Locus Communis
A digital commonplace book. Collect, tag, and share curated excerpts from the books you read — with smooth 3D page-turn animations and an animated leather-bound cover.
What it does
Locus Communis is a refined web app for commonplacing — the centuries-old practice of copying striking passages from your reading into a personal book. Flip through your personal and shared collections with 3D page-turn animations, bookmark favorites, tag excerpts, and export to Markdown, JSON, or Google Drive.
Public books let you browse and favorite other readers' collections. Kindle imports pull highlights straight from your device. The companion Obsidian plugin syncs your commonplace vault back into your notes, and the Librarian tier unlocks per-work markdown notes for deeper engagement with the text.
Recently shipped
- Two-way Obsidian notes sync — per-work markdown notes now flow bidirectionally between Locus Communis and your Obsidian vault via a dedicated sync endpoint.
- Guided tour mode — first-time readers get a walkthrough of the notebook, shared books, and sync features.
- Menu redesign — refreshed navigation and install helpers for the PWA offline flow.
- Web Audio page-turn sound — moved off the media session API so pressing play on your headphones no longer gets hijacked by a page flip.
- Firefox fixes — ironed out several rendering edge cases on Firefox.
Features
- Animated leather-bound book with 3D cover opening and page-flip transitions
- Personal (private) and public shared books
- Bookmark, tag, and export excerpts — Markdown, JSON, or Google Drive
- Kindle highlight import
- Deep linking with rich social preview cards (dynamic OG images)
- Obsidian vault sync via the official plugin
- Per-work markdown notes (Librarian tier)
- Browse and favorite other readers' shared books
- Full-screen markdown editor, dark mode toggle, responsive design