Digital readers lose context, notes, and control of reading progress
Digital readers run into different gaps as they read: word-by-word modes can obscure text structure, marking passages can feel cumbersome, and one reader’s bookmark is hard to move back. Some also want notes they can tag by topic and later cite to their source, but say their current tools do not support that workflow. A focused reading tool could bring these needs together, though the signals do not show that every reader wants all of them.
For digital book and article readers. Mentioned from Dec 2019 to Jul 2026 on Bluesky, GitHub and Hacker News.
4 different people described this problem in 4 separate discussions.
- Indie fit
- 3.0/10
- Pain
- 5.0/10
- Frequency
- 5.8/10
- Willingness to pay
- 0.0/10
- Momentum
- 4.4/10
- Who pays
- Consumers
- Competition
- High
- Build difficulty
- Medium
What people said
Quoted word for word. Follow a link to read the whole discussion.
Is there an app y'all are using for when you read great work, want to capture notes, tag it to a topic, and easily reference it later, especially to cite the source? Pocket isn't working for me for all this. Help?
highlightening is also much faster and more flexible than selecting the text. You can quickly underline or make a circle depending on how important it is for example
Build brief
See what to build and who will buy it
- 2 product ideas with the smallest useful version and pricing
- 4 places to find your first customers
- 2 more quotes from people who have this problem
- Current workarounds, existing solutions and risks