Photos, voice memos and PDFs

On the web

Signed in, Today has Add files under the box for a note: pick photos, recordings or PDFs, write a few words or none, and save. Where your browser can record, Record makes a voice memo right there. It plays back on the page before you save, and Remove drops it.

Every day’s page has the same box, so a photo can go on the day it was taken. A note you’ve already saved has its own Add files button, too.

A note holds up to 20 files, at most 50 MB a file. Photos can be JPEG, PNG, GIF, WebP or HEIC, the iPhone’s own format. Recordings can be most audio formats, an iPhone’s voice memos included.

By email

Attach photos, voice memos and PDFs to a reply, or to a note mailed to your own address, as you would to any email. They’re kept with the note. Tiny pictures, like the logos in a signature, are left out.

Any other kind of file attached to an email stays in the original email, which is kept whole, and the note says it had an attachment.

In the morning email

Each photo gets a small copy for the email, so photos travel inside the email itself: up to 4 for a day and 6 in all, with a link to the rest. A HEIC photo has no small copy, so the email leaves it out; on the web it shows where your browser opens HEIC, as Safari does. Your photos and recordings are only ever shown to you, by private links.

Write out what I say

In You, then Settings, under Recordings, turn on Write out what I say and each voice memo gets written out as text underneath it, so you can skim it and search it. It takes a minute or two. Turning it on writes out the ones you already have, too.

The recordings are sent to Amazon Transcribe to do it, up to 30 recordings a day. It’s off until you turn it on.

Describe my photos

Under Photos, Describe my photos gives each photo a sentence or two about what’s in it, so searching for “canoe” finds the canoe. You see a description only in search results. Turning it on describes the photos you already have, too.

The photos are sent to Claude, an AI from Anthropic, to be described. HEIC photos aren’t described. It’s off until you turn it on.

Where a photo was taken

If a note has no place of its own, its first photo’s location names it, by neighbourhood. Your photo itself is never changed. Places and the map has more.