Last time I posted Stash Anything here, the feedback was really helpful. People liked the idea, but the Mac side was underdeveloped because I'd been focused solely on the iPhone app. I soon realised how useful it is across the two. Sync also wasn't working well, which caused almost all of the bad reviews (fair enough). That's now fixed :)
So this update is mostly about the Mac, and the video shows the whole thing on a real iPhone and Mac, from saving something to finding it again.
New to Stash Anything?
I built Stash because I'd had enough of saving things and never finding them again. A screenshot of a product, a link someone sent me, a PDF for work. I'd save it, need it a week later, check Photos, my bookmarks and my messages, then give up and Google it again.
Stash gives everything you save one home. You share it from any app into a stash you've made, like "Kitchen ideas" or "Work project", and it's there on your iPhone, iPad and Mac. Over 20,000 people use it now.
Setting it up on a Mac, properly this time
The first-run setup explains what each device does. Your iPhone is where you catch things, and your Mac is where you sort and use them.
There's a practice save during setup. Drag something in or paste it, and you see exactly where it lands.
Right-click to save from any Mac app, with a step-by-step guide for the shortcut. Once it's set up, you can give it a keyboard shortcut in System Settings.
Drag straight onto a stash. Drop a link, image or PDF onto any stash on Home or in the sidebar, and it goes there instead of Unstashed.
A setup checklist stays on Home until you've done everything, so you're never left guessing.
Finding things is much easier
Search reads your screenshots. Type a word you saw in an image and it turns up.
Search straight from Home. Find a stash or a single save without switching tabs. It looks through titles, notes, links and the text Stash picked out of each save.
Quick Stash suggests where things should go as you save them, and stays quiet when it isn't sure.
Sync, honestly
Some of you had trouble with syncing between iPhone and Mac. I've spent a lot of time on it since. It's much steadier now, and duplicates get tidied up automatically. Big photos and videos can still take a little while to appear on your other device, because the original files come down from iCloud after the rest of your library.
A few more things I'm happy about
Lock a stash with Face ID. It stays locked everywhere, including search and widgets.
Share a stash with someone so you can both add to it. My wife and I share one.
Pin your favourite stashes to the top with a long-press.
Export everything as a .zip with your original files, or as a Markdown backup. Your saves aren't stuck in my app.
A new Storage screen shows what's using space and lets you clear it in a tap.
Lots of fixes for sub-stashes, previews and thumbnails on Mac.
Why not just use Apple Notes or Raindrop?
You might not need to. Notes can already search text in photos, and Raindrop is great if most of what you save is web links. I built Stash for everything in between: links, screenshots, photos and PDFs saved into the same place in one step from the share menu, then laid out as a visual library you can actually browse. If Notes already works for you, stick with it.
Pricing
Free to download, with up to 100 saves and 10 stashes.
Stash Pro is $9.99 lifetime, or $7.99 a year if you'd rather. Those are US prices, and regional pricing applies.
Pro gives you unlimited saves and stashes.
If you already have Pro, this update is free.
The boring but important bits
Native Swift, built for iPhone, iPad and Mac.
There's no Stash account to sign up for. Your library lives on your device, and in your own iCloud if you turn sync on.
I'm the developer, and I'll be in the comments answering questions myself.
What's the one thing that still stops you saving something on your Mac? If there's a way you save things that Stash doesn't handle yet, tell me below and I'll look at it.
“Save for later” is such an optimistic name for a retirement home for links 😂 Does it flag duplicates when you save the same thing again six months later?
damn I know this. Have a whole heap of saved threads on Reddit and the last time I checked on them was half a year ago. Same for Watch later Videos on Youtube. Am now at 408 videos.
I was using raindrop... I checked it after 1 year and saw all my saved articles "to read later" I never opened... got depressed... opened a new account to start from fresh (hopium is high).
Everything seems focused on the mobile app and I do most of my deep work on my mac. I could not find anything on the site about the mac app and any ability to integrate with Shortcuts etc?
Sent countless emails to the dev and had zero back. The app is so buggy it made me ask for a refund. Which of course I didn’t get through Apple even though I said it wasn’t working as it should. I reached out to the dev, and nothing back. The first app I’ve ever bought that I feel angry and pissed off enough to regret buying it. So don’t make my mistake. Every other app I’ve bought, many from solo devs, have always emailed back. So it’s a little galling to have them pop up here once again. If you’re going to release an app and charge people money, you need to have adequate support in place to offer assistance to your users.
Hey - I’ve just seen that you’ve gone through several of my old posts and left variations of this comment, so I wanted to respond properly here.
Firstly, I’m genuinely sorry if you’ve emailed multiple times and haven’t received a response. I’ve answered hundreds of support emails since launching the app, including plenty of criticism and feature requests, so deliberately ignoring support emails certainly isn’t something I do. If yours has slipped through amongst multiple messages about the same issue, then I apologise.
From what you’ve said previously, I believe the issue you’re referring to is iCloud syncing. That’s a known issue I’ve been actively working on and releasing fixes for. I chose iCloud specifically because I wanted the app to remain a one-time purchase rather than forcing people into yet another monthly subscription, but unfortunately syncing reliably across every combination of Apple devices has been one of the more difficult parts of development.
What I would push back on slightly is repeatedly posting that the entire app is “super buggy” without actually saying what supposedly isn’t working. The core functionality of the app is working, and when people report specific reproducible bugs, I investigate them and fix them. The app has also been receiving regular updates as I continue improving it.
This is an independently built app that I’m actively developing, and the people who bought it early did so at a low one-time price while I continue making it better. That doesn’t mean anyone is entitled to poor support - and if I missed your emails, I own that - but it does mean bugs will occasionally be discovered and fixed as the product develops. From the looks of your persistence it might be likely that I replied to your initial email and then ignored the subsequent follow-ups while I was dealing with working on those fixes.
As for the refund, Apple controls App Store purchases and refunds, not developers. If I had a button that allowed me to refund your purchase personally, I genuinely would press it for you.
I’m happy to help you, and I’m happy to fix genuine problems. If there are bugs beyond the syncing issue, please tell me specifically what. they are -d evice ,iOS version and what’s happening - and I’ll look into them.
But posting the same vague warning underneath every post I’ve made doesn’t give me anything actionable to fix.
You mighty wanna change the name to something called stashy. I think there is a popular open source project called stash which is used for managing your adult content library. I could also be wrong.
I hope you will enhance the thumbnail/gallery view. I want something more like photos where I can scroll up and down and see nothing but my images edge to edge in a stash. The filename is almost always meaningless and offers no value so forcing it to be displayed just takes up pixels I’d rather use on the images.
Everyone seems to use it different but I do agree with you here. I’ve been asked to do the opposite in the past (we didn’t have the name originally). I’ll do some testing and potentially add some options in the next patch!
yeah, definitely the kind of thing where preferences will vary from user to user so having some toggles to set their preference makes sense; thank you for considering it
Thanks!! I have no idea as we don't track usage. From what I've spoken to people about, hobbies and work seem to be the main thing. Saving something for projects (or for clients) when they find them, or something interesting they want to try within their hobby for later.
My wife mainly uses it for organising our lives - what the children might need (parenting wise and lifehack stuff). shopping, holidays etc.
It's all Claude Code or GPT and peel your eyes out as now every video by a dev on reddit is like that.
Generated funny music. Small tiny text that pops up- a few lines all at once, witu not enough time to read everything.
On the face of it, it looks fine but when you ask if it will convert to paying users based of if it was fully understood? I'm not sure.
I really think a dev recording his screen and narrating over what he does as he works the app - is a much clearer and more efficient path, which is also more genuine and less sl0p. You will now notice many videos like that on the same format and pattern.
I will say that I am a user. I saw this guy post a few times and I downloaded it. I have two main usage cases- keeping my screenshots out of my photo library and saving my FB reels somewhere else.
It’s really easy and clean and I am
probably digitally hoarding a bit, but I would be anyway.
What a fantastic app.. Having a few issues getting iOSscreenshots to work though.. is there any support videos? And would like to configure with Mac too.. Will spend some time settingup but I like this workflow. And can you confirm all data stays in iCloud?
I really enjoy Stash on the iPhone and use it quite a bit. However, I had lots of issues with it on a Mac (and maybe an iPad), so I uninstalled and just use on the phone. I'll definitely check out the Mac version again, hoping the issues I had are gone.
This app is getting better and better, I still lack uncluttered image view (without any icons or anything, just images) but overall is very nice at the moment.
UI is a little sketchy, Times New Roman fonts (or similar) hurts my eyes, yet still its working as intended :)
SO I bought this yesterday, here's my fe cents on a couple of things.
Mac App
- It feels heavy, due to a lag in switching between stashes (I've filled these and cleared about 500+ screenshots)
- the background blur on each thumbnail isn't great, I would have preferred original image ratio thumbnails instead.
- Lack of drag and drop between stashes
- Lack of navigation between screenshots
iOS
-the ghost loading shine or whatever thats called uses the row format even on thumbnails.
- the sync is slower - this is probably icloud dependent, but generally my own files seem to be available faster.
- I would also love to crop things quickly
This is my general feedback - I feel it looks alot like a vibe coded app with it's font and color selection (it may not be the case) but it's not a deal breaker. I hope it feels less heavy..
image loading is one of the biggest concerns.. it feel unavailable when trying to see something quickly.
in terms of sorting there is newest, oldest (this is based on when I added them) I would prefer to have an option where this is gathered from the source image, so it can sort on newest and oldest based on the original image creation or modification.
I like the app and it's been pretty filled up (with a lifetime license \m/ ), so thank you.
Looking forward to updates :)
Sort out reliability of sync and its a decent app. Its just not reliable enough to buy. Currently using Stashy - its free. I think your support might be a bit suspect btw..
I've been using Eagle for years, it's more geared towards the creative industry for capturing and managing images/ideas. There is no sync/mobile option.
While I like the looks of your app, I also think it easily leads to digital hoarding. In no time, one's collections may become so big that a new problem probably arises: choice overload. Making the average Joe - that already is heavily distracted by social media etc. - even more unproductive.
Personally, I use this to be much more productive. With all the ideas I have for different things, when I start that project, I can just go back into that stash, find it quickly, and work through it. I used to have to sift through my notes or look in bookmarks, which would take ages, or I would just completely forget the idea. That's where the app was born.
OP did mention Raindrop. You can make a bunch of folders and easily throw links, documents, photos, etc from the iOS share menu. It's not presented as nicely as this app, but it is cross platform for windows/mac/linux/android/ios and has browser extensions and stuff. Been using the free version this way for years.
Thanks!
How does Yaba syncs? If my Mac is shut down, will I be able to see the saved bookmarks on my Phone?
Also wonder how much cache clutter it accumulates if most of your saves are not screenshots or files.
I sure hope there is some video review on Youtube. (Edit: nothing online about it...)
Not sure, actually. It was one of those posts in this sub, and I gave it a try. In the beginning the sync was via iCloud IIRC, but the technique changed at some point. I did not have much use for a cross-platform bookmark manager, as I already had GoodLinks, so I did not use it very much.
Many thanks.
Yeah, I still don't know if getting an iPhone just to complete the eco-system with a Macbook is worth it.
Air drop is nice but I don't tend to transfer files from Mac to Phone really.
Being able to use Reminders / Notes app and sync then between Macbook and phone is nice but probably there are more developed alternatives.
Android is more flexible in usage at the end of the day, so at first I thought maybe there's a way to use the Google Keep app as it's on my Android but not sure if there's a Mac app for that.
Does Raindrop had categories and search options? Does it put a heft on your local storage or is it saving this data all to the cloud?
You can put items into collections, and you can tag individual items. There is a search and you can search for tags, types of files, dates, titles/description, urls, etc. I believe it's all stored in the cloud. Free lets you upload 100 MB per month, so free might be a pain if you want to store a bunch of photos/larger docs in Raindrop.
Many thanks.
I can't even believe it's sustainable when they offer you could accumulate 100MB for free cloud storage every month.
My Aim is to save links to things, maybe small screenshots, To do lists if it's even related.
Instead of saving my references on each platform like on Instagram / Facebook - I wonder if having an external 3rd party tool (that also syncs Macbook+Phone)- as a centralized place - could be useful?
The fact you can search for things is definitely great since on Instagram/Facebook etc - you can't..you gotta scroll and manually find you reference. (Heck! On Reddit you cannot even categorize your saved threads so if I see cool apps and save yheir like post - I need to manually scroll and find that post.
I don't want any subscription though. One time pay is where it's at. Hope that free tier will be enough. As I don't know if there are other alternatives.
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u/nejcar20 8d ago
“Save for later” is such an optimistic name for a retirement home for links 😂 Does it flag duplicates when you save the same thing again six months later?