Dean Huo

Beacon - Turn highlights into webpage navigation markers

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Beacon turns webpage highlights into a visual navigation layer. Select important text, create a highlight with a shortcut, and Beacon adds a clickable marker on the right edge of the page. Click any marker to jump back instantly, or hover to preview the highlighted text. Unlike traditional highlighters focused mainly on saving notes, Beacon keeps key passages visible while you read, making long articles, AI answers, docs, reports, and research pages easier to navigate.

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Dean Huo
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Hi Product Hunt 👋 I built Beacon because my online research workflow became faster with AI, but also much messier. When I use ChatGPT, Gemini, technical docs, or long articles to learn something, I constantly run into new concepts I want to revisit later. I don’t always want to save everything into a note-taking app. Sometimes I just need a lightweight way to mark important parts of the current page and jump back to them instantly. That’s what Beacon does. Select text, use a shortcut, and Beacon creates a highlight plus a small clickable marker on the right edge of the page. The marker reflects where the highlight appears in the content, so the page becomes easier to navigate. It’s useful for: long articles AI-generated answers technical documentation API references online research reports study materials knowledge-heavy webpages Beacon is intentionally simple. It does not try to replace full note-taking or knowledge management tools. It focuses on one small workflow: helping you return to important passages without losing your reading flow. This is v1.0, so compatibility may not be perfect across every webpage layout yet. I’d really appreciate feedback, bug reports, and ideas for what should come next. Question for the community: When you highlight content online, do you mainly want to save it for later, organize it into notes, or navigate the current page faster?
Dean Huo

Quick update after launch:

Thanks to everyone who checked out Beacon.

After getting some early feedback, I’m realizing that the most important thing for v1 is not adding more features too quickly, but making the core workflow more reliable:

highlight → marker → jump back → continue reading

Beacon should stay lightweight for now. I don’t want it to become another complex notebook tool too early.

Next, I’m focusing on better compatibility across long pages, dynamic content, AI answer pages, and different webpage layouts.

After that, I’m considering:

- export highlights

- color categories

- tags

- sync later

For people who read long webpages, AI answers, or technical docs: which one would be most useful to you?