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
- Ghost sharing: share themes with templates and a book-left layout for cleaner social previews.
- Covers and notecard rework: refreshed cover treatments and excerpt notecards across the app.
- List view: a new way to browse excerpts alongside the existing book view, with mobile menu polish.
- Admin panel update: backend improvements for managing books and submissions.
- CSV import: bring excerpts in from spreadsheets without retyping.
- Obsidian plugin 0.3.0: per-excerpt files with book-page metadata; two-way sync from 0.2.0 still in place.
Features
- Animated leather-bound book with 3D cover opening and page-flip transitions
- Personal (private) and public shared books
- Bookmark, tag, and export excerpts to 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