I take screenshots. A lot. Every time I see something useful, I just take a screenshot — EB bills, restaurant recommendations, Instagram posts, flight tickets, booking confirmations, movie suggestions, receipts and what not. It feels like the easiest thing to tell myself: "I have everything sorted and stored" and it gives me instant relief. It's almost like my brain says, okay, we've saved it. We don't have to remember anymore. Then life moves on, but the screenshots keep adding up.
So one day, I had to find a warranty card. I remembered taking the screenshot. But had absolutely no idea where it was. So I started scrolling. Ten minutes into it — nothing — and so I had to drop it and find some other way of getting the info. But in the process, I realized something. I did capture the information with a screenshot, but what good is capturing information if you are not able to find it when you actually need it?
It made me think. Why do we even take screenshots in the first place? It's not because we like collecting images. It's because we're scared we'll forget something or we think the screenshot has some really good value or insight. Our screenshot folder is basically our second brain. Except, there are two problems. First, our second brain was not organized well and second there was no way of searching through it.
I had to ask someone if this problem needed solving. I called up someone I know and asked if they faced the same issue. Of course he did. We then spoke to ten other people and everyone said the same. They take screenshots and everything lives inside the screenshots folder, but they never use them. So we decided to build an app that can help users organise, rediscover and get value out of the screenshots that they take and named it Upshot.
You can try Upshot on Google Play.
Read how we built Upshot to make screenshots easy to find — swipe-to-organize, gamified levels, and offline OCR search.