Complete guide to Remember This for Mac - your AI-powered external memory system designed for ADHD minds.
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 (which ADHD brains desperately need)
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
All life assets are saved to life-assets/ in your vault (voice/, photos/, parsed-time-logs/).
Time-based aggregation
Automatically-generated rollups that aggregate your life assets by time period:
Rollups are saved to 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
Whisper 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 experience:
Voice memos are your most powerful tool. They're fast, require no setup, and capture thoughts before they evaporate.
"I need to email Sarah about the project deadline"
"Just realized why the client was upset—they needed the data sorted differently"
"Feeling really overwhelmed right now, everything feels urgent"
"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 - the 5-second rule (if you wait, the thought is gone)
• Use natural language - talk like you're texting a friend
ADHD brains are often highly visual. Photos and videos aren't just memories—they're anchors that help you reconstruct entire experiences.
Where you are when you have that voice memo idea, whiteboard sessions, workspace
Screenshots, handwritten notes, receipts, before/after states
Social events, new acquaintances (faces + names = better recall)
Daily photos of long-term projects, workspace evolution
Pro tip: Take a quick voice memo after photos to add context that AI can't infer (who you're with, why this matters, background story)
Your structured reflection space
What happened, how you felt, what you learned, what you're grateful for
Wins, challenges, patterns noticed, next week's focus
Status, decisions made, blockers, next actions
Combat time blindness, track billable hours
Write time logs in simple markdown, then the Obsidian plugin parses them into 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, emotional trends, 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.
Remember This is specifically designed to address ADHD challenges:
Voice memos capture thoughts before they evaporate. Your brain can focus on thinking, not on trying to remember what you were supposed to be thinking about.
Timestamped captures create a concrete timeline of your day. Daily/weekly/monthly rollups give you longer-term time perspective.
Orientation board forces you to choose priorities. Weekly reviews build planning muscle. Task captures get things out of your head for strategic processing.
Daily rollups show concrete evidence of what you accomplished. Photo sequences provide visual proof of progress. Combat "I got nothing done" feelings with data.
Capture is effortless. No filing or organizing required. AI processes everything automatically. You spend brain power on living your life, not maintaining your system.
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 you actually DID get things done
Result: Even on chaotic days, you've captured what happened. The AI processes it into a coherent story.
If a thought seems worth remembering, you have 5 seconds to capture it before ADHD makes it disappear. Quick is better than perfect, always.
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're looking at. The app will link them together.
Every Sunday evening: review last week's rollup, write weekly reflection, update orientation board, set weekly theme. Creates structure without being overwhelming.
End each day with a voice memo or journal of "What I completed today." Even tiny things count. Combats "I never finish anything" narrative.
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're having trouble getting started or have questions about Remember This, we're here to help.