Use and organize notes in Scratchpad
Last updated: October 30, 2026
Available on: Mac and Windows. For the separate iPhone experience, see Use Flow Notes on iPhone.
Scratchpad lets you type or dictate drafts, add images, and organize reference notes in a tabbed rich-text desktop editor.
Note: If your organization disables Scratchpad, its page becomes unavailable, the notes list clears, notes and images cannot be opened or synced, and the Open Scratchpad shortcut row, Flow Bar button and Settings → System → Scratchpad are hidden.
Create a note
Open the Scratchpad page in Flow.
Select + to create a note.
Type your draft, or select the microphone — or hold the push-to-talk key shown in the empty editor — and speak.
Select the green checkmark to insert the transcript at your cursor, or X to cancel.
Click an existing note card outside its action buttons to edit it. Typing saves automatically; blank content is not saved unless you supply a title. Select Copy in the note's floating actions to copy the note.
How note titles work
Automatic titles use up to the first three words once text reaches 10 characters or three words; an image bypasses that minimum. Automatic naming applies when you create a note without an explicit title, or update one whose title is still empty, and only a nonempty automatic title is applied on update.
If your editor includes a title field, its value — even blank — replaces automatic naming. Clearing an existing note's title is saved; a blank title alone does not save a new draft. Blank titles display Untitled.
Manage tabs and windows
Each window supports five tabs. At the limit, new-tab requests do nothing without an error: shortcut dictation continues in the current tab, Open in new tab adds no tab, and opening another note uses a new window.
Organize: Double-click a tab title to rename it, up to 100 characters; drag horizontally to reorder.
Separate: Drag a tab vertically out of a multi-tab window to save it and open it in another window, with its own five-tab limit. Drag a window onto another to merge tabs.
Close: Hover a tab and click its X, or press Cmd/Ctrl+W. Closing a tab saves nonblank content; an empty tab creates no note. The in-app window X saves and closes every tab, stopping if one fails to close and leaving the rest open.
Hide: The operating system's window-close action hides the window and preserves tabs. Closing the last tab closes the window; a later normal show/hide action opens a fresh tab, regardless of the opening preference.
Use Cmd on Mac and Ctrl on Windows: Cmd/Ctrl+E toggles the sidebar, Cmd/Ctrl+T opens a tab, Cmd/Ctrl+W closes the tab, and Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+W closes the window. The Scratchpad window follows your app theme in Settings → Theme.
Other ways to open Scratchpad
The default Open Scratchpad shortcut is Opt+S on Mac or Win+Alt+S on Windows, assigned when Scratchpad is enabled, no binding exists and those keys are unused, including during Reset to default.
Change it through the shortcut pill on Flow's Scratchpad page, or Settings → General → Shortcuts → Open Scratchpad when that row is available. You can assign up to four bindings or remove all with the trash control; a cleared shortcut stays cleared across refreshes and restarts. An unassigned pill lets you add one; reopening its dialog restores the previous keys only if they are still free. Disabling Scratchpad removes its bindings and remembers them across restarts; re-enabling restores bindings whose keys are still free.
A short tap hides a visible, focused Scratchpad; an unfocused window comes forward instead. Holding or double-tapping starts dictation in a fresh tab when the current tab has content, regardless of opening preference and subject to the five-tab limit. Another press stops dictation started with this shortcut.
Flow Bar: Enable the toggle in the Scratchpad page header; the button is hidden by default and an explicit previous choice is preserved. It appears only outside meetings and in Flow Bar states that support polishing. Click it to open Scratchpad; hover to see your assigned shortcut.
Pin and find notes
Hover a note card or focus it with the keyboard to reveal Edit, Pin/Unpin and Delete; sidebar rows reveal pin and delete the same way.
Select Pin to pin immediately, without confirmation.
Check for the pin icon; if “Failed to update pin” appears, select the pin button again.
Select Pin again to unpin. Pinned notes sort first in lists and searches; each group sorts newest-modified first. Pin status is local to each device and does not sync, including to iPhone.
Search location | Matches |
Scratchpad sidebar | A contiguous phrase in the title or body, ignoring capitalization and body formatting syntax. |
Scratchpad page in Flow | Already-loaded body content only — not titles — ignoring capitalization, without Load more. |
In the sidebar, Load more adds the next 20 notes in the same order; pinned notes reach later pages only when more than 20 are pinned. Clear search with X.
Keyboard shortcuts on Flow's Scratchpad page
These shortcuts do not run in editable fields or while dialogs or popovers are open, and navigation stops at either end. Focus stays on a note while it remains in the filtered list.
Action | Shortcut |
Move through notes | Arrow Down / j; Arrow Up / k |
Open the focused note | Enter |
Create a note | c without Cmd/Ctrl, Shift or Alt; or Cmd/Ctrl+N |
Focus search | Cmd/Ctrl+F; or / without Cmd or Ctrl |
Restore earlier edits
Version history and the note's floating Delete note button appear after the note is saved. History is unavailable after deletion.
Select the clock-shaped Version history button in the note.
Select an earlier version to restore its content immediately, without confirmation.
Recent edits save first, and editing a restored version creates a new version. History lists newest first; the current entry cannot be selected, and without a selection the newest entry is current.
Which edits appear in history
Notes keep up to 50 versions, preserving Created. Consecutive typed edits or consecutive dictated edits within 10 minutes update the latest entry. Transforms always create separate entries, and subsequent typing or dictation starts another entry rather than merging across a transform.
Unchanged typed or dictated content adds no entry. If an updated entry matches the one before it — for example, after typing then deleting text — the redundant entry disappears.
Delete a note
Warning: Deleting a note cannot be undone. It permanently removes history and images on this device. Sync removes the note and its history on other devices, but does not remove their locally stored images. Even “Failed to delete note” can mean history and images were removed.
Select Delete on the note.
Review “Are you sure you want to delete this note?” and “Once deleted it cannot be recovered”.
Choose Cancel or Yes, delete it.
Success removes the note from lists and search immediately and clears its pin. Deleting inside Scratchpad closes that note's tabs in that window only and shows Note deleted; deleting from Flow's Scratchpad page leaves open tabs alone and shows Deleted note. On failure, Scratchpad keeps the tabs open.
Choose what opening Scratchpad does
Open Settings → System → Scratchpad.
Select Customize beside Scratchpad open behavior.
Choose an option; it saves immediately.
Setting | What happens |
Resume last note (default) | Reopens the hidden window's existing tabs. |
Open in new tab | Adds a blank tab when reopening a hidden window whose active tab has content. |
Open last active pinned note | The keyboard shortcut opens the last-used pinned note. |
Opening exceptions and pinned-note fallback
Open in new tab applies to showing Scratchpad without supplying content. Opening without an existing window creates one fresh tab. Opening with content — dictating into no text field or recovering a failed paste — always creates a new window. Opening an existing note from the page or sidebar ignores this preference.
Open last active pinned note remembers pinned notes opened from the page or sidebar, or activated as tabs, across restarts. If the remembered note is deleted or unpinned, the newest-modified pinned note opens; with none pinned, normal show/hide applies.
Add images and sync notes
Warning: Images are resized and compressed, and animated GIFs become a single still frame. Images require a signed-in session when saving; otherwise only the note text is saved.
Paste PNG, JPEG, WebP, GIF or BMP images into the editor, or drop them anywhere in the window; non-image files are ignored. Each note supports 10 images, each 5 MB or smaller after compression. Excess or oversized images are skipped with an error naming the limit.
Images sync to your other signed-in desktop devices, but image attachments are not supported on iPhone. Temporary upload failures retry automatically; permanent errors or cancellation stop the current attempts, and text still syncs if an image upload fails.
Notes save locally offline and sync automatically when you are signed in, online and your computer is active, regardless of your Dictation Cloud Storage setting. Sync pauses during dictation and resumes afterward, waits while Flow starts or updates local data, and can fail. Previously unsynced notes and pending images upload on later successful syncs, and copies from other devices do not overwrite local unsynced edits or their images. Hover Refresh on Flow's Scratchpad page to see the last sync time.
Select Settings → Data and Privacy → Sync notes for a full refresh.
Check for “Notes refreshed”; “Failed to refresh notes” indicates failure.
The button is disabled during the refresh and for 10 seconds after success.
Still need help?
Contact support if manual sync fails, a window cannot finish closing, or deletion reports an error. Include your platform, the exact error and what you tried.