2022 in Review: What Happened at Curiosity 💫

We’re starting the new year with a look back at how the Curiosity app changed in 2022.

Leon Zucchini

Published in

Curiosity

7 min readJan 3, 2023

It’s hard to believe another year has come and gone — and what a year it’s been for us here at Curiosity!

From launching new features to expanding our team and reaching new customers, we’ve had a lot to celebrate. Our Curiosity app has improved and grown so much in the past year thanks to our awesome customers. 😍

What’s stayed the same is our focus on helping people save time by creating the best, safest search possible. We hope to maintain these standards in 2023 and improve even more!

So let’s have a look at the highlights from 2022? 🚀

Our new features through the year ✨

1. Integrations 🔗

Our app has gotten an upgrade with the addition of several integrations to make your search experience more seamless. 📝 🖇️🌎

You can now access your Contacts from Google and Outlook, as well as popular productivity tools like Notion, Evernote, and Onenote directly from within the app.

We’ve also included integrations with pCloud and DocuWare, giving you even more options for storing and organizing your information.

And if you’re looking for the perfect image or GIF, our website search integration includes Giphy and Unsplash to help you find just what you need.

These integrations make it easier than ever to find what you need, no matter where it’s stored.

2. Clipboard Manager 😻

January started with a clipboard manager 📎 that lets you save and quickly get things you’ve copied.

You know when you copy-paste something and it’s wrong because you copied something else in-between… and you have to start again? Yeah, we find it super annoying, too. Our app lets you save and search through all your old clipboard entries.

Just connect your clipboard and search entries with the shortcut < (less than). You can also pin clipboard entries to the top for easy access. 📌

We currently support text, links, images, and files.

And if you copy something private and it shows up in your clipboard results? Not a problem! 🥷

You can hide or even delete individual results from the clipboard. That lets you get rid of them without having to remove other entries in the clipboard.

3. TAB Actions 🎭

In February we upgraded the Command Bar ⏫ with TAB actions (open, copy, reply, archive, delete…) and prettier images to actually let you do things with the results of your searches.

You just need to hit Tab from the command bar to see additional actions with the file or email, e.g., open, open in source, reply, forward by email, etc.

4. Search scanned PDFs and Images 🐰

Do you know those pesky scanned PDFs that aren’t searchable? In March we tackled search-in-images 🖼️ to let you search them — and pretty much any text in scans and pictures.

We managed to keep the app small and light with that feature by using built-in OCR (optical character recognition) capabilities in both major operating systems.

To take advantage of that, you just need to enable the toggle under Extract text from images in the Preferences menu and find all those pesky scans!

Meme of two kittens inside a computer desktop. Text over image says: “Hacker voice: We’re in!”

5. Schedule your File Indexing 🌺

April was about improvements. We added preferences and drastically increased performance. ✨

For instance, indexing files for search can get your computer working hard. To make sure that doesn’t stop *you* from working hard, we added scheduling for indexing.

This way you can tell the app when to do indexing and when to stop. For that, go to the Preferences menu, scroll down for File Indexing and select the time slots of your choice.

6. Color Themes 🎞️

In September the app got a makeover. We added color themes and completely re-designed the sidebar. 💄

Few things in life are purely black or white. So why should Curiosity be?🎨

You can choose between themes with a range of color schemes… from quirky to calming.

To try them out, click on the cog icon in the left bar for Preferences and scroll down to the section Themes. Check the box over a theme to try it.

7. Open Files and Folders in Local Apps 👻

In October we were back to speeding you up ⚡️ with the ability to open files and folders in local apps.

For instance, since we know you all love Notion… ✌ With this feature, you can open Notion pages directly in the local Notion app (just activate it under the Preferences menu as well).

8. New User Guide and Help Chat 🎃

November was a very busy month. It started with revamping all our help channels. 🛟

We added sections, search, quick videos, and chat to our User Guide (which you can check by clicking here), and added an in-app chat as well, to make it easier for you to get in touch with us! 😉

9. Save Searches as a Space ✈️

November also brought re-designed 🏷️ Spaces and Saved Searches to let you tag things without needing to move them.

And you can save specific searches as a Space! 🔎💾

To save a search, just click on the Save button in the search bar. Your search will be saved as a Space, and updated as your content updates. To change the saved search, just open the space, change the search, and type a new search.

Saved searches are especially powerful if you combine search terms for precision searches. They’re great for tracking a topic, e.g. if you monitor email threads or RSS feeds.

10. Lock, Save and Load Filters 🔐

We’ve upgraded filters so you can lock, save and load filters to save time with common searches. 🎯

If you often use combinations of filters (e.g. “slides in dropbox in the last week”), then this one’s really helpful. You can just save a combination of filters and reload them in future searches, saving you time.

To save a combination of filters: (a) Do a search in the app, (b) Set your filters, (c) Click the filter button on the left of the search bar and click “Save filters”, (d) Give your filter a name. When you next search, load the filter from the same filter menu.

11. Take Notes Within the App ✍️

Finally, in December we added Quick-notes (Beta) 📝 so you can take notes as quickly as hitting ALT+SPACE — and they’re all saved directly in Curiosity.

To get Notes, connect it as a new “app” under Apps. To make a quick note hit ALT+SPACE (Command bar), type New Note… and boom! 💥

You can also attach notes to docs, emails, etc. using the Tab (or right-click) menu. That lets you easily switch between the doc and your note.

Wrapping up 💫

Last year was a blast — stay tuned for even more great things in 2023! 🚀

2022 was a year of hard work, dedication, and achievement for us at Curiosity. We’ve delivered a bunch of great features to help you find things more quickly and simplify your life. 🤩

Now we face new challenges to make 2023 even better. We’re excited to see what the future holds and to continue making a difference in your life, so you can keep counting on us.

Let us know what you’d like to see next at Curiosity — share your thoughts and feedback in the comments!

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