ADHD
You know this. The idea that arrived while you were driving. The thing you absolutely needed to say before that conversation started. The question you meant to ask the doctor. There and then not there.
Captrieve is built for exactly this – capture in a few seconds, and it reminds you when you're actually in the right place to do something about it. Not at 2 PM on a Tuesday a week and a half before the appointment. When you need it because you just walked through the door.
What isn't working
You won't. Not because you're careless – because working memory doesn't hold things while the rest of your brain is doing something else. That's not a character flaw. That's just how this works.
You capture it. It goes into a pile. You never see it again at the moment it matters. The note exists. The moment is gone. Capture without retrieval is just organized forgetting.
It fires at 2 PM. You're in the middle of something. You dismiss it. Now it's gone and you've also lost your train of thought. A reminder at an arbitrary time works if the time is the right context. Usually it isn't.
Apple Reminders has location triggers. They work sometimes. You still have to stop what you're doing, open the app, type the task, configure the trigger by hand – all while the thought is actively leaving your brain at lightspeed. One trigger per task. No combinations. And delivery, the thing you are relying on, is not guaranteed.
What's different
The capture flow is one tap and your voice. Fast enough that the thought doesn't escape. Then you tell it when or where you'll want it back – and it finds you there.
One tap opens the record view. Speak. Tap again. Done. The whole thing takes less time than unlocking your phone and opening another app. The thought doesn't have to wait for you to finish.
When I get to the pharmacy. When I walk in the front door. When I sit down at my desk. When I plug in tonight. You pick the moment that will make it actionable – not just audible.
Not at a random time you set three days ago. At the pharmacy counter. At your front door. In the context that makes it impossible to dismiss because you're already exactly where you need to be to act on it.
NFC tags
NFC tags are inexpensive stickers – under a dollar each – that you place around your home. Tap your phone against one and whatever you've set for that location pops up instantly. No app to open. No menu to navigate. Tap the thing, see the thing.
For a lot of people with ADHD, this is the part that actually sticks. It's active and physical – I am here now, what did I need? – rather than a notification that fires at you while you're doing something else and interrupts the thing you were actually focused on. The tap is a moment you initiate. That's a different relationship with your own reminders.
Tap when you sit down. Everything you meant to do at the computer – all of it, right there, without having to reconstruct it from wherever you left off.
On the way out: the thing you keep forgetting to bring. On the way in: the thing you needed to do once you got home. The door is already the context. The tag makes it explicit.
The song idea you captured on Tuesday. The technique you wanted to try. The reference you found that you wanted to work from. Right there when you sit down, instead of somewhere in a notes pile.
The side effect to mention at the next appointment. The question about the dosage. The interaction you read about and wanted to ask the doctor. You're standing right there when you need to remember it. Now it's right there too.
After a while you notice you don't tap it anymore. The routine runs on its own. The place became the cue – not the app. That is the product working at its best.
What Captrieve is not
Captrieve does not want you to organize anything. It does not have projects or tags or priorities or due dates. It has thoughts and cues. You speak the thought. You tell it when you'll want it. That's the whole thing.
If you've tried and abandoned approximately seventeen productivity systems, this is built for you. The ones that failed asked you to build and maintain a system. Captrieve asks you to do one thing in the moment the thought arrives, and then nothing else. Future you handles it when the cue fires.
From people using it
As a person with ADHD, ideas fly in and out of my mind all the time. Now I use Captrieve with NFC tags all over my house – in the kitchen, on my guitar, at my desk, on my TV. It not only reminds me of the thing I need to do, the song I want to learn to play, the show I heard about and want to watch, but the habit of checking in with Captrieve in all of these places is actually training me to remember stuff on my own just from being in those places!
– J. E. M., full-time student, part-time crazy person
I used to walk into meetings and remember, right as they started, that there was something I wanted to bring up, but damn me if I knew what it was. Now I capture it the second I think of it and it's there when I walk in the door. My manager has noticed. I've noticed. I assigned my phone's action button to Captrieve.
– Priya S., project coordinator
Privacy
No account required. No cloud. No one seeing what you capture or when your cues fire. Everything is stored locally on your device. This is not a subscription to manage or a relationship to worry about – it is a one-time purchase that works entirely offline.
Get Captrieve
Twenty retrieves, no credit card, no account. After that, $7.99 keeps it forever.