Published: February 17, 2025

The new year has started and it’s time for a roadmap update!

Quick recap

Since our last article, we’ve achieved a lot:

Full offline mode is here! We’ve completed our offline mode roadmap and you can now work with Capacities offline on all your devices without any interruptions.
We’ve launched our dedicated tablet app which it is now available for everyone on iOS and Android.
We’ve added language support for more languages to the interface of the app. More are following soon.
We’ve added unlinked mentions to the backlinks section.
We’ve added many design improvements and introduced split screen views for media objects.

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. We continuously monitor requests made by our community and on our feedback board and integrate them into our roadmap.

It’s also worth mentioning that we are working on large projects on the backend to scale our infrastructure and make it faster and more reliable. This will lay the foundation for some new features later on too.

Our approach for this year is primarily to focus on making our existing functionality better rather than adding new features. They will come with time, but everyone will benefit from more consistent interactions in the app, less friction and better performance.

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 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.

Long-term plans

We have concrete plans for the following features and improvements, but we have not begun working on them yet. For features you are particularly interested in, we recommend voting on their respective tickets. You’ll get an update directly when the status moves from ‘Planned’ to ‘In Progress’. This will not be in the next few months, as we are focusing on the items above.

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. We are in the process of getting some infrastructure changes done which are required for integration with Readwise. After that, we will start working on the integration.

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.

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

As mentioned, we’ll continue to work on smaller features and improvements that will make Capacities more enjoyable alongside our big projects. 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.

Because of that, we introduced a new system for processing tickets and working on bugs (we call it our “Eat the Frog” session, we’ll share some more insights in a blog post soon). We are now shipping much more fixes and improvements than before as you might have seen in the “Improvements” and “Fixes” section of our releases.

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 remain 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 for making this possible. We’re so excited for what will come. 🚀

What's next?