Who this is for
People who write, research or pick topics for a living. What you read comes from everywhere: newsletters, social feeds, group chats, PDFs, livestreams. Whatever can be copied gets copied, and the rest gets screenshotted. Months later you remember a sentence but not which image it was in.
Get the text out of the picture first
After import, ScreenNote reads the text with Apple Vision on the phone and stores it as the note's OCR text. Open any note, expand the original text and select or copy it. This step works offline and does not depend on AI.
Finding things while you write
- Search the words inside the image. The Search tab matches OCR text, titles, summaries and tags. One remembered word is enough, no filename or date needed.
- Related screenshots surface by themselves. Open one and shots on the same topic or from the same source show up next to it, so finding one often finds a handful.
- Use system search. Swipe down on the Home Screen and note titles, summaries and tags can appear in iOS search results. See this post.
What AI adds
With AI on (official AI or your own API key), each screenshot also gets a title, a summary and key points. Key points point back to the passage they came from and copy with one tap. When a long article was captured in several shots, titles and key points tell you what each one is without opening it. AI also collects lines worth keeping from the OCR text into a Quotes list. Those are excerpts, not rewrites.
Looking back and sharing
The Highlights entry on the home screen holds the weekly recap, the yearly recap and Quotes. All three export as 1080×1350 cards in minimal, dark or gradient styles. See how Highlights works.
Limits
OCR is strong on clean print. Handwriting, decorative fonts and dense multi-column layouts produce errors, so check the original image before you quote. ScreenNote does not save the source link for you. If you need a citation, capture the title and source in the screenshot.
FAQ
Are the quote cards rewritten by AI?
No. Quotes are lines taken from the OCR text of your screenshots, not newly written text. This part needs AI turned on.
Can I use it as a clippings library without AI?
Yes. Import, on-device OCR, full-text search and copying the original text do not depend on AI. Only automatic summaries, key points and quotes do.
