Capture on Mac

The Mac is where Capture disappears into muscle memory. You are in your editor, your browser, a video call. A thought arrives. You press one chord, type, press Return, and you never left.

The global shortcut

Press ⌥Space from anywhere on your Mac. The Capture panel appears over your current app, already focused. Type your line, press ↩, and it is kept. Press esc to dismiss without saving; an unfinished line is restored the next time you summon the panel, with a quiet Picked up where you left off.

The panel needs a signed-in account that has finished setup, because routing needs your life areas. Before that, the chord does nothing.

The panel does not bring the main Kept window forward, and it does not steal focus from the app you were in once it closes. That is the whole point.

If another app already uses Option Space, change one of them. In Kept, open Settings → Capture and record a different chord under Global capture hotkey. Older installs may still have Control Space from an earlier default; the same setting shows what is current.

Inside the window

⌘N opens Capture inside the Kept window, the same sheet with the same behavior. The round button at the top of the sidebar does the same thing with a click. The command palette gets you there too: press ⌘K, type your line, and ⌘↩ moves it into Capture with the text already in place; press ↩ once more to keep it.

Lock the kind without leaving the keyboard

While the panel is open, hold Option and press a number to force the kind:

The locked kind stays for this capture. Release it by pressing the same chord again, and detection takes over. A kind whose module you have turned off in Settings is not offered, so a Notes-off account sees only Event and Task.

An event can pick its calendar inside the panel, and a Repeat rule when the destination allows one; Repeat explains itself when it cannot. Add area… in the area picker creates a new life area on the spot, with Undo until the panel closes; esc inside that field cancels the new area first, then the panel. A note offers Keep and open, which saves it and lands you in Notes with the caret ready.

⌘↩ commits from anywhere in the sheet, including while a picker is open.

Capture from the menu bar

Kept keeps a small item in the menu bar. Click it for a compact window with a capture field, what is up next, today's habits, and focus controls. It is the same routing and the same account as everything else. If your account has not finished loading, the window tells you to open Kept rather than showing stale actions.

The Services menu

Select text in any app, right-click, and choose Services → Save to Kept. The selection is saved straight into Notes as a note titled Saved to Kept, without opening the panel. It works for text files and transcripts too, including .txt, .md, .vtt, and .srt. Kept needs to be signed in with Notes on; otherwise the service says so rather than saving somewhere you cannot see. It is a good way to keep a paragraph from an email or a meeting transcript without retyping it.

What is different from iPhoneiPhone

• The Mac panel does not show note tags. Kept still grounds them the same way; find and change them on the note in Notes.
• There is no deep-press quick log. Use ⌥1, ⌥2, ⌥3 instead.
• The panel offers Event, Task, and Note. To log a meal on Mac, type it on the Body page, where Read it and Log it live. Body on Mac has no camera capture.

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