Extension for Snippet (or other cross-platform highlight, bookmarking, and note saving/organizing app)

PopClip Extensions
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Snippet is an app for highlighting text from the internet and other internet- or desktop-based platforms you use to read on (iBooks, PDFs, Pocket, Kindle, Evernote, MS Word, Excel, it goes on and on), exports them as notes in a folder, automatically adds the origin URL or document source, thus creating a basic citation that allows you to remember where you got the note, and easily link back to the source content), and compiling notes and highlights from multiple platforms in one place, easily organizable and searchable.

It has a firefox extension and a mobile app.

I have been looking for an app like this for years, as I read everywhere - but I want my highlights and notes in one place. not limited to a single .pdf .doc or .epub etc. and not limited to a single desktop app, and not limited to desktop apps at all, but allowing the same sort of ease for marking up, highlighting, note taking and citation building for web-based content that you have in say, a PDF viewer.

my copy-paste method is a mess, takes too much time to organize and flip between windows, requires the extra step of attaching the source (which may be vague - a random pdf, or a random page), and therefore my notes are all over the place.

this is long overdue! a life saver as an academic and overall voracious but scatterbrained reader who culls from thousands of different source documents a year, and needs them all in one place, easily retrievable.

it would be easy to make into a popclip extension, as it already exists as a firefox extension.

my problem is now when i select text on the web, both the popclip and the snippet popups appear – or sometimes they compete for attention, and i have to turn one off to access the other. but i am always switching between these 2 tools while reading, and having a popclip extension for Snippet would be the seamless solution.

https://gosnippet.com/hello

The existing extenstions for note taking apps don’t have all of these capabilities - they can do some, but not all. there’s not as much cross platform support, ability to highlight, and ability to access the notes all together in one location (and on mobile, desktop, and browser). Devonthink comes close.

Does anyone have a better suggestion for an app that Popclip already supports, that does these functions?

If not, or either way, I would greatly appreciate a popclip extension for Snippet.

1 Like
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It is an interesting web app though I think their popup every time I highlight something on the web would get to be a bit frustrating. Plus you are stuck with the clippings in their format.

I think you would get much more functionality from Devonthink. Plus Devonthink is infinitely scriptable to tweak it to exactly how you want it to behave. The combination of PopClip and Devonthink is superb for such customization.

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Thanks for the suggestion @betl5 and welcome to the forum. I’m looking to see if there if Snippet has a public API, that PopClip could use to add snippets. Can’t find anything at first look :mag_right: If anyone has anything, please share. :pray:

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hi nick, thanks for the help - i just contacted them to see if they do or would be open to doing it themselves, will keep you posted.

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rkaplan, thank you for your advice! devonthink is i think my next best option though it doesn’t have all the features i need…. i don’t like how it doesn’t automatically record the source material when snipping content, only when the document is saved on your desktop -
not for web based content. they also do not to my knowledge offer in-text highlight (Snippet automatically turns highlights into stand alone notes, and without switching windows) - so you get your highlights in the text, but then also have that content extracted and retrievable externally…. and easily viewable in bulk. so your research from different documents appears together, in an easily viewable “poster board” or sticky note format, which is visually appealing and easier to see the larger picture of your research and scan your notes than devonthink, which requires you manually select every tiny note before you even can see what your note or excerpt was - that’s not viewable quickly, only manually, and the black and white plain text is harder to differentiate than the colorful snippet board.

with devonthink I don’t like having to remember every single document you maybe only grabbed one sentence from, and then record the source as well. al of this is automated in snippet…. this is one of the main features that i’m looking for, creating a frictionless process for quickly grabbing notes from everywhere.

i don’t like how proprietary snippet is (its an annual subscription…) but i am willing to pay for a service i’ve been hoping someone would develop for my entire academic career.

alas! do you know if devonthink has extensions that allow you to do any of the above and expand its functionality?

thank you for your help…

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Devonthink is highly scriptable (Applescript or Javascript) with Smart Rule capability as well. The Devonthink Forum is extremely active with many scripts available for download and with lots of assistance in the community in debugging scripts you may write.

If existing scripts do not do what you want, for sure you could tweak them to what you want and continue to modify them as your needs change in the future.

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Thanks for this @betl5 ! Snippet looks really interesting.
As a way around the proprietary thing, have you tried the export functionality?
I can see myself maintaining a few folders of active snippets and later using the export feature to archive them in Devonthink.