Screenshot Inbox docs

Getting started

Screenshot Inbox runs on iPhone with iOS 17 or later and reads English text. Everything it does happens on your iPhone; it never connects to the internet.

How to get it

Screenshot Inbox is not on the App Store yet. Request early access and we will tell you as soon as it is available.

First run

1. Tap Continue through the three opening screens, which cover what the app does, Private by design, and Works offline.
2. On Access your screenshots, tap Grant Photos Access and answer the iOS prompt. With full access the app can organize every screenshot; with limited access, only the ones you select.
3. On Choose what to organize, pick All screenshots, Last 30 days (selected to start with), or Only new screenshots.
4. Tap Start organizing. The first scan begins and the Dashboard opens.

If you chose Last 30 days or Only new screenshots, later scans reach only screenshots taken after setup. To bring older ones in, turn on Include older screenshots in Settings.

Getting around

A scroll wheel at the bottom holds six sections: Dashboard, Inbox, Albums, Review, Cleanup, and Settings. Scroll it or tap a section. For a standard tab bar instead, turn off Scroll-wheel navigation in Settings; it shows four sections and lists the rest under More.

Scanning and filing

Each scan finds screenshots in your photo library, reads their text on your iPhone, and files each one into exactly one Screenshot Inbox album. Screenshots already filed are skipped, so scanning again never creates duplicates.

Scan your library

• Tap Scan Now on the Dashboard at any time.
• With Scan on launch on, the default, the app checks for new screenshots each time you open it.
• With Background processing on, also the default, iOS may run scans while the app is closed. iOS decides when, so timing isn't guaranteed.

The Dashboard counts screenshots as Found, Organized, Needs Review, and Unavailable Offline, plus Couldn't Read when one could not be opened. Below are totals per category and a Recently classified list.

The six categories

How it decides

The app weighs signals in each screenshot's text — prices, dates, links, addresses, measurements, phrases such as Add to cart or Ingredients, and the layout of shopping and messaging screens. A screenshot goes to Needs Review instead when its confidence is below your threshold (78% unless you change it), when two categories score too closely, or when it has too little readable text. Filing strictness in Settings changes how readily it commits.

Each correction you make teaches the app, on your iPhone, to weigh categories and retailers the way you do. Clear learned corrections in Settings undoes it.

File from another app

1. Viewing a screenshot in another app, tap the share button and choose Screenshot Inbox. Share one image at a time.
2. While it shows Filing this screenshot…, you can still tap Cancel.
3. Read the result — for example, Filed in Events. — and tap Done.

The share sheet can file only a screenshot already in your photo library and among your 40 most recent. If it can't tell which one you shared, it files nothing rather than guess.

Siri and Shortcuts

Six actions are available in Siri, Spotlight, and the Shortcuts app as soon as the app is installed.

Review and act

Work through Needs Review

Open Review. Each row shows the app's reasoning and its best guess, such as Suggested: Products · 64% sure. For each screenshot you can:

• tap the approve button, which names the category (Approve Products), or swipe right;
• tap Change and pick another category;
• tap the minus button, or swipe left and tap Exclude, to take it out of Screenshot Inbox;
• tap the row to open its Details screen.

To handle many at once:

1. Tap Edit, then select screenshots or tap Select All.
2. In the bar at the bottom, the check mark approves every selected suggestion, Assign (the tag) files the selection into a category or one of your albums, and the minus button excludes it.
3. After approving or assigning, an alert reports exactly what happened; tap OK. Tap Done when you finish.

Browse the Inbox

Inbox shows every screenshot in a grid. Filter with the chips — All, Products, Events, Recipes, Conversations, Reminders, Needs Review — and use Sort for Newest, Oldest, or Confidence.

Search

Search is off until you turn on Search in Settings, under Privacy & data. It needs Store recognized text on. A Search recognized text field then appears in the Inbox. Title words count for more than body text, singular matches plural, related words match at a lower rank (receipt also finds invoice), and a small typo in a longer word is forgiven. Search runs on your iPhone and saves nothing new. Screenshots only in iCloud have no text to search, and the Inbox says how many were skipped.

The Details screen

Tap any screenshot to open Details. It shows:

• the category, status, confidence, and Corrected by you if you changed it;
• Why this category, and Also looks like when a second category fits — tap Make this the category to switch;
• the details found for its category, with that category's actions;
• Detected: any link, price, date, and location;
• Recognized text, with Copy and Delete text;
• Classification: Change category, Album (once you have albums), Reprocess to read it again, and Exclude from Screenshot Inbox;
• About: when it was captured and processed, and its dimensions.

Most details appear only when the screenshot labels them — Serves 4, Prep time: 15 min. Three are deliberate guesses: a reminder's Person (the first name the app recognizes) and Notes (the lines under its title), and a recipe's Source when nothing credits one (the website its link points to).

Add an event or a reminder

1. Tap Add to Calendar on an event, or Add to Reminders on a reminder.
2. The first time, iOS asks for access. If access is off, the button is turned off with a note on how to allow it.
3. Check the draft: Title, All day, Starts, Ends, Location, and Notes for an event; Title, Due date, All day, Due, Priority, and Notes for a reminder.
4. Tap Add. Nothing is created until you do; Cancel discards the draft.

Items go to your default calendar or list. On a recipe, Add shopping reminder adds one reminder straight away, titled Shop for and the recipe's name, with up to 30 ingredients in its notes.

Summaries, copying, and the wishlist

• Summarize builds a short summary and action items from a conversation's own sentences. It invents nothing and needs the text to be stored.
• Copy details, Copy recipe, and Copy put text on the clipboard of this iPhone only, for five minutes.
• Add to Wishlist saves a product and changes to Saved to your wishlist. Open the list from Settings › Wishlist: items are grouped by retailer, and Still to buy totals what is left. Tap an item's circle to mark it purchased, or swipe left and tap Remove.

Your own albums

Beyond the six categories, you can make albums of your own — Groceries, Travel, Work receipts. Each also appears in Photos as Screenshot Inbox — followed by its name, and fills itself from keywords you choose.

Create an album

1. Open Albums and tap New Album (the plus button), or Create an album if you have none yet.
2. Type a name in Album name. It can't repeat another album's name, ignoring capitalization, or use a category's name; the line below says how it will appear in Photos, or what to change.
3. Under Keywords, type a word or phrase in Add a keyword and tap the plus button. A comma-separated list adds several at once.
4. Under Appearance, choose a Symbol and a Color.
5. Tap Save.

How keywords work

• Keywords match anywhere in a screenshot's text, ignoring capitalization, so pay also matches payment.
• They apply to screenshots as they're scanned. To apply new keywords to a screenshot already filed, open it and tap Reprocess.
• When a screenshot matches several albums, the one nearest the top of My Albums wins. Tap Edit and drag to reorder.

File by hand

On a screenshot's Details screen, tap Album under Classification and pick an album, or None. For many at once, use Assign in Needs Review. Clean Up never suggests a screenshot you filed into your own album by hand as stale.

Edit or delete an album

Open the album, tap the Album options button (three dots in a circle), and choose Edit album or Delete album, or swipe left on it in the list. Deleting asks you to confirm and says what will happen: its screenshots return to their categories — nothing is deleted — and the album and its keywords leave Screenshot Inbox. The album in Photos stays unless Delete the Photos album too is on in Settings, and even then the photos in it stay in your library. This can't be undone.

Clean Up

Clean Up points out screenshots you may no longer need. It suggests; it never decides. Nothing is selected for you, the app can't delete a photo on its own, and iOS asks you to confirm every deletion.

What it looks for

Delete what you don't need

1. Open Cleanup and tap Might have gone stale or Near-duplicates.
2. Tap each screenshot you want to remove. In a duplicate group, a button such as Select the 2 older copies selects all but the newest.
3. Tap the delete button, which shows your count — for example, Delete 3 Screenshots.
4. Confirm in the iOS dialog. Deleted screenshots move to Recently Deleted in Photos and can be recovered for 30 days.

Settings

Changes take effect right away. Settings are listed in the order the app shows them.

About, at the bottom, shows the app's version and its classifier's version.

Privacy and your data

Screenshot Inbox has no servers, no account, no analytics, no advertising, and no third-party code, and it never connects to the internet. We collect nothing about you.

What stays on your iPhone

A private database on your iPhone holds a reference to each screenshot (never a copy of the image), the text read from it unless you turn off Store recognized text, its category, confidence, and details, and your corrections, albums, wishlist, and settings. That database is left out of iCloud and computer backups and never syncs.

What reaches other apps

Three things you ask for hand information to iOS, which may sync it according to your own iCloud settings:

• Filing into Photos albums. A screenshot's category is recorded by the album it sits in, and iCloud Photos syncs albums.
• Events and reminders. Created only when you add one, with a title, location, and notes from the screenshot.
• Copied text. It stays on this iPhone — the app opts out of Universal Clipboard — and expires after five minutes.

An export can carry your screenshots' contents off your iPhone, but only if you send it somewhere from the share sheet. The file is removed when you close the share sheet.

Sensitive screenshots

With Withhold sensitive text on, a screenshot that looks like it holds a code, a card number, a password, or a balance is still filed, but its text is discarded and its Details screen shows Text not stored. Fixed rules on your iPhone decide, leaning toward withholding. Store the text anyway overrides a wrong call, and Withhold it again reverses that.

Your photos and permissions

The app never edits or duplicates a photo, never deletes one on its own, and never downloads a screenshot stored only in iCloud. With full Photos access, deleting a screenshot in Photos also deletes the text the app kept for it. Calendar and Reminders access is asked only the first time you add an item, and Notifications only when you turn them on.

Removing your data

Use Delete text on one screenshot, Clear local extracted data for all, or Reset app for everything (see Settings). Deleting the app removes all of its data. None of these touch your photos or the albums in Photos.

Because nothing is collected, the privacy answers prepared for the App Store listing are Data Not Collected, with no tracking.

Troubleshooting and help

A screenshot says Unavailable Offline

Its original is only in iCloud, and the app never downloads from iCloud. Its Details screen says: This screenshot is stored in iCloud and is not currently available offline. Open it in Apple Photos to download it, then return to Screenshot Inbox. Once it has downloaded, tap Reprocess or Scan Now.

Scan Now shows "Can't scan"

Photos access is off: Screenshot Inbox needs access to your photos to find and organize screenshots. You can turn it on in Settings. Tap Open Settings and allow it. If the message says the app couldn't read your settings instead, nothing changed — try again in a moment.

Only some screenshots are organized

• With limited Photos access, the app sees only the screenshots you selected. Deselecting one hides it from future scans but keeps its stored text until you clear it.
• After Last 30 days or Only new screenshots, older screenshots are out of scope. Turn on Include older screenshots, then tap Scan Now.
• Background scans may run rarely; Scan Now picks up anything new.

A screenshot went to Needs Review

Its reasoning names the cause: No readable text was found in this screenshot., Not enough information to classify this screenshot confidently., Multiple categories scored similarly — please choose the right one., or Confidence was below the threshold — please confirm the category. Approve or change it and the app learns. If too many land there, lower the Confidence threshold or pick a less cautious Filing strictness.

Details are missing or look wrong

• A rating, serving count, or cook time printed without its label is left out, not guessed.
• With no Ingredients heading, only lines with a measurement count, so 3 eggs can be missed.
• Relative dates such as Due Friday count from the day of the scan, not the day the screenshot was taken.
• Details are worked out at filing time; tap Reprocess to refresh an older screenshot.
• An event's venue name isn't filled in: the app reads street addresses, not place names.

The recognized text is missing

Text not stored means the screenshot looked sensitive: tap Store the text anyway, after turning on Store recognized text if the button is off. No text at all means storing was off during the scan — turn it on and tap Reprocess.

The share sheet didn't file a screenshot

I excluded a screenshot by mistake

Excluding takes a screenshot out of its album and every list in the app; the photo stays in your library. Tap Re-include before you leave its Details screen — no screen lists excluded screenshots.

A banner says storage is unavailable

Storage is unavailable — changes won't be saved after you quit the app. means the app couldn't open its database and is using a temporary one; your stored data is left untouched. Quit and reopen the app. If the banner stays, email us.

A new or restored iPhone starts empty

By design, the app's data isn't in backups. Scan again to rebuild your categories. Your wishlist, corrections, and the albums you made in the app start over; Photos and its albums are untouched.

Getting help

Screenshot Inbox is pre-release software. If something doesn't work as described here, email us.