Who this is for
People who treat screenshots as receipts: food delivery, rides, online orders, transfers. You do not want to type in every payment, and you do not want to hand a budgeting app access to your payment accounts. You want a record you can look back on later.
Log a payment in three steps
- Get the screenshot in. Bulk-import existing screenshots from Photos, send one from another app through the share sheet, or set up a Shortcut that files each new screenshot automatically. When you open the app it also offers any fresh screenshots it noticed.
- Let it read. Text recognition runs on the phone. Payment screenshots are filed under the Ledger module in the Categories tab, with amount, merchant and category on one row.
- Glance and confirm. Entries it is less sure about are flagged for confirmation. Open them one by one, confirm what is right and fix what is not.
What the ledger gives you
- A monthly breakdown by category, so you can see where the month went.
- Suspected-duplicate warnings, for when the same payment was screenshotted twice.
- Upcoming charges: recurring subscriptions it spots are listed with roughly what will be charged in the next two weeks.
- A source tag on each entry showing whether it came from basic on-device reading or was refined by AI.
Do you need AI turned on?
No. On-device recognition reads the amount and merchant from tidy payment notices. With AI on (official AI or your own API key), categories and messy bill pages are read more accurately, and you can re-process existing entries in bulk. Official AI has a monthly free allowance, and the exact number is shown in the app. When it runs out, the on-device features carry on as before. What gets sent in each mode is spelled out in section 4 of the privacy policy.
What it does not do
ScreenNote does not connect to WeChat, Alipay or any bank, and it does not pull transactions. Every entry comes from a screenshot you took, so a payment you forgot to capture will not appear. For real reconciliation, trust your bank statement and treat this ledger as an everyday look-back.
FAQ
Does expense tracking from screenshots need an internet connection?
Importing and on-device text recognition work offline. If you turn on AI for more accurate amounts, merchants and categories, the recognized content is sent according to the mode you pick. The privacy policy lists exactly what goes where.
Does it read my WeChat or Alipay account?
No. ScreenNote is not linked to any payment account. It only processes the screenshots you take yourself.
Can I track expenses on the free plan?
Yes. On-device recognition and viewing the ledger are not capped. Official AI refinement has a monthly free allowance, and the on-device features keep working after it runs out.
