What's next?

Published: September 1, 2024

We’re in the middle of the summer break but we’ve shipped a lot of new features and improvements over the last few months!

Capacities Web Clipper is now available for Chrome, Edge, Firefox and Safari
The mobile app is now available on the App Store and Google Play Store
A new date picker and time ranges for dates

The following can be expected soon:

Tablet App

We’re currently developing our tablet app and aim to release a beta version for all Believers very soon. After a testing phase, we will roll it out to all Capacities users.

Offline Mode

We extensively wrote about our roadmap towards an offline-first Capacities:

We’re in the last steps to that goal. To stay updated on our progress, you can follow our offline roadmap. We expect to finish all the missing features within the next months.

Next big steps for Capacities

We’re currently working on three big projects. Next to that, we’re working on smaller features and improvements that we ship every now and then. This includes more consistent interactions in the app, less friction and better performance. We continuously monitor requests made by our community and on our feedback board and integrate them into our roadmap.

Calendar 2.0

After the updated date picker and support for date ranges, two more important steps will follow in the next few months:

Step 1: A reworked calendar: We’ll rework how you can interact with the calendar in Capacities. We’ll overhaul the month, week, and day view to make it more intuitive and more powerful. We’ll also rework how date references and timelines are displayed, which is needed for:
Step 2: Calendar integrations: Calendar integrations will allow you to display, create and manipulate your calendar events from within Capacities. You’ll also be able to create notes from your events. For version 1, we’ll add integrations for Google Calendar and Microsoft Outlook. We are also currently evaluating if we will also add Apple Calendar and the CalDAV protocol in version 1.

Media types 2.0

Working with media is an essential part of knowledge work. We see huge potential to bring working with media in Capacities to the next level. These improvements will be split into several releases that will be released sequentially. Here’s what we have planned:

Overhaul of all existing media types: Standardized views, image zooming, better PDF rendering, audio transcription, a global audio player, and much more!
Media x Search x AI: Each media type has the potential to be made dramatically more useful with the help of search and AI technologies. Next to UI and usability improvements, this will be the main focus point of our overhaul of media within Capacities. Some examples would be searching the content of images or PDFs, automatically generated descriptions for images or transcription for audio files.
Video object type: Video will allow you to save YouTube videos and more as your own object types, enabling you to watch them inside Capacities and take notes.
Email object type: You will be able to send emails to Capacities and save them as email objects. You will be able to take notes, tag them, and search their content.

Deeper AI integration

AI will be a real game changer for your knowledge work, there’s no question, and we see immense potential for AI in Capacities. We are constantly evaluating the latest advancements and technologies and are thinking about how we can best integrate them into Capacities.

AI will not be a single “feature” but will be deeply integrated into Capacities over time. It, therefore, will constantly be part of our roadmap.

We created an isolated roadmap for AI. You can read about our AI roadmap in the documentation.

Next up

The following are features and improvements we have concrete plans for but will most likely not be ready in the next couple of months.

Importing from other note-taking apps

While bulk import is still a higher priority for us, we decided to focus on other features first. We’re still in the process of finding a good solution for transitioning from other note-taking apps.

We know that many users are manually transitioning from other apps and we are aware that this is cumbersome. So we’ll most likely implement solutions which will allow you to import a set of notes to an object type or a collection first. We also plan to allow bulk media upload so it’s easier to import PDFs, etc.

Over time, we are also considering adding “one-click” imports from other apps. This is not easy, as every app builds on other paradigms and to make most out of Capacities it’s best to build on our three pillars. We hope that adding these features incrementally makes sense to you.

Reader integrations and Annotations

Comprehensive annotation system: We plan a unified concept for annotations across different media and sources. This includes footnotes, highlights, and comments in media content, as well as snippets and highlights from reader integrations.

Reader integrations: Integration with reader apps (such as Readwise Reader) is highly requested. We have a first-class integration planned that deeply integrates into daily notes, objects, and how Capacities works.

Smaller features and improvements

Kanban views and “Group by”: As a step towards a more visual approach to knowledge work and as a prerequisite for task management, we’ll add Kanban views and the ability to “Group by” to collections and queries.
Bidirectionally linked properties: Like in other databases, you’ll be able to link two objects together. Your book’s “Authors” will be linkable to your persons “Books”.
References in Queries: You’ll be able to reference the surrounding object in your queries so you can reuse queries everywhere.

Simple task management within Capacities

Task actions already allow you to delegate tasks to your task manager of choice, where you can then manage all your tasks the way you want.

Task management in Capacities will be a simple and pragmatic solution with a special object type for tasks. It will integrate seamlessly into the interface and existing concepts. It will give you a birds-eye view of all your open tasks within your notes and several additional organizational properties that will work for most people in most scenarios.

We don’t plan to turn Capacities into a full-blown task manager with all kinds of special use cases. We’ll keep it simple and will offer an option to deactivate it completely.

Our values & long-term commitment

And finally, a couple of words about what drives us and where the company is heading.

Commitment towards a faster Capacities with less bugs

Next to the big projects, we’ll continue to work on smaller features and improvements that will make Capacities more enjoyable. We want to reduce the bug count and increase the stability of the app. Capacities should be an app we work in every day which is fun and enjoyable to use. So this is one of our highest priorities at any point in time.

Continuous effort towards simplicity and ease of use

We want to stress how important simplicity and ease of use are to us. We see this as a continuous effort, and we’ll aim for it whether we are improving existing features or developing new ones. We want to offer a system that just works for most users and requires the minimum effort to set up. As part of this, we will work on a great onboarding experience, better material, and videos, as well as faster ways to set up your workflows.

Our vision for Capacities

We envision Capacities as the best “thinking environment” for individuals. We want to enable people to spend more time in a calm place where we can capture, process, think, work, and create amazing things. We want to remove any friction and be a tool that is as useful as possible for you. We want to achieve this goal before we do anything else.

We remain convinced that a relentless focus on users and individuals is best guaranteed by staying an independent and sustainable company, and we are on a great track for that.

Capacities as a company

We already achieved a lot. We’re so grateful for our users and the enthusiasm, excitement, and constructive feedback from our users and the community. Thank you all for being part of this journey.

We are a sustainable and growing business due to the incredible support from all Capacities Believers and Pro subscribers. Capacities only works because of your support. We deeply appreciate that. Thank you all.

Current team:

Michael (Co-founder, Developer)
Steffen (Co-founder, Developer)
Beth (Content, Marketing, Community)
Luca (Developer)
Anna (Content, Marketing, Part-Time)

We are hiring!: If you’re interested in working with us, you can find more information here.

Thank you all for making this possible. We’re so excited for what will come. 🚀