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Comment by thejarren | Hacker News Reader

I take screenshots all the time, and sync them to iCloud so I can access them immediately on my phone/iPad. I also back up previous years of screenshots, I think I have back to 2015 right now.

But one thing that I've been keeping my eye on as well (and used for a month) is https://www.rewind.ai/ which records everything that happens on your M1/M2 mac screen and is immediately searchable.

Just like Alex says here "They’re not as good as having the original, working thing – but they’re much better than nothing. I can dip in quickly and easily, and instantly be reminded of the creativity of my past self." And I think arguably Rewind solves for that completely (with the added cost of increased storage space and less specific capturing/resolution).

This isn't a pitch for their product, it's just a natural progression to screenshots/capture that I believe is relevant here.

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This looks absolutely amazing, it honestly feels like someone made this program just for me because I kept nodding to myself as I was reading through the feature list. Just what I want! But I'd never use a closed source software for something as personal as recording everything I do on my laptop. They can have Wireshark traces and weekly audits with a digest going straight to my inbox, proving nothing ever leaves my Mac, but I still wouldn't use it. It'd just feel unsecure even if it realistically probably isn't. Hopefully we'll see something like this as a fully OSS solution some day.

Ubuntu ..14 or so.. had a really good activity journal, where you could see on a timeline every file you touched, website visited, song played, etc. It was not quite a continuous video, but it was so helpful. Something changed that seemed to have stopped the whole project working on newer versions. Maybe the zeitgeist log it relies on is not used by applications so much any more

Edit: found it https://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/jammy/man1/gnome-activi...

As an added note, I stopped using Rewind because of the "steep" monthly cost ($20 a month), and the fact that I'd only want to use it as a backup to use long term.

Upon reflection, $240 a year to have completely uncut video of my computer screen instantly searchable forever is a very valuable offering. Not to mention the fact that the file size is fairly small compared to large 4k videos.

If it were built into macOS I'd be blown away and use it forever, still on the fence about it.

It's a niche product it seems. I have zero interest in it.

I mean, I have zero interest in Instagram, but that doesn't make it a niche product.

That makes sense. This archive tool is even more out there because it's not a direct link or file of the content, but just a capture of what the content would be. My work is mostly UI/UX and design related, so the capture is actually pretty valuable.

I'm a bit of a digital packrat, and sometimes like to review personal files from nearly a decade ago, so I think something like this would increase in value for me over time.

Sort of. The more you hoard, the more painful it is to trawl through the hoard to review. It reminds me of Linus Torvald's "Only wimps use tape backup. REAL [adults] just upload their important stuff on ftp and let the rest of the world mirror it." -- let your work be remembered on the basis of who it had an impression.

I've been looking into Nextcloud/Photoprism for a more efficient storage/browser experience, but honestly the software seems pretty amateur so far (vs Google Photos / Apple Photos).

For now, everything is loosely store on an SSD, with different folders for year/month/day (of backup). Screenshots are stored by year.

I'd really like a google photos browsing experience for all my data backup, regardless of content type (well, with filters).

That quote is partially missing the point here : part of the value to you is the emotional one as the creator of that thing - the most obvious example from a slightly different domain being baby photos.

I also stopped using it for the cost, even though I loved the software.

If the rewind feature set—especially the search through screen recording aspect—is the most compelling, then perhaps something I've been working on may be of use. It can basically do everything rewind can (though audio support is a WIP), doesn't cost anything, and feedback would be really helpful.

Shoot me an email at govind <dot> gnanakumar <dot> com if you're curious or interested in beta testing it.

I'm interested, and I'm attempting to email you, though I can't quite figure out the email address. I keep getting an address not found error.

I poked around their post history and their email is actually: govind <dot> gnanakumar <at> outlook <dot> com

Wow thanks for that! Much appreciated.

Rewind looks cool - almost magical (I imagine part of the magic is due to the M1/M2 chips).

But I would be concerned overly relying on them. They've raised VC money, which means their future path is unclear. I don't know what direction their product will take if pushed by VC growth expectations. In particular, this is just a client-side only app with a pretty clear and finite feature set. But VC influence means there's a risk they will be shoehorning in features and online capabilities to promote growth.

(I’m the co-founder & CEO of Rewind.)

While it’s true we raised money from VCs we did not give them a board seat or voting control. I have super-voting shares and am the only member of the board. We will never be pushed around by VCs.

Our vision is to give humans perfect memory and we will not let VCs get in the way.

Hey well I'm glad to see you in the replies to one of my comments! Love what you're doing, and I'm following updates.

A reminder that iCloud Photos is not end to end encrypted, and that both Apple and the US federal police (FBI et al) have warrantless access to the contents of iCloud, so you are creating a huge trove of data that could be misused against you by police at any point in the future should it be politically expedient to do so. Screenshots frequently contain all sorts of extremely sensitive information.

This may not be part of your threat model, but it should at least be known by people so they can evaluate the risk themselves.

From Dec 7, 2022:

https://www.macrumors.com/2022/12/07/apple-advanced-data-pro...

Approximately nobody has this turned on.

It's opt-in, so approximately nobody ever will.

Everyone you iMessage with will still be putting all of your conversations and attachments and iCloud message sync keys into non-e2ee backups from their end, so turning this on won't accomplish much even if you know about it.

Tomorrow it might become opt-out.

But I still wouldn't trust Apple 100% : we know that they were among the companies silently cooperating with the NSA, and the potential for backdoors in their software isn't nil. (Whether you should consider this as a real threat depends on your circumstances of course.)

> Approximately nobody has this turned on.

It doesn't matter as long as the person storing screenshots in iCloud turns it on.

> Everyone you iMessage with will still be putting all of your conversations and attachments and iCloud message sync keys into non-e2ee backups from their end

Weren't we talking about storing screenshots in iCloud photos?

Actually came here to mention rewind, too.

It’s simply put a groundbreaking game changer for me.

Be it finding text in conversations, using it to recall the face of an applicant when their name doesn’t ring a bell, find code, find text in websites you visited, going back to make sure your eyes didn’t trick you, …

I recently started to enable closed captions in all applicant interviews so I can search for specific terms I recall after the fact.

Truly amazing.

How does it work when a simple search returns too much data? Or is that an edge case? I think that if you used Rewind for several years, the amount of hits a specific search would return is insane (for example, searching for "dog", if you remember seeing a specific dog breed some time ago, but not sure when or where)

one kinda similar app on windows is ManicTime https://www.manictime.com/ which can track opened apps, documents and URLs, and put them on a timeline. it can also automatically take screenshots (on a rolling period, limited to paid version), but I find the limited free version to be quite useful in itself.

though, while it's neat to have activity history be accessible like this, it still doesn't compare to the value of intentionality of manual screenshots, and bookmarks, and notes, and files, and stuff like that. while it may be neat to be able to get back like this to something you missed while you browse, if it's done only to find it and put it down as a note/bookmark/screenshot/file, you just come back to systems that are already present and searchable.

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