Native Design

Kurzgedacht: Opinions are features

Most note-taking apps fail because they try to be everything. They add features until the blank page feels like a burden.

I built Kurzgedacht out of frustration. Every app I tried treated attachments as inline content, cluttering the text with links and images until the actual thought got lost. I wanted a notes app that had opinions about how notes should work.

The name is a play on "Kurzgesagt" (German for "in short" or "in a nutshell"). I swapped "gesagt" (said) for "gedacht" (thought). Briefly thought. Notes are meant to be captured fast and found faster, not organized into elaborate systems.

Transience over permanence

The "Today" view is an integral part of the app. Users can set it to open automatically on their first launch of the day, then consciously select from up to 10 suggested notes to focus on. Once the suggestions are exhausted, there won't be more until tomorrow. This is an opinion. Most apps show you everything. Kurzgedacht caps your daily attention budget.

The app proactively suggests notes using a weighted heuristic engine. Overdue reminders score highest, they need to scream for attention. Notes you've reopened multiple times this week get a boost, detecting "active working context" even without explicit edits. Recent opens get recency bias because what you looked at yesterday is likely relevant today.

Smaller signals add texture: notes edited in the last 24 hours, notes with tags or attachments (assuming "richer" notes are more valuable). The algorithm caps each category to keep suggestions diverse, not just a wall of overdue tasks.

Users can also manually "pick" notes for their day. It's a conscious act of selection, not a passive scroll through an infinite list.

Attachments belong on notes, not in them

This was the original frustration. In most apps, if you paste a link or drop an image, it lands inline with your text. Three links and two images later, your note is unreadable.

Kurzgedacht separates content from attachments. Links become cards. Images go into a carousel. Files get their own section. The text stays clean.

This isn't a feature, it's architecture. The data model enforces the separation, so the UI can't break the pattern.

Capture with zero friction

The fastest note is the one you don't have to think about.

When you open the app, it checks your clipboard. If there's something there (text, a link, an image), a floating "Paste Card" appears. One tap creates a fully formatted note with attachments already organized.

The system tracks clipboard changes to avoid repetitive prompts. It's unobtrusive until you need it, then it's instant.

Privacy in public

Notes contain private thoughts. Sometimes you need to check something on a train or in a meeting without exposing your entire life.

Stealth Mode hides note bodies, images, and tags, leaving only titles visible. You can toggle it in settings for persistent privacy, or use a hidden gesture: three taps on the header for quick activation. Haptic feedback counts the taps so you know it's working.

This isn't Face ID. It's faster. It's for the moment when someone glances at your screen and you want plausible deniability, not a locked vault.

Forgiving search

You shouldn't have to spell perfectly to find your own thoughts.

The matching algorithm uses Damerau-Levenshtein distance, which handles transpositions like "teh" becoming "the". Tolerance scales with word length: short words (4-5 characters) allow one edit, longer words allow two, and very short words require exact matches to prevent noise. Bigram fingerprints quickly discard non-matches before running expensive edit-distance calculations.

Finding notes isn't enough; ranking them matters. Exact matches beat prefix matches beat fuzzy matches. Title matches weight 10x higher than body matches. Recently edited notes float up. Frequently opened notes get a popularity boost. The goal is to surface the right note first, not just find it somewhere in a list.

Advanced filters let users be explicit: has:check for checklists, has:img for images, is:locked for encrypted notes, date:today for recent entries. The search adapts to how people actually type under pressure.

Tactile feedback

Every interaction has haptics. Sorting, selecting, activating Stealth Mode, creating notes. The app feels physical even though it's just glass.

Animations use matched geometry effects so elements move continuously rather than cutting between states. The FAB zooms into the new note sheet. Cards slide into the Today section. Nothing teleports.

This level of polish isn't decoration. It's confidence. When the app responds predictably, users trust it with their thoughts.

Closing

The best products don't give you options. They make decisions so you don't have to.

Kurzgedacht works because it has opinions. The Today view limits what you see. Attachments stay out of the text. Search forgives your mistakes. These aren't features to toggle, they're the product.

Sometimes the hardest design decision is choosing not to offer a choice.