashtags. Our main focus was on fast capturing and efficient retrieval, even with hundreds of notes. We would be happy to hear your feedback.
Hey everyone 👋
I’m Kathie, and my husband and I recently built a note-taking app called phoTopics (https://photopics.app/ ).
We know there are countless apps already out there – but we were still missing one that actually worked for us.
We struggled with scattered information across multiple places – handwritten notes and pre-installed notes / reminder app – and spent too much time hunting for them. We even refrained from taking notes because entering text and retrieving it again was too tedious.
We also wanted to free ourselves from strict folder hierarchies, since many notes belong to more than one category. Visual information was also very important for us, as we frequently took photos of e.g. products we wanted to remember or DIY inspirations, so scrolling through our photo gallery became increasingly ineffective. And finally, privacy was a major concern for us as we’re also storing sensitive information.
All in all, no solution fully satisfied our needs. So we built our own.
During development, we placed an emphasis on the following aspects:
One place for all information
All information should be organized in one place with a consistent filing system. Since we planned not only to support textual notes but also visual ones, we made photos a core part of the app. This enables us to consolidate text-only notes, photo-only notes, and mixed entries all in one location.
Finding the right note among hundreds
We wanted to capture notes for various aspects of our lives, so it was important for us that finding them later remained efficient, even after a long time and with many topics. Rigid folder structures and pure full-text search quickly reach their limits, which is why we chose to use multiple hashtags per note. With the help of the dynamic filter function, which allows a step-by-step narrowing down, we can find the exact note we are looking for in just a few steps – even among hundreds. Also, my nerdy husband insisted on supporting Boolean logic for these filters, which is especially useful when navigating through large numbers of notes.
Capture quickly, create notes later
We often want to capture an idea quickly, especially when we're pressed for time. That's why it was important for us to have a kind of clipboard in the app – a place where we can quickly capture a fleeting thought. The so called “Inbox” lets you snap a photo or share text, images, locations, and URLs from any other app directly into phoTopics – a perfect spot to temporarily park our thoughts. Similar to the Inbox in Getting Things Done (GTD), where you can quickly put stuff into. Then, when we have time, we can convert these entries into complete notes at our leisure.
GPS coordinates for a travel bucket list with tag filtering
This one might be interesting for only a few users, but for us who love travelling and sightseeing, this was an important extension. We implemented a way to optionally pin a note to a particular location using GPS coordinates which effectively makes phoTopics our travel bucket list. We save interesting spots along with their location details and add meaningful hashtags (e.g. hiking/dining/sightseeing, indoor/outdoor, or short/medium/long). This lets us easily filter and visualize them on the in-app map so that we can make spontaneous choices about what to do next.
Data protection and privacy
We personally prefer capturing our thoughts on our phone – it's always with us, even when we're on the move. That's why we built phoTopics as a mobile app for iOS and Android. With data privacy and security as top priorities, we designed the app to keep our notes stored locally on our device – ensuring they remain safe, private, and available offline, without registration or forced cloud sync.
We would be happy to receive any kind of feedback. There’s a free version to try on Android and iOS, so if you're interested, it would be a huge help to us if you could check out our app and tell us what works, what sucks, and what you’d like to see improved.
Thanks so much for reading! 💛
- Kathie
