Margin 2.10.1

Lectures written by hand keep their pages, not every lean of the hand.

A lecture filmed as a hand writing on paper used to keep a capture every time the hand moved: 47 for a 10 minute lecture of about 3 pages. Now:

• The writer's hand, its pen and its shadow are left out when captures are compared.
• A page nudged while writing is lined up again.
• Of two captures of the same page, the one showing more of it is kept, so the picture in your note is the whole page, not the hand.
• A capture that shows writing no other capture shows is always kept, so nothing written is lost.

That lecture now keeps 17 (every distinct state of the page). Slide lectures keep exactly what they kept before. The note written from the 17 covers the same points, and its pictures are whole pages.

Also fixed

• A slide whose title changed to one of the same length, or a title-only slide followed by one with a longer title, could pass for the same slide and be dropped. Every match is now confirmed at three times the size.
• The Live tab shows the picture Margin kept.
• "No captions · audio blocked" showed for lectures whose sound was being transcribed: the sound often arrives a moment after capture starts, and is now waited for.

To update: download margin.zip, unzip it over your Margin folder, run ./install.sh, then press the reload arrow on Margin in chrome://extensions.
Lectures you already captured can be folded again with the new rules: venv/bin/python -m sidecar.sessions shows what it would do, --apply does it (notes already written keep their pictures).

Margin 2.10.0

DeepLearning.AI works like Udemy.

• Open a lesson on learn.deeplearning.ai and Margin opens beside it and captures as it plays, no button needed.
• Notes land in the course's own folder, numbered by lesson, with the module as the section, written from the lesson's real English captions.
• Lessons you already finished get notes from their captions, one click in the Course tab.
• Timestamp links in your notes jump to that second of the lesson (the site's player does not do this on its own, so Margin does).

Checked end to end on a real lesson (ChatGPT Prompt Engineering for Developers) with a real model: captions, the slide, the note, the crux and the quiz.

To update: download margin.zip, unzip it over your Margin folder and run ./install.sh, then press the reload arrow on Margin in chrome://extensions (it now also needs to read learn.deeplearning.ai).

Margin 2.9.4

macOS stops asking for folder access again and again.

Margin's helper is started by a tiny app that checks every minute whether it is running. It used to ask the helper "are you there?" and wait 2 seconds. While the helper was busy writing a note it could take longer, so the app started a second copy, which failed straight away (the first one was still running) but only after reading Margin's folder. If Margin lives in Desktop, Documents or Downloads, that read made macOS ask for access every time.

Now it only checks whether Margin's port is taken, which answers instantly however busy the helper is.

To update: download margin.zip, unzip it over your Margin folder and run ./install.sh. macOS asks once more (the launcher changed); click Allow, and that is the last time.

Margin 2.9.3

• Updating no longer asks macOS for folder access again. The installer used to rebuild Margin's small launcher app every time, and macOS treats a rebuilt app as a new one, so it asked again for access to the folder Margin is in; until you clicked Allow, Margin's helper could not start. The launcher is now rebuilt only when what it runs changes.
• From 2.9.2: a slide no longer looks dim for a moment when you return to the Live tab, and the download is 2 MB.

Everything from 2.9: the Crux tab (the 80/20 of a lecture), Ask the lecture (answers linked to the moment), the Quiz tab (flashcards you flip, then export to Anki).

Install: download margin.zip, unzip it, run ./install.sh, then load the extension folder in chrome://extensions. The first time, macOS asks whether "Margin Sidecar" may access the folder Margin is in: click Allow. Full steps: https://saksham.digital/margin

Updating: unzip over your Margin folder, run ./install.sh again, and reload Margin in chrome://extensions.

Margin 2.9.2

• Slides no longer look dim for a moment when you come back to the Live tab: only a newly captured slide fades in now.
• The README's pictures are twice as sharp, and the download is smaller (2 MB): the pictures stay on GitHub.

Everything from 2.9: the Crux tab (the 80/20 of a lecture), Ask the lecture (answers linked to the moment), the Quiz tab (flashcards you flip, then export to Anki), and re-running the installer restarts Margin's helper.

Install: download margin.zip, unzip it, run ./install.sh, then load the extension folder in chrome://extensions. Full steps: https://saksham.digital/margin

Updating: unzip over your Margin folder, run ./install.sh again, and reload Margin in chrome://extensions.

Margin 2.9.1

Updating now restarts Margin's helper. Running ./install.sh again stops the helper that was already running, so the new version is the one answering straight away (before, the new Crux, Quiz and Ask tabs needed a log-out to appear). It also keeps your notes folder even if you never saved one with the installer.

Everything from 2.9.0: the Crux tab (the 80/20 of a lecture), Ask the lecture (answers linked to the moment), the Quiz tab (flashcards you flip, then export to Anki), and closing Margin with × keeps it closed.

Install: download margin.zip, unzip it, run ./install.sh, then load the extension folder in chrome://extensions. Full steps: https://saksham.digital/margin

Updating: unzip over your Margin folder, run ./install.sh again, and reload Margin in chrome://extensions.

Margin 2.9.0: the crux, a quiz and the lecture to ask

Margin now helps you keep a lecture, not just note it.

• Crux tab: the 80/20. The one idea the lecture exists to teach, the three to six that matter most, what to remember, and the line to keep if you forget everything else. Written with the note (no extra model use) and folded into it in your vault. Notes from before get it with one click.
• Ask the lecture. Type a question, get the answer from what was actually said, with the moment linked: click it and the video jumps there. If the lecture never covered it, it says so.
• Quiz tab. The note becomes flashcards you flip in the panel: space to flip, 1 for again, 2 for got it, and the ones you miss come back until you know them all. Export to Anki from there, with a line on what Anki is.
• Closing Margin with × keeps it closed on that lecture. Before, it opened itself again a second later. The toolbar button or Alt+Shift+M brings it back.
• Each tab keeps its own scroll position.

Install: download margin.zip, unzip it, run ./install.sh, then load the extension folder in chrome://extensions. Full steps: https://saksham.digital/margin

Updating: unzip over your Margin folder, run ./install.sh again, and reload Margin in chrome://extensions. Then log out and back in so the new helper starts, or get 2.9.1, whose installer restarts it for you.

Margin 2.8.4

Checked the way a new user meets it: the release zip installed into an empty home folder, set up from nothing (Python 3.14, no keys, no settings), a lecture captured, and once a Gemini key was added, the note, a diagram and the lecture's code run in a notebook.

• No slide lost to a shorter title. Before dropping a capture as part of a slide it already has, Margin takes a second, sharper look. A new, shorter title over the same picture could pass for the old one.
• Clearer first run. If a lecture ends before you have set up a model, Margin says to add one in Settings (everything captured is kept), instead of listing why each engine was skipped.
• Lectures without captions. The installer offers the speech model they need (Homebrew's whisper-cpp does not include one), about 490 MB, once.
• CI now tests what Margin supports, macOS and Linux with Python 3.11 and 3.13, and builds the real download.

Install: download margin.zip, unzip it, run ./install.sh, then load the extension folder in chrome://extensions. Full steps: https://saksham.digital/margin

Updating: unzip over your Margin folder, run ./install.sh again, and reload Margin in chrome://extensions.

Margin 2.8.3

Margin is now licensed under Apache-2.0 (it was MIT). It is still free to use, change and ship anywhere, including at work; Apache adds an explicit patent grant and says the Margin name is not included, which is what companies' legal teams look for. Versions up to 2.8.2 stay under MIT.

Nothing else changed since 2.8.2.

Install: download margin.zip, unzip it, run ./install.sh, then load the extension folder in chrome://extensions. Full steps: https://saksham.digital/margin

Margin 2.8.2

• Updating keeps your notes folder. Running ./install.sh again offers the folder you already use, so pressing Return never moves your notes somewhere else.
• A README that shows it working: a GIF of a real run up top, and every picture from one demo lecture.
• Includes 2.8.1: one slide per slide when the lecturer moves, and a clean-up for lectures captured before it (venv/bin/python -m sidecar.sessions --apply).

Install: download margin.zip (same as margin-2.8.2.zip), unzip it, run ./install.sh, then load the extension folder in chrome://extensions. Full steps: https://saksham.digital/margin

Updating: unzip over your Margin folder, run ./install.sh again, and reload Margin in chrome://extensions.