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Attachments
Attach photos, scans, PDFs, clips and sketches to a note from the Orb menu and keep them in a rail beside the note: a column of tiles on an iPhone, a preview pane with a filmstrip (and an inline video player) on an iPad. Swipe the rail to change notes, drag a tile out to remove it, crop and annotate pictures in place. Files sync end-to-end encrypted through iCloud.
Updated for iOS 1.65
Attachments
Design Intent: A note can carry the files that go with it — a photo, a scan, a PDF, a sketch, a clip — without those files ever becoming the note. The text stays the note; the files ride along beside it.
Attaching files
- Orb menu › Attach offers Photo library, Take photo, Scan document (a multi-page PDF through the camera), Sketch and Files. Taking a photo here attaches the picture as a file; turning a picture into text is a different path (Text from photos).
- Paste works too: a picture copied in Photos or Safari, or files copied from another note, attach to the note when you paste. Text on the same clipboard still pastes as text. If you would rather a pasted picture became text, turn on Settings › Editor › Pasting › Extract text from pasted images.
- On iPad, drop a file, photo or PDF from another app onto the note and it attaches.
- Everything attached on iPhone and iPad is a copy kept inside Antinote. Files attached on a Mac as links to their original (a link glyph on the tile) live on that Mac; their names travel, their bytes only if the Mac synced them.
- Read-only notes and notes in The Void keep their attachments viewable but take no new ones.
The rail beside the note
- A note with attachments shows them in a rail down the right edge of the screen, so they stay in view while you write. The rail runs the full height of the screen and the note reflows beside it — text never runs behind it. (There is no separate attachments sheet any more: the rail is where the files live.)
- On an iPhone held upright the rail is a column of tiles from the very top of the screen, like the Mac's shelf, ending in the dashed + tile and a Copy all button. Tap a picture and it opens enlarged in a dark view; other files open in a full-screen preview; a sketch opens back on its canvas. A long-press on a tile gives Share, Copy, Download from iCloud, Preview or Edit sketch, and Remove from note. A pulsing cloud with an up arrow on a tile means the file is still on its way to iCloud — the tile already opens, copies and drags like any other; a ring over a dimmed tile is a download, the bytes aren't here yet.
- On an iPad, an iPhone Duo unfolded or a phone on its side, the rail is a preview pane: the current file as large as the pane allows, a filmstrip of the others underneath with the + tile and Copy all at its end. Tap a filmstrip tile to bring that file up large; tap the large picture to open it. A video shows a Play button and an Open button over its first frame — it never plays on its own. Play runs it right there in the pane with the usual controls; paused or finished, the two buttons come back; Open is the full-screen player. The note keeps the keyboard, so you can type with the files beside you.
- Two controls sit on the rail's inner border, half-way down: the close button (a chevron on the column, × on the pane) tucks the rail away for this note — other notes keep theirs — and the paperclip badge in the top-right corner brings it back. The grip under it drags the rail toward the note to widen it, up to half the screen, for bigger thumbnails; pictures stay sharp at any width, and the width is remembered on this device. In split view on an iPad each pane has its own rail, inside the pane and up to half of it wide.
- Swipe left or right on the rail to move to the next or previous note, exactly as swiping the note itself does.
- Drag a tile to rearrange the files: the tile you hold takes a neighbour's place once you pass its middle. Drag a tile out of the rail and a red × appears on it; let go and the attachment is removed from the note. Adding, rearranging and removing are all on the note's undo stack with the typing, so shake to undo (or the undo button) brings a removed file back.
- In select mode the tiles pick like lines do. Copy puts the picked lines and files on the clipboard together, Cut and Delete take both off the note in one step, and a paste back into Antinote attaches the files again. Copy all copies every file in the rail, the same as the Mac's.
- A locked note shows no rail until it is unlocked — the thumbnails are part of the note.
The enlarged view
- Tap a picture in the rail and it fills the screen on a dark backdrop. Pinch or double-tap to zoom in on a detail and drag to move around; × or a tap outside the picture closes it.
- Swipe left or right to move through the note's other attachments without closing the view. Pictures zoom like the first; a PDF or a clip shows its first page or frame with an Open button for the full preview, and a file still in iCloud offers to download.
- Top-right, two buttons edit a picture in place: Crop opens the editor with a crop window over the picture (corner and edge handles, drag inside to move it, double-tap to take the whole picture back); Edit opens it on the pens, highlighter and eraser. The Draw | Crop switch in the editor moves between the two. Done writes the result over the attachment; Share sends the file out.
iCloud and storage
- Names and details always sync with the note. The files themselves sync when Sync & privacy › Sync attachments is on, end-to-end encrypted like the notes (iCloud sync). Files over the size the Mac allows stay where they were attached.
- Other devices fetch a file when you open it, or ahead of time up to the size you choose under Auto-download synced files up to. A cloud glyph on a tile means the file is still in iCloud: the tap downloads it first, and a message says what is happening (or why it couldn't).
- Settings › Attachments shows how much space the files take. Remove downloaded copies clears files already in iCloud (they re-download when opened); removed attachments wait seven days in an attachment trash you can empty.
Settings