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How do you capture things quickly across devices in a self-hosted setup? (lemmy.world)
submitted 4 months ago by to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
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I’ve been struggling with something that sounds simple but is surprisingly annoying:

capturing content quickly across devices in a self-hosted environment.

On Android there’s share, on iOS shortcuts, on desktop copy/paste… but everything feels fragmented.

I often end up losing things or postponing them just because capturing isn’t frictionless.

Curious how others handle this.

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[–] 2 points 4 months ago (1 child)

The problem with that to me at least, is that there’s no one uniform way to capture things. Notes and videos and images and files all need different contexts and views. I hate Pocket and similar services for this reason - it feels too “media” friendly, too focused on videos and links and PDF files. When most of my read later is text - articles and such.

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 4 months ago (1 child)

    Yeah — that’s exactly the feeling I kept running into.

    At some point I stopped trying to adapt existing tools and ended up building something around this idea of “uniform capture”.

    It’s basically a very minimal layer where you can send anything (text, links, quick notes, etc.) from any device in one step — without worrying about where it goes or how it’s structured.

    Still early, but it’s been working surprisingly well for me in daily use.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago (1 child)

    Tell me more!

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  • [–] [S] 0 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    Sure 🙂

    What I ended up building is basically a very minimal “capture layer”.

    The idea is simple: no matter where you are (phone, browser, desktop), capturing something should always be the same action.

    In practice:

    • Android → share
    • iOS → shortcut
    • browser → bookmarklet
    • desktop → just paste

    Everything goes into the same place instantly, without deciding upfront what it is or where it belongs.

    No tags, no structure, no “mode switching”.

    Just capture first, decide later (or never).

    I built it mainly because I was tired of stitching together different tools depending on context.

    If you want to take a look: https://github.com/oldany/dropmind

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago (1 child)

    That looks cool! And… I think we can extend it to iOS and android apps. The benefit being drag and drop simplicity and sharing sheet access, instead of shortcuts, which have always felt wonky to me.

    I’ll play with it first. Thanks for the link!

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 4 months ago (1 child)

    Yeah I get what you mean 🙂

    Shortcuts work (that’s what I’m using on iOS right now), but they can feel a bit “indirect” compared to something more native like share sheets or drag & drop.

    Curious to hear how it feels once you try it — especially what feels frictionless vs what doesn’t.

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 4 months ago (1 child)

    Small update: DropMind just showed up in today’s selfh.st newsletter under development activity.

    Feels like the idea is slowly starting to resonate — curious to see how people end up using it in their own setups.

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 4 months ago

    Just pushed a small update based on real usage feedback.

    Fixed a couple of issues (attachments cleanup + clipboard counts) and improved the Apple Shortcut for multiple items.

    Still keeping things simple and focused on fast capture.

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