What it does
Relic looks at your screenshots and photos and pulls the words out of them. The words are kept with the item, so search can match them like any other text. The picture itself never leaves your computer, and neither do the words: this happens on the machine that captured it.
A photo of a boarding pass is the easy example. Snap it, keep it, and a week later type gate B12 in the search box and the photo comes back.
Where the text shows up
Double-click a row to open the item. The words Relic read sit near the top, under the heading EXTRACTED TEXT, in a plain typewriter face. Two small buttons sit beside that heading: one copies all of the text, the other blows the block up to the full height of the window. Collapse puts it back.
Nothing there is locked. You can copy the text out, or type your own title and tags over the top, and what you write is never overwritten by a later pass.
Finding a picture by its words
You do not have to do anything special. Type the words you remember seeing and the picture ranks with everything else that matches.
- A screenshot of a receipt comes back when you type the name of the shop.
- A photo of a room number comes back when you type the number.
- A screenshot of an error comes back when you type a few words of the message.
A picture can also turn up for a phrase that is not printed on it anywhere. That is a separate switch, and it has its own page: Search by meaning.
What gets read
Every photo, whether you kept it or not, and the items you keep. Relic works through them in the background a few at a time, so a picture you just took becomes searchable shortly after you take it. A row that is still being read says Analyzing… under its title.
This needs the models, so it only works while Settings › Search and AI › On-device smart tags is on and the download has finished. See the one-time download.
Turning it off
Turn the row off and Relic stops reading pictures. Everything else carries on: items are still sorted into groups, and text items are still handled as before.
Text that has already been read stays with those items, so old screenshots keep working. To get rid of it, delete the item.