Complete guide to Remember This for Mac — the personal context layer that makes AI useful for everyday life.
Remember This works on a simple principle: capture everything, process nothing in the moment.
Don't try to remember — just capture
AI processes your captures to surface what matters
Daily summaries help you see progress and stay on track
The key is to make capturing so effortless that you do it without thinking. Processing happens in the background while you live your life.
Remember This operates in three layers:
Automated background processing
Assets are organized in the Registry/
folder, separated from the Notes/ Obsidian
vault for fast mobile sync.
Time-based aggregation
Automatically-generated rollups that aggregate your life assets by time period:
Rollups are saved to the life/ folder and
include embedded photos, links to transcripts, and stats.
Scheduled AI processing
Claude Code runs on your schedule (e.g., once daily at 11 PM) and:
Schedule: Configurable daily processing (default: once per day) or trigger manually via "Process Now" button
All AI preprocessing happens locally on your device
Transcription and vision models download automatically during setup. Claude Code uses cloud models by default.
Follow these steps to install Remember This
Download Remember This for Mac
Download DMGOpen the downloaded DMG file and drag Remember This to your Applications folder
Launch the app and grant permissions when prompted (Photos Library Access, Full Disk Access)
The onboarding wizard will guide you through the rest of the setup
The app handles most setup automatically
When you first launch Remember This, the onboarding wizard will:
The app handles all of this for you. No manual configuration needed.
While not required, Obsidian provides the best browsing and editing experience:
Voice memos are your most powerful tool. They are fast, require no setup, and capture thoughts the moment they happen.
"I need to email Sarah about the project deadline"
"Just realized why the client was upset — they needed the data sorted differently"
"Feeling really good about how that meeting went, we finally aligned on the plan"
"At the coffee shop on 5th street where I had that breakthrough"
"Decided to go with vendor A because they had better customer service reviews"
• Keep it short — 30 seconds to 2 minutes is ideal
• Don't self-edit — just talk naturally
• Capture immediately — if you wait, the thought fades
• Use natural language — talk like you are texting a friend
Record voice memos directly in the Remember This app while reviewing your timeline. These are transcribed instantly and saved to your folder.
Tip: Reference items by their labels (A, B, C...) shown on timeline items. For example: "A and B are related to the kitchen remodel project."
After recording, click Process Now to have Claude process your voice memo immediately, or wait for the scheduled daily run.
Photos and videos are not just memories — they are anchors that help you and your AI reconstruct entire experiences and understand the context of your life.
Where you are when you have that voice memo idea, whiteboard sessions, workspace
Screenshots, handwritten notes, receipts, before/after states
Social events, new acquaintances, family moments
Daily photos of long-term projects, workspace evolution
Pro tip: Take a quick voice memo after photos to add context that AI cannot infer (who you are with, why this matters, background story)
Your structured reflection space
What happened, how you felt, what you learned, what you are grateful for
Wins, challenges, patterns noticed, next week's focus
Status, decisions made, blockers, next actions
Understand where your time goes, track billable hours
Write time logs in simple markdown, then the built-in parser generates structured data for:
Your temporal lens on life
A bi-directional view showing your life on a logarithmic time scale — both past and future — in a single glance.
Time buckets:
5 minutes · 15 minutes · 1 hour · 6 hours · 1 day · 3 days · 1 week · 1 month · 3 months · 6 months · 1 year · 3 years · 10 years
Each bucket shows tasks, ideas, key moments (past), and plans/intentions (future) at that timescale.
Automatically generated summaries showing activity patterns, accomplishments, and AI-spotted insights.
Click any photo to see voice memos from around that time, journal entries from that day, and related photos from the same location.
Fast time tracking from anywhere in Obsidian
The plugin adds a command for quickly inserting timestamps in your notes for time tracking:
This inserts a timestamp like 2025-12-11 (+0200) 22:51 at your cursor position, making it easy to log what you are working on throughout the day.
AI is powerful, but without personal context it gives generic answers. Remember This bridges that gap by turning the artifacts of your everyday life into structured context that AI can actually use.
When your photos, voice memos, and notes are organized and accessible, AI can help with real questions — not hypothetical ones. "What did I decide about the kitchen remodel?" gets an actual answer.
Timestamped captures create a concrete record of your days. Daily, weekly, and monthly rollups give you perspective on where your time and attention go.
You never have to file, tag, or organize anything. Capture naturally — voice memos, photos, notes — and AI processes everything into a coherent structure automatically.
Daily rollups show concrete evidence of what you accomplished. Photo sequences provide visual proof of progress. It is easy to forget how much you get done — your data remembers.
Everything lives in a local folder on your Mac. Transcription and photo captioning happen on-device. Your life data stays yours.
7:00 AM — Morning brain dump voice memo, check orientation board (5 mins)
9:00 AM — Start work, take photo of clean workspace
11:00 AM — Break walk with voice memo about new idea
1:00 PM — Quick journal entry about morning productivity
5:30 PM — End-of-work voice memo summary, photo of completed work
8:00 PM — Review today's rollup, evening gratitude journal
Total capture time: ~20 minutes spread throughout the day
Running late — Quick voice memo while getting ready
Client emergency — Voice memos as thoughts come up, photos of error messages
Scattered focus — Just capture whatever happens, no structure needed
Evening — 5-minute brain dump, review rollup to see what you actually accomplished
Result: Even on hectic days, you have captured what happened. The AI processes it into a coherent story.
If a thought seems worth remembering, capture it right away. A quick voice memo now is better than a perfect note you never write.
Capture throughout the day (seconds each time). Review in batches: morning (2 mins), evening (3 mins), weekly (15 mins).
When you take a photo, immediately do a voice memo explaining what you are looking at. The app will link them together.
Every Sunday evening: review last week's rollup, write a weekly reflection, update the orientation board, set a weekly theme. A simple routine that keeps things clear.
End each day with a voice memo or journal of what you completed. Even small things count. It is a surprisingly effective way to see how much you actually get done.
Cause: Full Disk Access not granted
Solution: System Settings → Privacy & Security → Full Disk Access → Enable for Remember This
Cause: Photos Library Access not granted
Solution: System Settings → Privacy & Security → Photos → Enable for Remember This
Cause: Plugin not installed correctly
Solution: Run
claude --debug to verify plugin loading,
reinstall if needed
Cause: Claude CLI not installed or not authenticated
Solution: Verify
claude --version
works, run claude auth login if needed,
and check Settings to enable automatic daily processing
Cause: Running in debug mode (CPU-only)
Solution: Ensure Remember This is built in release mode for Metal GPU acceleration
If you have questions or need help getting started with Remember This, we are here to help.