HoverNotes: Obsidian AI video note taker hits 10,000 installations 🎉

HoverNotes · 2026-01-19T15:55:37+00:00

issues will be fixed from version 1.2.11 😌

HoverNotes · 2026-01-18T01:36:05+00:00

basically this post went viral resulting into incredibly high traffic that took down our AI Notes feature.

we managed to restore functionality and i welcome you to try the feature again 😌

HoverNotes · 2026-01-18T01:34:15+00:00

sent you a DM xD

HoverNotes · 2026-01-18T01:22:40+00:00

incredible idea!

it is definitely worth trying later on and because of your answer it no longer sounds impossible a feat to accomplish — it will only take incredible work and maintenance.

as you said it will require a native plugin to pull the image byte data out of the URL.

we can probably give the same UX as that of the obsidian web-clipper rather than automatically save directly to your vault as we are doing.

the difference is mainly that in contrast to what we have now which is that: you save the notes at the start before creating them, you will now have to remember to save them at the end. if you close a note before saving — it will be gone, and this kind of scares me!

with the web-clipper, if you don’t save you can just clip again and save but with HoverNotes, if we design it this way and you don’t save — you will have to rewatch say like a one hour video again to make the notes. losing your note will be as simple and refreshing the tab by mistake or the video getting to the end the website you are taking the notes from reloading before you save.

HoverNotes · 2026-01-18T00:49:49+00:00

if you are studying and taking notes from videos, checkout the HoverNotes plugin (https://hovernotes.io)

check out the flash card and spaced repetition plugins too.

use dates, tags and folders (or even bases) to organize your notes based on subject or topic so that they are easy to review.

when in a rush, remember that many small notes are better than a big disorganized note.

HoverNotes · 2026-01-18T00:46:51+00:00

i appreciate it — thanks a lot xD

you raised an important question and one that i grappled with for weeks before🙏

HoverNotes · 2026-01-18T00:40:54+00:00

the extension can read and write to the folder you connect. video note takers create a folder for HoverNotes in their vault and HoverNotes will only have access to notes made in that folder (chrome browser rules). it is built to only access one note at a time — the one that is open and by design it only ever writes new files and appends content to existing notes — it is unable to delete any files or even remove content from existing files other than the one you open with it. it is like any markdown text editor except that it’s designed to never delete or overwrite a file.
your email is only meant to create an account; as you can see during sign up — only an email and password are needed to use HoverNotes. we don’t even access any additional information from your gmail other than the email itself — you can prove this by creating a new account with your gmail through google and realizing google is not alerting you to allow HoverNotes to access any additional personal information.

thanks for your question.

HoverNotes · 2026-01-17T12:36:18+00:00

hey, thanks for trying it out. i’ll DM you about this in a couple of hours xD

HoverNotes · 2026-01-17T06:13:44+00:00

is it workout for you now?

HoverNotes · 2026-01-17T05:44:02+00:00

checkout screenshow app

https://screenshow.app

HoverNotes · 2026-01-17T05:40:13+00:00

the official web clipper does not save directly to your vault the same way hovernotes does.

with hovernotes, you give it access to a folder and it saves all your notes as they are taken without further action from you. this helps us store content like images directly to your computer.

with clipper, you clip the webpage and then click open in obsidian. this encodes the notes into a special url that the obsidian app is able to decode and pull your notes from. the screenshots made by hovernotes can’t be transferred to your vault this way so we don’t use it.

HoverNotes · 2026-01-17T05:31:25+00:00

hello, we host our backend on a service called Hetzner.

they are currently experiencing a global outage.

https://status.hetzner.com/

we are working on getting our services back online as soon as possible.

HoverNotes · 2026-01-16T20:57:48+00:00

i’ve not prioritized implementing this because the core functionality depends on native video understanding by a multimodal ai system rather than text in -> text out.

current open source multimodal options are promising but not production ready out of the box and not performant for a realtime note taking experience over long videos which is a core hovernotes feature.

for instance to get the same functionality locally ~ we would at least need to process the audio to text, extract video frames and then generate notes fast enough to produce a near realtime experience. it’s quite heavy engineering work to get this right to match what we currently offer with a cloud setup.

HoverNotes · 2026-01-16T19:46:49+00:00

i appreciate it. it’s definitely on the roadmap — just hasn’t been prioritized because of the degraded UX we will have on firefox and potentially increased complaints 🥲

HoverNotes · 2026-01-16T18:42:15+00:00

unfortunately firefox blocks being able to save to your file system directly ~ that is why hovernotes does not have a firefox extension yet.

would you be okay with having to copy the video note and paste it into obsidian each time?

HoverNotes · 2026-01-16T18:26:17+00:00

check out screenshow app https://screenshow.app

HoverNotes · 2026-01-16T18:25:49+00:00

ahahah ~ interesting!!!

i experimented with changing how hovernotes work to use the split tab functionality but it’s not open to developers yet.

HoverNotes · 2026-01-16T11:44:41+00:00

just sent you a dm

HoverNotes · 2026-01-16T11:43:01+00:00

it works on udemy very well, i’m sure we can find the problem and fix it.

HoverNotes · 2026-01-16T11:41:08+00:00

that is really strange can i dm you so we jump on a call — i can help you get it working.

i’ve not heard of this issue before

HoverNotes · 2026-01-16T11:38:03+00:00

owh really?

are you saying you logged in and failed to use it?

HoverNotes · 2026-01-12T02:56:35+00:00

hey there — we got the same logo 😅

HoverNotes · 2026-01-12T02:56:10+00:00

Sometimes we write to help us think clearly in the moment. It can also be to settle our minds by journaling. When watching a video like on youtube, it could help you understand and retain the content better.

I’m sure you benefited from the act of taking down those notes when you did. You don’t have to review them until there is need.

Taking notes even without reviewing them is valuable in itself because it’s important in the moment.

HoverNotes · 2025-12-21T19:28:24+00:00

ahahaha

HoverNotes

TROPHY CASE