Pool App Sorts Screenshots Into Personalized Collections and Recovers Original Links

Pool, a new iOS app, automatically sorts screenshots into personalized collections called pools and tracks down the original links behind saved content. The app helps users rediscover products, recipes, travel ideas, and other saved material they intended to revisit later.

Users grant the app access to their photos, after which Pool moves the images into categories based on the products, places, or things depicted.

Once imported, the app uses AI to locate the original link associated with each screenshot, such as a retailer’s website for a product or the ingredients and instructions for a recipe originally posted on Instagram. Co-founder Maxime Junique said the idea came from his own experience and that of co-founder Piet Terheyden.

“It sounds pretty obvious, right now, when we say it, but it’s something that we do so naturally — you don’t notice it, necessarily,” Junique said.

The founders met years ago in a co-working space and asked friends about the issue; the friends reported the same habit of screenshotting and forgetting items such as design ideas or other inspiration. The app was the first product to emerge from Spinoff Studio, the founders’ product and design studio, around three years ago.

The first version was built in Lisbon over a couple of weeks while the founders lived out of a van.

They later pivoted to B2B SaaS and built CRM software called Waitless, which was acquired last year. The maturation of AI brought Pool back to life. “We were like, it seems like a perfect time to go after this idea,” Junique told TechCrunch.