Essential Space is an amazing app and something I genuinely want to use to capture screenshots, thoughts, links from Amazon, etc. The idea itself is great. But there are issues that have existed for a long time and they seriously hold it back.
The biggest problem is that it becomes an organized mess. The more you use it, the worse it gets. Things pile up and eventually Essential Space becomes almost unusable. Everything is technically “organized” but in practice it just feels like clutter stacked on top of clutter.
I don’t think it needs a massive redesign or anything extreme. It just needs better control. Give us the option to disable or hide sections of the UI. Even something as simple as being able to turn off one section makes a huge difference in reducing the visual noise and mental overload.
The captures section is especially bad. If you take 10+ screenshots and add a few voice notes, it completely overwhelms everything else. You’re stuck scrolling through a single endless page of screenshots and text trying to manually find something. There’s no separation, no relief, no sense of structure. It stops feeling like a tool and starts feeling like chaos.
Being able to hide the captures section entirely, or at least control its visibility, would make Essential Space dramatically more usable. Right now it just doesn’t scale with actual use.
Having a section in settings dedicated to hiding or showing each section would go a long way. It would give people control over their own space instead of forcing everyone into the same layout regardless of how they use it.
I understand that hiding sections might introduce some issues with where things go when you capture them, but that can be solved with default collections. for example, a collection for voice notes, one for recent screenshots, and a main screenshots collection with sub-collections for each app. that way everything still has a place, it just isn’t constantly visible and overwhelming unless you choose to see it.
Keeping the capture chips would also help a lot. They already make it easy to jump to specific screenshots or sources, especially from the homescreen. They just need to exist alongside a cleaner structure instead of trying to compensate for the clutter.
Combine that with a search button in the titlebar and it would completely change how usable essential space feels. Right now finding something can be slow and frustrating. With visibility controls and proper search it would actually feel fast and intentional.
I have no doubt more people would use the app if it felt easier to manage and didn’t collapse under its own clutter.
