Capture

Capture is the habit the rest of Kept is built on. You do not decide where a thought belongs. You write it down the way you would say it, and Kept files it.

"Dentist Thursday 3pm" becomes an event on Thursday at three. "Renew the domain before it expires" becomes a task with a due date and a high priority, because your words carried both. "Idea for the garden: raised beds along the north fence" becomes a note tagged garden. You review the result for a second, and it lands.

Open Capture

• iPhone. Tap the round button at the bottom of any main screen. Touch and hold it instead to skip detection and pick Task, Event, or Note directly, plus Meal when Body is on.
• Mac. Press ⌥Space from inside any app, or ⌘N inside Kept. The global panel floats over whatever you are doing and disappears when you press Return.
• Everywhere else. The Capture widget, the Capture control, the Action Button, and Siri open the same sheet. Widgets and controls also offer direct doors that skip detection: Quick note, Add task, Log meal. Hand Capture in Kept a line from Shortcuts and it files without opening anything. See Widgets and controls.

What happens to your line

As you type, Kept reads the line and lights up the kind it detects: Task, Event, or Note, and on iPhone a Meal when Body is on. Detected details appear as rows under your words: Due, Priority, Area, and for an event its time and calendar. A value Kept guessed is marked as a guess; tap any row to change it. On iPhone, tap the detected date, pick the day, and tap Done to come back to the sheet. A task's due row takes a day, and Add time gives it a clock when the deadline is a real hour, not just a date. Tap the kind pill to lock a different one.

The button at the bottom names what will happen: Add task, Add event, Save note, Log meal, or Add it while Kept is still deciding. Press it. The sheet closes, a short receipt confirms what was kept, and on iPhone Kept takes you to where the new item lives, Tasks, Calendar, or Notes, so you can see it land.

Two rules govern every capture:

• Kept never invents what you did not say. A due date and a high or critical priority appear only when your words carry the cue. "Fix the failed charge" arrives undated with no priority, waiting for you to decide. The same bar applies later, when Kept fills in the details of a task in the background.
• Your words are the title. The title you see in the sheet is the title that is saved. Kept trims only what it has already used: a leading label such as task: and, for an event, the words that named the date and time. A late refinement can add fields, never rewrite what you wrote.

Dates, times, and time zones

• "Thursday 3pm" lands on the next Thursday at three.
• "Friday" alone is an all-day event on Friday.
• "10:30 AM EDT" is placed at that instant, and the sheet shows both that clock and your local time.
• An ambiguous abbreviation such as CST stays as you wrote it until your region makes it clear.

On iPhone, tap a detected date to open the calendar, choose a day, and tap Done. Changing the day keeps your words and does not add a time to an all-day event.

Life areas and goals

Kept files a task or event under one of your life areas when your words point at one. If the right area does not exist yet, choose Add area… in the picker, name it, and Kept creates it on the spot. Undo is one tap away until you close the sheet.

An area is not a goal. Kept never attaches a captured task to a goal just because they share an area, even if it is the only goal in that area. Linking work to a goal is a deliberate act you take from the task or from the goal. See Goals.

On iPhone, tap the detected date, choose the day, and press Done to return to Capture. The Done control remains readable in light and dark appearances.

Tags on the sheet

Suggested tags on the capture sheet are arriving gradually across beta accounts. Where they are on, a task or an event files by its area and shows no tags. A note keeps the tags Kept can ground in your own words: a subject or a name you typed, never a joining word like out, up, or in, a verb on its own, a pronoun, a day, or a number by itself. When nothing in the line names a subject, the note has no tag. Add or remove a note's tags any time in Notes.

Meals

Type what you ate and Kept detects a meal. "Two eggs and toast" looks each food up in a nutrition database and tells you anything it could not find. Snapping a photo of a plate is a separate path from Body; see Meals, sleep, and training.

Where the thinking happens

Kept routes on your device first. On an iPhone or Mac with Apple Intelligence available, an on-device model detects the kind and pulls out dates for most lines without a network; Settings → Capture on Mac shows whether it is ready and opens System Settings if it is not. When you have allowed Cloud AI and you are online, a cloud pass refines the harder lines: an area that needs judgment, a priority read from tone, a line that holds several thoughts. With Cloud AI off, the cloud pass never runs and the on-device result stands.

If the cloud is unavailable, Kept keeps your line as the single best thing it can be on the device, and nothing is lost. A capture never depends on keeping the sheet open; the raw line is written to a durable inbox on the device the moment you add it.

Fix a wrong guess

Kept will sometimes choose the wrong kind or miss an area. The fix is always the same: open the saved item and change it. Your correction becomes the record. If you wish Kept had asked, it is easier to lock the kind before you press Add: tap the kind on iPhone, or press ⌥1, ⌥2, or ⌥3 on Mac for Event, Task, or Note.

Undo on the receipt takes a just-added task back without a confirmation dialog. If Undo cannot finish, the task stays and you can try again.

Capture more than one thing

Write several thoughts in one breath, separated by periods or new lines, and Kept can file each one separately. This needs Cloud AI and is rolling out; if your account has the single-item route, or you are offline, the whole line files as one item and you can split it by hand.

Next: Capture on Mac covers the keyboard-only flow in detail. Today and your Top 3 shows where captured tasks go.