A lot of what matters in a note isn't typed.

It's the lease you attached as a PDF. The photo of the receipt from the hotel in Lisbon. The screenshot of an error message. The slide someone shared after a meeting.

If search only reads what you typed, all of that is invisible the moment you need it.

So Scratchpad's search reads those too.

One Box

Press ⇧⌘K on the notes screen, or tap Search notes at the top of the list, and start typing.

Results come as you type.

Every word you add has to appear somewhere in the note, so a second word narrows things quickly. Each result shows the words around the match, so you can tell two similar notes apart before opening either.

A note whose name matches what you typed comes first. If you search for "lease", the note called "Lease" should beat the one that merely mentions a lease eleven times.

That's the whole interface. One box, and it looks everywhere.

Inside The Files

The words inside an attached PDF, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Markdown, text, CSV, or JSON file are searchable. A phrase in the document finds the note it's attached to.

That changes what a note can be.

A note about the flat can hold the lease itself, and a search for "notice period" finds the clause without you copying it out first. A spreadsheet of quotes for the kitchen turns up when you search for the supplier's name.

The note stops being a summary of the paperwork. It is the paperwork.

Inside The Pictures

Pictures are read as well.

Scratchpad reads the printed text in a screenshot, a photo of a page, a receipt, or a slide, and a search for any of it finds the note the picture is in. A scanned PDF, whose pages are pictures of paper, is read the same way, up to its first 200 pages.

This happens on our own servers. The picture never goes to another company to be read.

It reads best what looks like a page or a screen: dark type on a plain, light background, or light type on a dark one.

And I'd rather be exact about what it doesn't read well, or at all:

• Handwriting. Not read at all.
• Words laid over a photograph, like a poster or a caption on a holiday picture.
• Small, blurry, or sharply angled text in a phone photo.
• Languages other than English and French.

That first one deserves a sentence of its own. I'd rather say so plainly than have you trust a search that quietly misses your notebook pages.

There's also a small delay. A picture is read the first time you search after adding it, so a new one can take a search or two to turn up.

What It Covers, At A Glance

Search also reads anything you've had transcribed from a recording, and the titles and bodies of notes in the archive.

Here's the whole picture:

Archiving a note takes it out of your lists, not out of reach.

Notes in the trash are not searched. They're on their way out, and they'd only crowd the results.

The Locked Exception

A locked note is found by its title, and that's all until you unlock it.

Its contents are encrypted, so there's nothing for search to read. Its files and pictures are left alone entirely: they aren't read for search, even after you unlock the note.

That is a real cost.

If you lock the note with your lease in it, a search for "notice period" won't find it. The choice is yours to make note by note.

It's still the right default for something private. A search index full of words from a locked note would be a copy of the note that the lock doesn't cover.

A search index full of words from a locked note would be a copy the lock doesn't cover.

The full list of what is and isn't read is in Images and files.

Why It Matters

The point of writing something down is being able to find it again.

And you rarely remember where you put a thing. You remember a word from it.

Search that reads the attachment, the receipt, and the screenshot means that word is usually enough.

You remember the word. Search does the rest.