Capture everywhere · On My Radar

There are several ways to get something into On My Radar, and they all end the same way: a blip on a radar. On most radars the blip starts in the Inbox state. A template can start blips in another state, such as a Discussion radar, where each thread starts Active. This page covers each one, starting with the fastest.

Quick drop

Quick drop captures into your drop box from any screen, without choosing a radar first.

Keyboard shortcut: Cmd+K on a Mac, Ctrl+K on Windows and Linux.
Button: Quick drop in the sidebar, which also shows the shortcut.
Phone: the pen button in the middle of the bottom bar.

A box titled "Drop box" opens with the cursor in it. Type, then press Cmd+Enter (Ctrl+Enter) or choose Drop it in. A toast says "Dropped in".

Some things to know:

The shortcut does nothing while your cursor is in a text field, so it never takes a keystroke from something you are writing. Click outside the field first, or use the sidebar button.
Enter adds a new line. Cmd+Enter or Ctrl+Enter sends.
Escape closes the box but keeps your text. Open it again and the text is back.
Below the box, a line shows what will be inferred, such as tags · idea or "will save as a link".
Quick drop takes text only. To attach a file, use a radar's capture box.

The capture box on a radar

Every radar you can write to has a capture box at the top. On a computer it has the cursor when you open the radar, unless you are already typing somewhere else. On a phone, tap it. There is no radar, state or type to choose first.

Cmd+Enter or Ctrl+Enter captures. Enter adds a line.
Capture does the same from a button. It appears once there is something to capture.
The text is kept as a draft for each radar, in your browser tab, until you send it. You can switch radars or reload the tab without losing it, unless your browser blocks site storage (a private window, for example). Attached files are not kept.
A smart radar has no capture box. It is a saved search, so capture into a real radar and tag the blip.

On a computer the line under the box says "enter adds a line · cmd + enter captures". On a phone it says "#tags are inferred".

Hashtags

Write #word anywhere in a blip and it becomes a tag.

A tag must start at the beginning of the text or after a space. A # inside a web address is not a tag.
It starts with a letter or number and can contain letters, numbers, hyphens and underscores.
Tags are stored in lowercase, so #Idea and #idea are the same tag.
A blip can carry up to 24 tags. If you or an agent write more, the capture is refused and tells you which ones did not fit. Email, RSS and webhook captures keep the first 24 instead.

Click a tag to see every blip carrying it, from every radar you can read. From that page, Create smart radar saves it as a radar of its own.

Links

Paste a web address on its own and the blip becomes a link with a preview: the page's title, description, site name and image, where the site provides them. The preview arrives a moment after the blip is saved.

Hashtags next to the address are fine: https://example.com/a #reading is still a link filed under a tag.

If you write a sentence around the address, the blip stays a note on most radars. A Reading list radar is the exception. It takes the first link out of the text and keeps your words as the reason you saved it.

Attachments

In a radar's capture box you can add files three ways:

Drag them onto the box.
Paste them. A copied screenshot works.
Choose the paperclip, labelled "Attach a file".

Each file shows its name and size and can be removed before you capture. A blip can carry up to 12 files, each up to 25 MB. When every attachment is a picture the blip is an image, otherwise a file. You can capture files with no text.

Storage counts against your plan. If the server has no file storage, you see the message "File storage is not configured on this server".

Email capture

You can email things into On My Radar. The subject, message and attachments become a blip, and the original message stays available to read.

Set up your address

Open Settings, then Email capture.
Enter an Email username: 3 to 32 lowercase letters, numbers or hyphens. This name becomes the start of every capture address you have, and it cannot be changed later.
Choose Set up email address.

That turns on email capture for your drop box and shows the address, with a copy button. At first it accepts only messages from your own account email.

If the page says "Email delivery is not active on this installation yet", you can reserve your username but nothing is delivered. Ask your admin.

Approve senders

Email is accepted only from senders you approve one by one.

Open the radar, choose Settings, then Sources. For the drop box, open the Drop box and use its Settings the same way.
Under Approved senders, enter an exact address and choose Approve sender.
Check that Receive email on this radar is on.

Rules:

One exact address per sender. Domains and wildcards are not accepted.
Your own account email is always approved.
You can approve up to 25 senders per radar.
Each radar has its own list and its own address. The drop box uses username@ followed by the domain. Other radars use username+name@ with the same domain. The radar's settings show the exact address to copy.
Only the radar's owner can set this up. A shared editor cannot, and neither can an agent.
Smart radars cannot receive email.

What gets through

The message must pass the sender's mail authentication. Only signatures from the exact domain in the From address count.
Forwarding is not supported reliably. Send a new message from your approved address instead of forwarding someone else's.
A message can be up to 10 MB in total, including attachments, with up to 12 attachments.
A radar accepts up to 100 new emails per day.

The Sources page shows when the last email arrived and the last delivery problem, if there was one.

RSS feeds

A radar can follow RSS or Atom feeds. Each new entry becomes a blip.

Open the radar, choose Settings, then Sources.
Under RSS feeds, choose Add RSS feed.
Enter the Feed URL.
Under Import existing posts, choose how much history to import: Forever, Past year, Past month, Past week or Past day. This choice is required. Time-limited choices skip posts with no publication date.
Choose Add feed.

The first import is queued, and the feed shows "First import queued", then "Active". Feeds are checked about every 15 minutes. Each row shows how many entries were imported and when it last checked. If a check fails, the row says why and tries again by itself.

You can Pause, Resume or Remove a feed. Removing a feed stops new posts and keeps the blips already imported.

Limits and rules:

Only the radar's owner can add feeds.
The URL must be a public http or https address with no username or password.
A radar can follow up to 10 feeds, and an account up to 50.
Smart radars cannot have feeds.

Webhooks

Anything that can send an HTTP POST can create blips: a form, a build result, an alert. Set them up under a radar's Settings, then Webhooks. The drop box does not take inbound webhooks. See Webhooks for the full setup.

Capture through an agent

A connected agent can capture for you, with at most the access you have. Its token or connection needs write permission (radars:write) to capture, and radars:manage to add feeds or webhooks (a feed also needs you to own the radar). Ask it to "drop this in my inbox" or "add this to my Launch radar".

drop captures into your drop box without needing a radar.
create_blip captures into a named radar. Tags and links in the text are handled as they are in the capture box.
For files, the agent asks for an upload ticket with create_upload_ticket, uploads the bytes, then calls create_blip with the attachments.
create_feed adds an RSS feed, and create_webhook creates a webhook (not on the drop box).
Email capture settings and approved senders are yours alone. No agent tool changes them.

Blips an agent creates can carry the agent's name, cosigned by you. See Agents, sessions and attribution. Connecting an agent can depend on your plan. See Connect your agent.

What is not here

On My Radar does not provide a web share target. To send a link from another app on your phone, paste it into Quick drop, or email it to your capture address.

Quickstart: your first five minutes.
Install on your phone: capture from mobile.
Webhooks: send events into a radar.
Connect your agent: capture and sort through an agent.