Moving Apps Is Like Moving House: Not all Your Furniture Will Fit

It’s common in the note-taking world to try out several apps before settling on the one that fits your workflow best. There are plenty of options out there, each built with different strengths and aimed at different types of users. A pattern we’ve noticed, though, is that when people test a new app, there’s a common urge to recreate the exact setup from the app they used previously. It’s completely understandable; you’ve built something that works for you, so naturally, you want to keep it intact whilst hopefully using another app even better suited to you. But this rarely works as intended.

Apps are fundamentally built in different ways, and often for different use cases. Trying to rebuild your exact previous setup usually leads to frustration, either because key features behave differently or because the app has a different philosophy altogether.

One way to think about this is like moving house. Your furniture has a certain layout in your current home. It fits the existing rooms well. When you move, you pack it all up and start imagining how it will fit in the new house, that has different rooms and different dimensions. Consequently some furniture won’t fit the same way and some pieces might not fit at all, so you may even have to get rid of some furniture. The goal is to make your new space functional and enjoyable, not to force it to be identical to the old one.

The same applies to apps. Not all features will map over neatly, and not every app is designed to support every use case. For example, at Capacities, we’re building a powerful tool for individuals, so we don’t support collaboration features. Trying to use our sharing feature for any workaround to this is not going to work: it’s like trying to squeeze a sofa into a room that’s simply not built for it. You might be better served by combining Capacities with another tool that specializes in collaboration.

That said, figuring this out should not fall entirely on users. One of Capacities’ core values is transparency, and this extends beyond communicating what’s next and being active in the Community. It’s also about being upfront about what we support, and equally clear about what we don’t support. We don’t want to leave anyone guessing.

We try to reflect this transparency in how we present Capacities: through the website, onboarding, feature pages, and content explaining exactly what’s possible. If this content encourages people to adopt Capacities then obviously that’s great, but an equally important function of it is to save users weeks of trial and error by transparently showing them if Capacities can work for them.

That said, there’s still room for improvement. So here’s a question for anyone reading: How can we be clearer about what Capacities can, and perhaps more importantly, cannot, do? What questions did you have when testing Capacities, or when comparing it to other tools? Feel free to join our community and share your thoughts there!