The specific annoyance this feature solves
Screenshots often hold information you just need "for a moment" — an SMS verification code, an order number, a payment amount, a Wi-Fi password. What these all have in common is that they're text at heart, but locked inside image pixels — the traditional way is to squint at it and type it in by hand, which makes it easy to misread a digit. That's especially costly for something time-sensitive like a verification code, where one typo means requesting a new one.
How to trigger it: AI needs to be configured first
This step depends on AI (BYOK, bring your own key). Once you've configured a key with any provider, every newly imported screenshot automatically runs through analysis in the background. If it recognizes structured information like a verification code, order number, amount, or password, it pulls that out separately as a "label + value" pair — no manual tagging or selecting required.
Without AI configured, this step simply doesn't happen — but the screenshot's raw text can still be manually selected and copied on the note detail page; you just lose this layer of automatic key-field extraction. See this piece on using it without AI for the full difference.
Where to find it, and how to copy
A screenshot with a recognized key field shows a small tag right on its row in the home screen note list — no need to tap into the detail page; a glance at the list tells you this screenshot has copyable key information. Next to the tag is a copy button; tap it once and the content is saved to the system clipboard, ready for you to switch straight to the target app and paste. The interface pops up a "Copied ×××" confirmation so you know it worked.
For example: your bank sends an SMS verification code, and you screenshot it into ScreenNote on a whim. When you switch back to the payment page ready to type it in, there's no need to flip back to your photo library, zoom in, and squint through digits that are easy to misread one at a time — that row in the list already carries the recognized verification-code tag. Tap the copy button and paste it in — far faster than typing it off the image by hand, and far less likely to get a digit wrong.
What gets recognized as a key field
Mainly content where "the number or string itself is the point" — SMS verification codes, order numbers, payment amounts, account passwords — essentially the common fields found in bills, verification messages, and receipt-style screenshots. If a screenshot doesn't actually contain this kind of structured information — say, a landscape photo or a screenshot of a long block of text — no tag gets generated; nothing is forced to appear. If the same screenshot has multiple possible fields recognized, the list row shows the most prominent one, while the rest stay in the OCR text and can be viewed in full on the detail page whenever you need them.
How this differs from "copying the whole block of text"
The note detail page also has an expandable "OCR text" section, where any screenshot — whether AI is configured or not — shows the full recognized text for manual selection and copying. The value of the key-field tag is that you don't have to hunt through a big block of text yourself to find the right line — AI has already worked out which few characters in that text actually matter, and puts them right in front of you. Pair it with system Spotlight search, and you can even skip the step of opening the app at all.
