Quick Capture

Quick Capture is a small, always-on-top window that you can summon while working in Octarine or another app. It requires an active Pro or trial license on desktop.

Captures can create an Inbox item, append to the most recent Inbox item, append to today's Daily note, or append to a note you choose. For the iPhone capture sheet, see Inbox & Quick Capture on iOS.

Opening Quick Capture

Octarine must be running with at least one available workspace. Open Quick Capture from:

• File → Quick Capture… in Octarine
• The Octarine icon in the macOS menu bar or Windows/Linux system tray
• The global shortcut, even while another app is focused

Platform	Global shortcut
macOS	Control + Option + Space
Windows and Linux	Ctrl + Alt + Space

Press the global shortcut again, press Esc, or use the close button to dismiss the window. On macOS, dismissing Quick Capture returns focus to the app you were using.

If Settings → Window → Don't show system tray is enabled, Octarine disables Quick Capture across all workspaces. The tray entry, app-menu action, global shortcut, direct clipboard capture, and background prewarming remain unavailable until you turn the setting off.

Capture the Clipboard Without Opening a Window

You can save copied text or an image without opening Quick Capture or bringing Octarine forward. This requires an active Pro or trial license, and Octarine must already be running.

1. Open Settings → Quick capture → Clipboard in the workspace that should receive captures.
2. Enable Allow Double Option to capture from clipboard on macOS or Allow Double Control to capture from clipboard on Windows and Linux.
3. Choose whether Save to creates a new Inbox entry, appends to the most recent Inbox entry, or appends to today's Daily note.
4. Copy text or an image, then double-tap the platform modifier.

Octarine saves the clipboard to the current workspace and shows a system notification when the capture succeeds or fails. If the clipboard contains only a web address, Octarine stores it as a Markdown link. On Linux, this shortcut requires an X11 session and is unavailable under Wayland.

Choose a Workspace and Destination

Use the workspace menu in the top-left corner to choose where the capture will be saved. This is useful when you have more than one workspace open.

Use the destination menu in the center to choose where the capture goes:

• Inbox
• Today's Daily Note
• A note you picked earlier, shown by its name
• Choose note... (or Choose another note...) to search the workspace for a note to append to. Regular notes, Daily, Weekly, and Monthly notes, and templates are all available.

Press Cmd + Shift + J on macOS or Ctrl + Shift + J on Windows and Linux to cycle through Inbox, Today's Daily Note, and your chosen note. Octarine remembers the last destination and the chosen note separately for each workspace. If you switch to a workspace without a saved destination, Quick Capture starts in Inbox.

Capture to Inbox

Inbox mode supports:

• An optional title and a rich-text body. A capture can contain either one or both.
• Priority from Urgent through Low, or no priority. Press Cmd/Ctrl + P to open the priority menu, then use 0 through 4 or the arrow keys.
• Up to five tags selected from the workspace tag index or created from the picker. Press Cmd/Ctrl + T to open it.
• Pasted rich text, links, and supported embedded media.

Choose Capture or press Cmd/Ctrl + Enter to create a new Inbox item.

When a previous Inbox capture is available, the footer also shows Append to INB-N. Choose it or press Cmd/Ctrl + Shift + Enter to add the new body to that capture instead of creating another file. If you entered a title, Octarine adds it as a heading above the appended content.

Append to Today's Daily Note or a Chosen Note

Daily mode appends the body to Daily/YYYY-MM-DD.md, creating today's note if needed. Note mode appends to the end of the note you picked. Both start with the cursor in the editor.

Two settings under Settings → Quick capture → Appending to notes control how appended captures look:

• Include capture timestamp adds the capture time to each appended capture.
• Insert as adds each capture as a Paragraph, Bullet, or Task item.

With Paragraph, the timestamp sits on its own line and a title becomes a heading above the body. With Bullet or Task, each capture becomes a single list item with the timestamp and title at the start. When the note already ends with a list, new bullet or task captures are added to that list rather than starting a new one.

These settings also apply to clipboard captures saved to the Daily note.

Menu Bar and System Tray

The Octarine tray menu provides access without first opening the main window. It includes:

• Quick Capture…
• Up to five active Inbox items, with additional items under More…
• Open Inbox
• Settings…
• Quit Octarine

Selecting an active capture opens that item in the main Octarine window. The list follows the current Inbox order and includes up to 30 active captures.

On macOS and Linux, closing the main window hides it while Octarine continues running in the menu bar or tray. Choose Quit Octarine when you want to stop the app. On Windows, closing the main window quits Octarine and removes the tray icon.

To run Octarine without a menu bar or tray icon, enable Settings → Window → Don't show system tray. This also disables every Quick Capture entry point.

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