Support

FAQ

What is Clew?

Clew is a commonplace book for your iPhone, iPad, and Mac. It's a single place to save the lines worth keeping—highlights from books, quotes from articles, lyrics from songs—then tag them, search them, and find the connections between them.

What kinds of sources can I save highlights from?

Books, web pages, and songs. More source types—movies, TV shows, and podcasts—are on the roadmap. You can also save a highlight without attaching any source, and you can always add one later.

How do I add a highlight?

A few ways, depending on where you are:

• Tap the plus button (+) anywhere in the app and type or paste the text.
• Use the camera button 📷 to snap a photo of a page and let Clew pull the text out of it.
• Share a web page to Clew from Safari using the share sheet.
• Ask Siri or run a Shortcut to quick-save text.

Can I capture highlights from a physical book?

Yes. Point the camera at a book page or document, and Clew recognizes the text and lets you quickly select the sentence(s) or paragraph(s) you want to save. It can even match it to an existing book in your library and detect the page number.

You can import multiple photos from your camera roll and review them all at once. You can also tap a page's thumbnail to select text directly on the full-size photo.

Can I import highlights I already have somewhere else?

You can import from CSV and XLSX files, with columns matched automatically and imported books enriched with covers, ISBN, and publication year. Direct import from Readwise, Kindle, and others is coming.

Where is my data stored? Can anyone else see it?

Your Clew collection (highlights, sources, etc.) lives in your own iCloud storage—inside your Apple account, on your devices, and nowhere else. Clew has no account, no server, and no tracking.

See the full privacy policy for details.

How does sync work?

Clew syncs automatically across your iPhone, iPad, and Mac using iCloud. If a device looks out of date, check that it's online and signed in to the right Apple account.

Does Clew use AI? Does that send my highlights anywhere?

Clew uses on-device Apple Intelligence for things like tag suggestions and finding connections between highlights. All of it runs privately, on your device. No data is uploaded or shared.

How do I share my highlights?

Share any highlight as text or Markdown to another app. With Clew Deluxe (coming soon), you'll also be able to share gorgeous highlight cards, perfect for social media, device wallpapers, and more.

Tips for Getting the Most Out of Clew

• Tag as you go. A highlight with two or three tags is one you'll actually find again. Clew suggests tags based on what the highlight is about—accept or ignore them, and add as many as you'd like.
• Let tags overlap. Connections and Clusters reveal connections between highlights based on their tags, so the more you tag, the more insights the app helps you discover.
• Capture first, tidy later. Snap photos of a whole chapter, then review and clean up the batch in one sitting—it only takes a minute!
• Put a widget on your home screen. A resurfaced highlight you'd forgotten is the whole point of keeping them.
• Use Quick Search. When you're using Clew with a keyboard attached, press ⇧⌘O to search your entire collection from anywhere.
• Check Stats now and then. You can see your most-used tags, most-highlighted source, and trends in how your collection has grown.

Need Help? Get in Touch

Found a bug?

Include whatever you can: what you were doing, what happened instead, and your device, OS version, and Clew version. A screenshot helps a lot too.

Have an idea?

Feature requests and general feedback are welcome. Check the roadmap to see if your idea is already planned. If not, send an email!

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