Canto
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subtankFiles, images and links
Canto reads the files you give it on your Mac, so search and Ask can use what's inside them: the text of a PDF, the words in a photo of a whiteboard, what was said in a recording. Nothing is uploaded to do this.
Attach a file#
In a note, choose / › File and pick one or more files. Each becomes an attachment in the note: a chip you can expand into a preview (pictures, PDFs, tables from CSV files, a player and transcript for audio). In Ask, use + › Attach files… (⌘U), or drop files on the message field.
Every attachment is also in the Attachments place (sidebar › Library). It lists files and pictures from your notes and chats, with a search field and All, Images, Docs, Audio, Video and Other filters. Right-click one to Open file, Open note (or Open in chat), Insert into active note, Attach to the chat, Retry indexing if reading it failed, or Delete permanently. Deleting a file for good tells you which notes lose it first.
Attachments live in your vault's data folder, next to your encrypted notes. See Backups, history and the Trash.
What Canto reads#
| File | What Canto keeps |
|---|---|
| Text PDFs, Word (.docx), EPUB, Markdown, plain text, HTML, CSV, JSON, XML | The text |
| Scanned PDFs | The text, read by macOS's Vision on your Mac, up to 500 pages |
| Pictures | The text in them and labels for what they show, read by Vision. On macOS 27 with Apple Intelligence on, also a short description |
| Audio and video (MP4, MOV, M4V, M4A, MP3, WAV, AAC, CAF, AIFF, FLAC) | A transcript, made on your Mac. Videos also get descriptions of their scenes |
A chip under each picture says how it was read. What Canto read is stored as text in your vault, so any model can use it and search finds it.
WebM, MKV and AVI files can't be read: macOS itself reads audio and video, and it doesn't read those. Canto says so when it can't open a file.
Settings › Sync & storage › Data location › What's indexed counts what Canto has read so far: image descriptions, video scenes and document text.
Pictures from the web#
A picture in a note or a chat that points at a website loads from that site when it's shown, so the site can see that your Mac opened it. No note text is sent. Turn Pictures from the web off in Settings › Memory & privacy › What leaves this Mac, and such pictures show a placeholder with the site's name and a Load button for just that one.
/ › Image avoids this: it fetches a web picture once and keeps a copy in the note.
Folders on this Mac#
Link a folder you already keep on your Mac (a project folder, a folder of PDFs, an Obsidian vault) and Canto reads its files where they are. Nothing is copied or moved.
- Choose Link a folder… under Folders on this Mac in the sidebar, or drag a folder from Finder onto that place.
- Canto lists the folder's files and indexes them by name and by what they say, so ⌘K and search find them. A linked folder only re-indexes files that changed.
- Click a file to preview it, or open it in a pane. Markdown and HTML show Rendered or Source; CSV files show as a table; Word, RTF and Canto's own files open too.
- Right-click a file for Open in split, Quick preview, Ask about this file, Open in default app, Reveal in Finder and Copy path.
- Right-click a folder for Chat with this folder, Re-scan folder, Index now, Open in Finder, Rename (the name in Canto) and Remove from Canto. Removing a folder makes Canto forget what it read; the folder and its files stay exactly as they are.
Editing linked files. Canto only reads linked folders until you allow edits. The first time you edit a text file from a linked folder, Canto asks (Allow editing); after that, saving changes the original file in its folder, and Canto keeps a copy of the version before each save. The switch is Settings › Connections › Folders on this Mac › Save edits back to linked files (off until you allow it).
A file Canto can't open (a damaged or password-protected PDF) says so, and why.
Pages your notes link to#
Canto can also read the web pages, YouTube videos and PDFs your notes link to, so a chat can use them. Because it fetches from the web without you asking each time, it's off until you turn it on:
- Turn on Pages you link to in Settings › Memory & privacy › What leaves this Mac. Canto asks once first.
- Canto then fetches each linked page from its own site and indexes it on your Mac. Nothing about your notes is sent.
- Settings › Memory & privacy › Pages you link to has two more switches: YouTube transcripts and PDFs on the web.
Links you paste into a chat are a different thing: Ask opens those as part of web search, and only while Web search is allowed. See What leaves this Mac.
Recordings#
Recording straight into a note is Live transcription (⌘T, or / › Live transcription…), and recording a meeting is Record a meeting. Both are in Voice and meetings.