# Files, images and links > Attachments, pictures and scanned PDFs read on your Mac, recordings, folders on your Mac that Canto reads in place, and web pages your notes link to. Applies to Canto 1.0 beta 3 · Updated Oct 10, 2026 · https://lonelyduck.io/docs/canto/files 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](https://lonelyduck.io/docs/canto/backups#where-your-vault-is). ## 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. > **Note:** Before macOS 27, Canto reads the text and labels in pictures but not what a chart or photo shows, so questions about charts and photos are less precise. After you update to macOS 27, Canto describes pictures you added before; videos are described once you index them again. Image descriptions can be turned off in **Settings › Models › Apple on this Mac › Image descriptions**. 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](https://lonelyduck.io/docs/canto/privacy). ## 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](https://lonelyduck.io/docs/canto/voice).