SWYoon Labs

Fully revised · July 2026. This post replaces the original five-part "dev diary" teaser with a single, complete guide: why I built Side Panel Clock, how to install and use it, how the code works, and how to put it to work in your own day. I spend most of my working day inside the browser, and all day long I kept doing the same tiny things: glancing at the clock, working out what time it was for a teammate three time zones away, and starting a quick timer so a task wouldn't quietly eat an hour. None of these are hard. The problem is that each one pulled me away from what I was doing. The OS clock meant looking off-screen. A world-clock site meant a new tab. A timer meant yet another tab or a phone app I'd forget to check. Individually trivial; together, a steady drip of small interruptions. So I built Side Panel Clock — a small Chrome extension that puts a clock, a world clock, a timer, and a Pomodoro into the browser sidebar, one glance away with zero context...

UPDATE · v1.3.0 Just keep jotting — it tidies itself up Simple Side Note — the lightweight notepad that lives in your browser sidebar — is out in 1.3.0 . In one line: "Less cleanup by hand, and every delete is undoable." 📝 At a glance 🧹 Auto-clean old memos — unpinned memos clear themselves after a chosen age (7 / 30 / 90 days) 🗑️ Trash — deleted memos are kept for 30 days and can be restored anytime 📌 Pin = "keep this" — pinned memos are never auto-cleaned 🛡️ Off by default — nothing is removed until you opt in 🧹 Auto-clean old memos — the headline feature Every lightweight notepad has the same dilemma. It's great for jotting things down the moment they pop up , but over time most of those turn into throwaway notes you no longer need — and deleting them one by one is quietly annoying . So 1.3.0 adds ⚙️ Settings → Saved...

Update summary: Phrase Hero 1.2.0 completes all five learning worlds, expands the library to 100 expressions, opens every world from the start, and can refresh learning content without an extension update. Five complete learning worlds Phrase Hero began with a simple goal: make common English expressions easy to practise in Chrome's side panel. Version 1.2.0 completes the original five-world map. The Study and Research world and the Career world join the existing categories. Each world contains 20 expressions across the two exercise levels, bringing the total to 100. Examples in the new worlds include: Study and Research: figure out , sum up , read up on , and sit in on ; Career: turn down , take over , live up to , and follow up on . Meanings are available in Korean, Japanese, Chinese, and English while the quiz sentence remains in English. Choose any world from the beginning Previous versions used sequential unlocking. A learner had to complete an earlier world...

UPDATE · v1.2.0 Never lose a note again Simple Side Note — the lightweight notepad that lives right in your browser sidebar — is now on v1.2.0 . In one line, this release is all about "keep your data safe, and keep your hands on the keyboard." 📝 At a glance 💾 Backup & Restore — export all your notes to a single file and import them back anytime ⌨️ Keyboard shortcuts — ⌘/Ctrl+S to save, ⌘/Ctrl+F to search (toggle in Settings) 🖥️ OS system fonts — San Francisco on Mac, Segoe UI on Windows, applied automatically 🐛 Small fixes — unified color-button tooltip language, and more 💾 Backup & Restore — the star of this release As your notes pile up, one worry grows with them: "What if I lose all of this?" Until now you could export notes one at a time as HTML or Markdown, but there was no way to back up everything at once. Delete the ex...

Update summary: Phrase Hero 1.1.0 adds a focused review round for incorrect and skipped questions, while keeping review separate from scores and unlock progress. The problem with replaying an entire quiz The first version of Phrase Hero made short phrasal-verb practice easy, but it treated every question equally after a round ended. If you missed only three expressions, the only option was to replay questions you already knew as well. Version 1.1.0 adds a smaller loop: finish a round, identify the weak expressions, and practise only those items again. How missed-answer review works During a normal round, Phrase Hero records questions that were answered incorrectly or skipped. The completion screen then displays a Review mistakes (N) action when there is something to revisit. Selecting it starts a new round containing only those questions. This makes the next action obvious and removes repeated questions that do not need immediate attention. The review round deliberately d...

In one sentence: Phrase Hero is a free Chrome side-panel game for practising English phrasal verbs in short sessions without leaving the page you are reading. Why phrasal verbs are difficult to retain Knowing the individual words in figure out , turn down , or follow up on does not guarantee that you will recognise the complete expression quickly. The meaning depends on the combination, and a list in a notebook rarely provides enough retrieval practice. I built Phrase Hero because I wanted practice that was easier to start. It stays in Chrome's side panel, presents one small decision at a time, and lets a learner complete a round without opening a separate study service. How a practice round works Choose a world such as business, communication, daily life, study, or career. Each world contains two exercise styles. Level Task What it trains Level 1 Choose the missing verb from four options Recognition in context Level 2 Select the verb and particle in the...

📅 Published July 2026  ·  ⏱ 4 min read  ·  ✍️ SWYoon Labs Simple Side Note v1.1.0 is now live on the Chrome Web Store. This update rethinks how saving works, adds smarter memo organization, and brings Markdown export — without changing what makes the extension simple to use. Here is everything that is new. 💾 Explicit Save Button Previous versions saved automatically as you typed — which was convenient, but left a persistent question: "Was that actually saved?" Starting in v1.1.0, you are in control. A Save button now appears at the bottom of the editor, and it tells you exactly what is happening. When there are unsaved changes, the button shows a · indicator so you always know the current state. After saving, the button briefly confirms with ✓ Saved . If you preferred auto-save, it is still available. Go to the new Settings tab and turn on Draft Auto-Preserve to restore that behavior. ...

📅 Published June 2026  ·  ⏱ 5 min read  ·  ✍️ SWYoon Labs By the end of this post, you will have five searchable grammar memos living in your Chrome sidebar — organized by topic, ready in one click, and fast enough to check mid-sentence while you are writing an email or a message. The tool is Simple Side Note , a free Chrome extension. The setup takes under ten minutes. After that, adding a new grammar rule takes about thirty seconds — right-click, type two lines, save. What You Will Have When You Are Done Five memos in your sidebar, each named after a grammar topic you actually struggle with. Every entry inside them follows the same three-line format — rule, example, your confusion. And a search bar at the top that finds any entry in under ten seconds by keyword. The next time you wonder whether to write "I have been waiting" or "I was waiting" — instead of opening a new tab and re-searching, you type "p...