Open Monday's draft on Thursday knowing what it needed
Days later, the line you left yourself waits in Smart Return's list. Put it on the card, and one click brings back your draft's browser tab and your Obsidian note.
Lecture 9: flood retention
“I'm on slide 14. Recheck the gauge figure before I go on.”
Project · Urban Water Systems
- Microsoft PowerPointThe app opens, you pick the deck
- SafariThe tab you were on: the 2013 flood report
This card is Smart Return. Example: a made-up geography institute in Germany. People, projects and sources are fictional, and each project on these cards was made by hand.
“What I like most is the ability to return to work after interruptions without having to create another task-management workflow. I do not think Recall needs to become a learning-management platform. Its strength is helping people recover their working context quickly.”
You can't say what was wrong with paragraph three
Thursday, 13:50, and the article draft you last touched on Monday is open in front of you. You read paragraph three twice, trying to remember what was wrong with it and which source you meant to check, until someone knocks.
- Your work
- Lesson prep, an article or a thesis chapter, picked up between classes and often days later.
- Where you lose the thread
- The draft is still there, but the small pointer is gone: the paragraph to review, the source to check.
- What Recall gives you
- The pointer you left, then the draft's browser tab or Obsidian note back in one click.
Slides, seminar, office hours, grading: one Thursday
An invented Thursday: you teach twice and have one article under revision.
You are on slide 14, with the deck in PowerPoint and a flood report in Safari, and today's lecture starts at 10:15 across campus. You press ⌥⌘B and type one line: “I'm on slide 14. Recheck the gauge figure before I go on.”
Leave a noteone line on the thread you are in
Office hours start at 14:30. Under the Smart Return card, in Waiting on you, is Monday's note: “Paragraph three overclaims. I need to check Krüger 2019 before I rewrite it.” Return to it puts the article on the card. One more click brings back the Overleaf tab and opens Zotero, where you pick Krüger 2019.
Smart Returna note waits, however old it is
Office hours are done and the papers are waiting in Moodle. Before you open the first one, you click the Recall is on switch in the menu bar and pick 3 hours. While the tray says Paused, nothing is captured.
Pauseno capture or analysis until it resumes
On the Today page, the afternoon's article work sits in one lane with anything else you did in Overleaf, because Overleaf looks like one site to Recall. You choose Move to project and pick Elbe article, the project you made by hand last month, and it stays there. Move to project files a whole thread, so a thread that mixes two Overleaf papers can't be split.
Move to projectsorted by hand, and it stays
A pointer that waits for you, however long.
Press ⌥⌘B before you leave the draft and type what it needs, and days later the note waits in Smart Return's list.
Return to it puts that draft on the card. One more click brings back the Overleaf or Google Docs tab and your Obsidian note. Zotero, Word and PowerPoint open as apps.
Choose Move to project, then New project, and Loops keeps one list per course or paper, with its notes and unfinished work.
Overleaf projects read as one site to Recall, and so do Jupyter notebooks on one server, so you file those by hand. Move to project files a whole thread, so a thread that mixes two papers can't be split.
Click the Recall is on switch in the menu bar and pick how long, and while the tray says Paused nothing is captured.
From 15 minutes to until you resume. For an app you always grade in, exclude it in Settings.
The animation is an illustration with made-up data. The other screens are from the real app, filled with demo data.
Where it stops, and what it keeps.
Recall stays out of learning management: there is no link to Moodle, ILIAS or Stud.IP, and it grades nothing. Each row says what works today, what works in part, and what is not there yet.
- Naming threads and projects by hand
- Here today
- Click the pencil beside a thread's title. A project has Rename in its ⋯ menu, and a name you give it stays.
- Return to the exact PDF, slide or source
- Partly
- A browser tab and an Obsidian note come back exactly. PDF readers, PowerPoint, Keynote and Zotero open as apps, and you pick the file. Sharper returns are in active development, but a page inside a PDF is not promised.
- An overview of open projects, with last action and next step
- Partly
- Loops keeps one list per project, with notes, unfinished work, time spent and when you left it. It is strict about what counts as unfinished, and the next step is whatever your note says. Weekly review is planned next.
- A clear split of my words and what Recall inferred
- Partly
- Your note appears in quotes, marked as yours. How you got here lists the pages, chats and calls you went through, with nothing written by AI. Might be relevant suggests up to three moments from other apps. Thread names, summaries and open questions are Recall's own reading of your screen, and nothing marks them as inferred.
- Asking questions about past work
- Not yet
- Ask your past work is in active development, with a first version being tuned. Until then, the search box on the Today page finds threads by name, summary or note.
- Export
- Not yet
- One-click export of your whole local history in open formats is planned next. Until then, your history sits in one folder on your Mac.
What is on your screen stays on your Mac. Recall Core, our own model, runs there: it reads the screen about every 15 seconds and discards the image, keeping short descriptions, app names, window titles, timings and your notes in one folder. One exception to discarding the image: when a chat message becomes a task, Recall may keep a small picture of that chat on your Mac, only while the task is open.
All of that can still name a student, so pause from the menu bar before you open grades, or exclude the app you grade in. Forget history deletes your Recall history on this Mac. Usage analytics and crash reports are on by default, never carry anything from your screen, and one switch turns them off.
Diagnostics sharing is off by default, and should stay off where student data could be on screen: when it is on, screenshots redacted on your Mac can be sent to us.
Questions lecturers and researchers ask
Does it work with Overleaf, Zotero and Jupyter?
Yes for the return, no for the sorting. In a browser, Overleaf, Google Docs and Jupyter come back as the tab you were on. Notebooks in VS Code come back as the workspace folder, and Obsidian comes back with its vault and note. Zotero, Word, PowerPoint and PDF readers open as apps, and you pick the file. Overleaf projects read as one site to Recall, and so do Jupyter notebooks on one server, so you file those by hand. There is no plugin to install.
Can I keep student records out of it?
Yes, by pausing or excluding. Pause from the menu bar for anything from 15 minutes to until you resume, and nothing is captured. An excluded app is never captured, analyzed or reopened. Exclusions work per app, not per site, so a Moodle tab in your everyday browser needs a pause, or a second browser that you exclude. The Trust Center shows GDPR controls as implemented and no third-party audit yet, so ask your data protection officer if your university has rules on assessment data.
Does Recall record my lectures or report to my university?
No to both. It records no audio, video or calls, never touches the microphone or camera, and never logs keystrokes or reads the clipboard. Your university gets no view of it: there is no team view or manager dashboard, and your history sits in one folder on your Mac.
Is there a student or education price?
No. There is one plan for one device: $14 / month, or $9 / month billed annually at $108. It starts with a 30-day free trial, no card, and every charge has a 7-day money-back guarantee.
Is there a Windows version?
Not yet. Windows is on the roadmap with no date. Recall runs on Macs with Apple silicon (M1 or newer) and macOS 14 or later. Join the Windows waitlist and we will email you the day it is ready.
How soon will I see something, and what does it need?
Within the hour you see your first threads: related tabs, files and chats grouped under one name. Tonight your whole day is on the Today page. Smart Return comes tomorrow, after a break. It needs the Screen Recording and Accessibility permissions and a one-time download of Recall Core, about 1.9 GB, and setup asks before it downloads.