Storing memories is usually tedious. URLs are moved to the bookmarks area or copied and pasted into a dedicated app. Then there are the camera clicks of posters or the dozens of screenshots we take that sit like a tidy mess in the Photos app.
Imagine a system where you press the iPhone’s action button. It takes a screenshot, writes a quick summary of what’s on the screen, adds hashtags for quick searches, and automatically saves all the information to an app of your choice.
Sounds great, right? Well, the iPhone won’t do that. Android devices like the OnePlus 15 can do this. And that leaves you with a tedious process where you have to save, move and manage important memories.
What is important is not always easy to find
I have over two thousand screenshots saved on my iPhone. Most of it is content that I wanted to revisit later. Random articles, a cool meme, course material, job opportunities, a music video on YouTube, and more. I want to save all this information and revisit it.
That’s easier said than done. The search system built into the Photos app just isn’t smart enough. I recently saved the screenshot of a fantastic photo series documenting the local dance traditions of Shillong in the hope of visiting the place in the near future.
Between saving this information and the weeks of work that followed, I took dozens of new screenshots for work tasks. When I finally got some breathing room to explore the nearby village, I couldn’t find the original screenshot.
I couldn’t bring myself to scroll through a long gallery, and the search system didn’t help with contextual, text-based queries. I was disappointed and a little angry. My iPhone 17 Pro can run AI models locally, but doesn’t provide a system that can help store important things with some analytics data.
You see, on the OnePlus 15 you get a feature called Mind Space. With one touch, a snapshot of your phone’s screen is saved. The built-in AI analyzes it, writes a short summary of it, saves the page URL, and even creates one-step tasks.
All these memories are saved as a special card in an app with a heading and the preview of the screenshot. It’s like an AI-powered storage vault, which is now also integrated into Gemini. The iPhone offers no such convenience, even though ChatGPT is at the heart of Apple Intelligence.
Luckily, the Shortcuts app offered some respite. And although it took a few minutes and a few tries, I was able to recreate the same functionality as Mind Space on OnePlus phones and the corresponding system on Nothing smartphones.
How do I do it?
My goal was to create a quick and clear task flow that looks like this:
Keystroke > Save screenshot > Analyze content > Write summary, save URL, create tags > Save to notes.
To get it working, I went into the Shortcuts app on my iPhone and created a frame for the actions. After determining the exact chain of command, I searched for the “Use” function and selected the AI “model” for analysis and text generation.
When choosing the model, you can choose between Apple’s Cloud, On-Device AI and ChatGPT. For maximum speed, the On-Device feature works best. However, I chose ChatGPT because it has been updated to the smarter GPT 5.1 model with better reasoning features.
Next, I described the requirements in the Use Model field using a natural language description. Finally, I selected the built-in Notes app as the destination to save these memories. You can also push any other app of your choice.
After the link was complete and I gave it a name, I moved on to the physical action part. Since I rarely use the action button on my iPhone, I went to the Settings app and configured it to trigger the shortcut of my choice.
This is the end. Now, whenever I need to save a bunch of information, I just long-press the action button and the information on the page (along with a summary and URL) is saved to the Notes app. This all happens in the background without having to jump back and forth between apps.
But what if you’re already using the action button for something else? There is a workaround for this too. You can park the same shortcut in Control Center and trigger it from there. However, you need to make a small change.
More specifically, you’ll need to allow a delay of a second or two between tapping the shortcut button in Control Center and returning to the app where you want to take a snapshot. The delay is crucial.
When you trigger the shortcut and a screenshot is immediately taken, the image saved is that of the Control Center. However, if there is a delay, you can swipe up in Control Center and go back to the app/page you want to capture and save. Alternatively, you can use Siri to trigger the link with a voice command on your iPhone.
All in all, thanks to the AI features on the device, you can now save yourself the trouble of saving random screenshots and losing them in a crowded gallery. More importantly, you can customize the entire process of storing the information or add additional steps to tailor it to your needs.
