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, or append to today's Daily note. 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 Esc or use the close button to dismiss the window. After a successful capture, Octarine closes Quick Capture and returns focus to the app you were using on macOS.

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 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. 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 switch between Inbox and today's Daily note. You can also press Cmd + Shift + J on macOS or Ctrl + Shift + J on Windows and Linux. Octarine remembers the last destination separately for each workspace.

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

Daily mode appends the body to Daily/YYYY-MM-DD.md, creating today's note if needed. Turn Settings → Quick capture → Timestamp before daily captures on or off to control whether Octarine inserts the capture time before each appended block.

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.

Quick Answers