On a computer, Relic picks up everything you copy without being asked. When something is missing, it is almost always one of five things. Work down the list.

On a computer

Capture is paused. A pause is easy to forget, so Relic puts a strip above the list every time you open the window, with the time left on it when the pause is a timed one:

Capture pausedResume

Capture paused for 8 minResume

Capture paused for about an hourResume

Press Resume on the strip, or use the tray menu, which reads Resume capture while a pause is running. A timed pause ends on its own, and restarting Relic always comes up capturing.

The app you copied from is blocked. Anything in Settings › Capture › Never capture from is skipped, quietly and on purpose. Open the list and look for the app you were in.

Never capture from

Copies from these apps never enter Relic. Good for password managers.

Settings › Capture › Never capture from: button: Add app….

That kind of thing is turned off. Text, images and files each have their own switch, and all three are on unless you changed them.

Capture text

Settings › Capture › Capture text: toggle, default on.

Capture images

Settings › Capture › Capture images: toggle, default on.

Capture files

Settings › Capture › Capture files: toggle, default on.

It was too big. Relic skips anything over the size limit rather than filling your vault with it. It tells you when that happens, at most once an hour:

Too large to capture

The limit is 100 MB. You can raise it in Settings.

Max item size

Skip captures larger than this. Bigger files are kept as a path only.

Settings › Capture › Max item size: 1 to 100 MB, default 100 MB.

A copied file over the limit is not lost. Relic keeps the item as its path, so you can still find it later, you just do not get a copy of the bytes. Drag the slider up if you copy large files often.

Copies Relic skips on purpose

Some copies never reach any clipboard tool. Password managers, and a few other apps, mark what they put on the clipboard as private, and every well-behaved app honours the mark. Relic does. That is why the password you copied from your password manager is not in your history, and nothing is broken.

If you actually want one of those items in Relic, the save and annotate shortcut is not blocked. Select the text, press Ctrl + Shift + E, and Relic saves it and opens the editor. An explicit action beats a hint. The same is true of the Never capture from list.

On a phone

Nothing is captured in the background on a phone, and nothing will be. Neither Android nor iPhone lets an app read the clipboard unless it is the app you are looking at. So on a phone you tell Relic to take something, in one of three ways:

Share to Relic
In any app, tap Share and pick Relic. Text, images, PDFs, links and files all land in your vault. Nothing to set up.
The Quick Settings tile, on Android
Copy something, pull down Quick Settings, tap Capture to Relic. Add the tile once from the tile editor. Walkthrough in Capture on Android.
A Shortcut, on an iPhone
Make a Shortcut that opens relic://capture, name it Capture to Relic, and bind it to Back Tap or the Action Button.

Relic on a phone can show you and search everything your computers captured. It just does not watch the clipboard while you are elsewhere. If you tapped the tile and nothing appeared, copy the thing again and tap again: the tile reads the clipboard the moment Relic comes to the front, and a copy made in a different app a while ago may already be gone.

On Linux

Relic captures everything you copy on Linux, on both X11 and Wayland. What Wayland does not give any app is the name of the window you copied from. Two things follow from that:

Never capture from cannot match. With no app name, Relic has nothing to compare against the list, so copies are captured. Close the app you did not want captured, or turn capture off while you use it.
Items have no source app on their line. The device name is still there. This is cosmetic.

The private-copy mark still works on Linux, so a password manager's copies are still skipped. There is more on the session difference on the shortcut page.

If capture still looks wrong, open Settings›About, press Copy diagnostics, and send it to support@relic.space with the app you copied from.