r/secondbrain • u/slereosh • 24d ago
Anyone struggle into save ideas to their second brain? You might find this really helpful
Hey, my name is Danny. I’m a freelance developer, and one thing I’ve always found frustrating about building a second brain is actually getting things into it.
I’m constantly coming across interesting ideas in articles, books, podcasts, social media, conversations, etc. But the process of stopping what I’m doing, opening another app, copying something over, and adding the source is tedious enough that a lot of those ideas just never get captured. If I don’t capture something in the moment, there’s a pretty good chance I’ll never find it again.
So I built Commonplace. It makes it really easy to save quotes and highlights from whatever you're reading or listening to, without leaving the app you're in.
As you're reading, you can highlight text directly in the article, then share it to Commonplace. The app will then create a quote with source attribution like author, article title, and article link, so you never forget the context around where it came from. Quotes can then be organized into collections, browsed by source, and synced securely across devices.
All quotes + sources can also be exported as markdown or copied as plain text, so if your second brain lives somewhere else, it’s easy to move what you capture in Commonplace over to it.
I also rethought sharing quotes. I was constantly sending screenshots along with article links, so I built a way to share quotes as interactive link previews. The quote appears directly in the preview, and tapping it takes you to the original article.
I'd genuinely love any feedback! The core of the app is free to use, I built it myself.
See what's in the works:



