Amnesia - A Mac app that asks why you opened that tab
Amnesia is a local-first macOS menu bar app for people who open X, YouTube, Reddit, Slack, or analytics dashboards and forget why. It asks for your intent, keeps a tiny timer on-screen, checks whether you did what you came to do, and turns the day into a private report of opens, forgotten intents, and time lost.
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This feels like it would be incredibly useful for people with ADHD. The intent prompt alone could be a game changer for them. Quick question though can you add your own custom apps and websites to track or is it limited to the ones you've pre-selected
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@pradyumna6 Thank you, that means a lot. ADHD / attention drift is one of the use cases I care about most here.
And yes, you can add your own custom websites and apps. The default list is just there to make setup fast, but Amnesia is meant to work with whatever tends to pull you off track personally.
@vidur_saini Great!
Best of luck for the launch. Eager to see where Amnesia will go!
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@pradyumna6 Really appreciate you!
This is a very specific behavior that most productivity tools ignore. I don't lose time because I lack a task list. I lose time because I forget the reason I opened something in the first place. Clever framing.
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@darly_selby Totally. That was the exact itch behind Amnesia.
Most tools assume the problem is planning or discipline, but a lot of the leak happens in that tiny moment between “I opened this for a reason” and “wait, why am I here?” We wanted Amnesia to catch that moment without turning into another system to manage.
Im thinking this might well morph to a mobile app, notably because I frequently take my phone with me when I (e.g.) go to the basement to get a phillips-head screwdriver, and when I get there, I've completely forgotten why I came down to the basement in the first place. I have to go back upstairs and wander around until "Oh yeah, I needed it to screw in the door handle."
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@arathy_kushalappa1 That was the goal! Thanks, Arathy :)
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@luki_notlowkey Thank you! Yes, I’d like Amnesia to become a sustainable paid product. The important part for me is making money in a way that aligns with the product: local-first, privacy-conscious, no attention-harvesting, and useful enough that people are happy to pay for it. Right now I’m focused on learning from early users and improving the core experience.
Hey cool idea. I have a question regarding app-switching velocity: does Amnesia allow users to whitelist certain background apps that shouldn't trigger the intent prompt, or does it dynamically adjust its sensitivity based on the active project/workspace you are currently in? Sticking a timer right in the menu bar is smart. Congratulations on the launch!
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@konstant_gk Thanks! Right now Amnesia is intentionally simple: you choose the specific apps and sites you want it to catch, and everything else stays out of the way.
There isn’t dynamic workspace/project sensitivity yet, but that’s exactly the kind of direction we’re thinking about: letting Amnesia understand context better without making the setup feel heavy. For this first version, the goal was to make the interrupt explicit, predictable, and easy to trust.
Forcing a moment of intent before the distraction loop kicks in is such a simple but high-leverage intervention. Congrats on the launch!