Links, cards and players
Paste a link on a line of its own and it becomes a card with the page's title and picture, or the player for a song, a video, a map or a design.
Paste a link onto an empty line and, a moment later, it turns into something you can see: a card with the page's title, a few words about it and its picture, or the service's own player when it has one.
Paste the same link in the middle of a sentence and it stays a link.
Cards
Most pages describe themselves for exactly this, the way a link looks when you send it in Messages or Slack, and that's what the card shows. Click it and the page opens in a new tab.
The card is made once, when you paste the link, and it doesn't change after that, so it still reads the same if the page is taken down. Its picture is a copy kept with your files, so opening the note never asks the other site for anything, and nobody there learns who's reading it.
What a card can show depends on the site:
- Articles, blogs, shops, recipes, GitHub, and most of the web give a full card.
- A post on X shows who wrote it and what it says.
- Instagram, Threads, Facebook, and LinkedIn often show little more than the site's name, because they keep their posts for people who are signed in.
- A page that says nothing about itself, or one behind a sign-in, stays a link.
Players
Links from these services become the service's own player, so you can watch, listen, or look around without leaving the note:
| Service | What to paste |
|---|---|
| YouTube | a video, a Short, or a live stream; a start time is kept |
| Vimeo | a video, including an unlisted one |
| Figma | a design, a FigJam board, a prototype, or a deck |
| Spotify | a song, an album, a playlist, an artist, a podcast, or an episode |
| Apple Music | an album, a playlist, a song, or a music video |
| Apple Podcasts | a podcast, or one episode of it |
| SoundCloud | a track or a playlist |
| Loom | a video shared with anyone who has the link |
| CodePen | a pen, which opens on its result |
| Google Maps | a place, a search, or a spot on the map, including the short links from the Share button |
A player comes from the service itself, the way a YouTube video does anywhere else, so a Figma file that isn't shared may ask you to sign in to Figma inside the note.
Back to a link
Rather keep it as a link? Hover over the card or the player and press the × in its corner: the address takes its place as an ordinary link, and ⌘Z brings the card back.
Links in a sentence
Rest the pointer on a link in your text for a moment and a small card shows the page's title and a few words about it, so you know where a link goes before you open it. It's there on a computer, in your own notes.
Where they show
Cards and players show on a published page and on a share link, and they come with a note you copy and paste somewhere else in Scratchpad. A search finds a card by its title and its words.
Exported as Markdown, a card is its address on a line of its own, so it reads as an ordinary link anywhere else.
A locked note gets none of this: links stay links, and nothing is fetched, because making a card means our server reads the address.
Last updated 1 October 2026