Videos
You remember the moment, not the video.
A talk. A demo. A tutorial. A clip you saved because of one specific thing in it.
Ten seconds mattered; the other forty minutes didn't. Shelf keeps the video tied to why you kept it.
- MonConference talk on local-first software
- MonThe bit about ownership, not sync
- WedProduct demo: their onboarding flow
- ThuMotion easing in interface animation
- FriTwo minutes on interviewing users
- Later“that talk about local-first”
Next quarter
The video comes back through what it was about, and the note you left beside it.
The video is long. The memory is short.
What stays with you is a sentence, a technique, a moment of a demo, one slide.
Shelf keeps the video with the words and context around it, so the short memory can retrieve the long file.
- The title and description as you kept them
- Your own note about the part that mattered
- The week you watched it, and what else you kept then
- The topic, understood by meaning rather than tags
A note beside a video is worth more than a playlist.
Playlists group by intention at save time, watch later, inspiration, work. That intention expires almost immediately.
One line about why you kept something outlives every playlist you'll ever make, and Shelf treats that line as part of the memory.
Finding a video months later.
Not by channel name. By what it was about.
What you remember
A conference talk. Someone argued that ownership matters more than sync.
Clues Shelf can use
- Talk-length video, slides visible
- Its topic is software architecture and ownership
- You kept a note beside it
- Meaning
- The video's subject matches your description.
- Nearby
- Your note about ownership sits with it.
- Context
- Kept during your local-first reading week.
Kept nearby
- Note: ownership beats sync · January
- Screenshot: local-first passage · January
Where kept videos actually get used.
Three moments where a video you watched months ago has to reappear.
Making the same argument again
You need the talk that convinced you the first time, not a summary of it. See how
Building the thing you saw
A demo becomes reference material once you're implementing something similar. See how
Handing it to someone else
The clearest way to explain an idea is often the video that explained it to you. See how
What you watch says a lot about you.
Viewing history is one of the most revealing records a person leaves. Shelf keeps yours on your Mac, with no account and no profile assembled elsewhere.
Forty minutes watched. Ten seconds remembered.
Shelf keeps the two connected.
Keep the moment, not just the link.
Save the video and one line about why. That line is what brings it back.
Next thought
The problem was never finding new things to watch. It was remembering the ones that changed how you think.
Saving isn't rememberingKeep exploring
Shelf V3 is out now
Shelf V3 is the current build. Shelf does not use automatic updates, so download the latest build here and install it over your current version.
This is intentional. Shelf is built around a local-first, privacy-focused philosophy. An automatic updater requires additional background processes, network connections, update infrastructure, and another system with permission to modify the app. We prefer to keep Shelf’s network footprint and background activity as small as possible.
Manual updates keep the process explicit: Shelf only checks the internet when a feature actually needs it, and you decide when a new version is downloaded and installed.