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Thought Train
p/thought-train
Stop Using Stickynotes | Use this app instead
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Marc Perel

Thought Train — Stop using sticky notes to remember what you're doing 📒 🚫

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Thought Train is an app that keeps your notes neatly tucked into your menubar, right where you can see them

✅ 10,000+ users

✅ Keep a list of quick notes

✅ Highlight more than one thought, and they'll scroll like a carousel

✅ Stop tabbing around

Replies
Best
Ryan Hoover
Super unique, @marcperel. I've definitely made the mistake of CMD+TAB'ing between too many things at once. Separately, this Mac menubar app is similarly minimalistic.
Marc Perel
Maker
@rrhoover When I saw Mac menubar, I thought "damn I should really put Thought Train up now!" I like their minimalism, I'm looking already at un-designing Thought Train to take up less room.
Tommy Jacobs Vedvik
Love it! Tbh it felt a bit like another todo app until I actually tried it. Maybe make a small gif or video explaining it quickly? I'm a big procrastinator and this small app is perfect for reminding me what to work on.
Marc Perel
Maker
@tommyjvedvik Cool thanks Tommy that's helpful, you're right I need to sort out a nice preview video 📹
Marc Perel
Maker
@tommyjvedvik Tommy I've made a cute little gif now which shows how it works upfront, thanks for this suggestion mate.
Victor Gross
Launching soon!
Hey @marcperel , nice app ! what about an autoselect to get the two clicks (1/click on the icon 2/ click on the input field to start typing) in one (click on the icon and start inputing directly) ? ++
Marc Perel
Maker
@vicgrss Yeah I like that idea. I also imagine a contextual Right Click > Send to Thought Train would be cool on highlighted text so you can add it right away.
Vincent Denise

I bought this app (It's pay what you want model) because I was looking for an alternative to Stickies. Good work!

Pros:

Simple and works well.

Cons:

None so far.

Michael Marshall Smith
Interesting idea. Any plans to have the thought list sync via iCloud, or at least to be able to store/read the file in DropBox or similar? Be nice to be able to have them on both desktop and laptop.
Marc Perel
Maker
@ememess I considered this, but for the initial use I didn’t want to add complexity of APIs. It’s something I’ll consider though, because most thoughts arrive away from my machine too, usually on my bike 🚲 or in the car 🚗
Michael Marshall Smith
@marcperel Makes sense. Tho simply being able to choose where the app reads/writes to would do it for DropBox...
Marc Perel
Maker
@ememess I’ll see how that pans out in an update thanks mate.
Marc Perel
Maker
📢 💰 UPDATE ON PRICING If you're wondering why Thought Train is no longer free... After a few months of purely organic traffic, I decided to set the price of the app. That's right, I removed the pure "pay what you want" element, and set it to $3,99. I'm happy with the decision,  as it's helped stabilise earnings and will mean I can better plan product updates, especially the beautiful redesign and productivity updates I have planned!
Tom Schlander
I really like the idea and I bought the tool. There are a few things that could be fine tuned. Seeing your tasks in your menubar scrolling is nice, but it is too much space that is taken away. There can be other ways to show that there are undone tasks and the font size and text field looks a bit strange. Like I said the idea is brilliant, but execution could be better.
Marc Perel
Maker
@tschlander Cool thanks Tom, the design definitely needs some polish, especially on the animation front. Then obviously there's the case of improving the way the text itself behaves in the menu-bar. PS. You can un-highlight thoughts, when you have just one thought highlighted, scrolling stops. That's not plainly obvious in the UX 🙌
John O'Nolan
This is such a cool idea. Would love to hear the back story about how you came up with it :)
Marc Perel
Maker
@johnonolan Hey John, I literally got so tired of forgetting what I was doing 'between' things. Between email, Slack and Skype, and all the other distractions; I kept having a moment of "hmmm what was I doing again?", and so after a quick failed Google I decided to build something that was always visible, but unobtrusive... That's how Thought Train came about, to keep my 'train of thought'. (I'm a massive fan of Ghost btw)
Ashley Sanders

I don't often use menu bar tools, but this one is a must have. It is the nicest to-do/note taking app I've ever used, and the fact that it's right in the menu bar makes it easy to use regardless of what I'm doing in other applications.

Pros:

Really easy to use. Simple but super effective.

Cons:

None so far.

volcanic autumn 🍂
I love that it's markdown capable and looks great with dark mode. Though, I was wondering if there's any preset hotkey or shell command to bring forth the application quicker? And if there's any export options? Thanks. @marcperel
Marc Perel
Maker
@procrasprinces Sarah, the latest version has a quick key :) CMD+ALT+T I've been using it for a few months and that works great.
Hrefna Helgadóttir (Habbi)

I've been using this for a few days now, and I have to say it's fantastic.

If anyone is like me and has a lot of balls flying in the air most days, it's super useful to when the 'wait, what was I working on again' thought pops up in my brain (like all the time) to do a quick glance at the top menu bar and go 'ah, there it was' – and then it's exxxtra satisfying to check it off.

A+ from me

*saying that, the annoyance of the carousel means I really force myself to pick one task to complete, so that's kinda nice => would be nice if the second items would just live in the little drop down though so once one task is finished, I could just swiftly move on to the next without re-gathering my planning thoughts.

Pros:

subtle yet effective, my favourite kind of product

Cons:

really don't like the carousel* if there's more than one item

Marc Perel
Maker
Gosh thanks for the great review! You can turn the carousel off by just de-selecting notes and leaving one highlighted (or leave none highlighted and you’ll just have then tracks) “Completed” notes live in the archive too, so if you click “Show archive” you can fetch them again. Go ya covered 🤣
Jamis Charles
Trying it out now. Seems great. Seeing some overlap with my other menu items. @marcperel How did you get your menu bar so empty? Love it. 2 suggestions: Nice typography. Reverse the order of the list
Marc Perel
Maker
@jamischarles Thanks James - My empty menubar is a picture :) - Previously it always did the carousal effect, so it had a max-width, but we removed that and made it static, lots of early users found it too distracting. - I want to take another stab at a simpler design with better fonts. What I do to combat limited space is just use emojis.
ccgreen

DOWNLOADED - twice. paid once. Can't type in anything. Can't create an account - HELP!!

Pros:

NONE

Cons:

CAN'T GET IT TO WORK; CAN'T LOG IN...

Marc Perel
Maker
Thanks I've responded to your email and forwarded your account issue to the team at Gumroad.
Michael Robson

You can rearrange the Though Train menu bar icon by holding CMD and dragging the icon left/right.

Pros:

The design makes it feel like stock MacOS. Plenty of subtle features make it easy to track and organize my notes.

Cons:

My thoughts can't be trained. 😎

Travis Northcutt
Very rad! Way to go @marcperel. Will you be able to add a keyboard shortcut to open it?
Marc Perel
Maker
@tnorthcutt I want to add a keyboard short-cut or a contextual menu in the right click for highlighted text to just say "send to Thought Train".
Travis Northcutt
@marcperel Cool! A keyboard shortcut would be really great for lots of people, I think – way less of a "flow" interruption if you're coding, researching, etc. to quickly make a note. I try to do this if I get interrupted and have to walk away or switch tasks; otherwise I spend a ton of time resuming work when I come back.
Marc Perel
Maker
@tnorthcutt I'll think of one that's available ie. not widely integrated (like some apps take over shift+cmd+4, OMG!)
Vincent Denise
Hey @MarcPerel, Thought Train is cool. Do you plan to add emoji support soon? 🚂
Marc Perel
Maker
@yesnoornext It supports them if you copy & paste them in, I want to add an emoji button for quicker adding though.
ccgreen
HATE IT SO FAR. WANT TO LIKE IT AND USE IT. DOWNLOADED; PAID - IT'S IN THE MENUBAR - BUT CAN'T TYPE ANYTING IN.
Bart Van Remortele
Could be something that helps me every day in daily standup but I'm missing a few key features such as: date and time thought was added -> next was added, or a way to group them by day too look back at what was added and a way to copy and paste them. If it could support this then this would be a great productivity tool for developers.
Rishi Thariani

Loved the simplicity of the concept - while other apps try to differentiate by adding more and more, Marc has built out a functional tool that addresses a very key problem of switching between apps/tabs.

Pros:

Simple and effective.

Cons:

Would love to see a drag and drop to re-order tasks as a user.

Brett Spradbury

Simple to download, easy to use

Pros:

Great user interface, easy to use!

Cons:

Haven't found one yet