On iPhone and iPad, your notes, folders, tags and AI chats show up in Spotlight, the search on the Home Screen, so you can find a note without opening Grape first. It is on every plan, Free included, needs no account and has nothing to turn on. What Spotlight searches stays on the device, and Grape uploads nothing for it.
Searching from the Home Screen
Swipe down on the middle of the Home Screen, or tap Search at the bottom of it, and start typing. Grape's results come together under Grape, among the results from your other apps.
What shows up
- Notes, titled by their first line with the text that follows under it. Spotlight searches the first 20,000 characters of a note, and a note's tags count as its keywords, so typing a tag's name finds the notes that carry it. A handwriting note is found by the words read off its pages, and templates are there too: every note the app's own search finds
- Folders, with how many notes each one holds and, for a folder inside another, where it lives, like Work › Meetings · 12 notes. Shared with me is listed while it holds something
- Tags, like #standup, with how many notes carry them
- AI chats, named the way the chat history names them, by the chat's title or the first thing you asked, with the question or the answer under it
A note wears the Grape icon. Folders, tags and chats each wear a symbol of their own on a tile in your accent color, so they read apart from the notes at a glance.
Opening a result
Tap a result and Grape opens on it: a note in the editor, a handwriting note on its pages, a folder on its list of notes, a tag on the notes that carry it, and a chat in the chat sheet over the note list. A result for something you deleted a moment ago opens nothing, and it leaves Spotlight right after.
When iOS offers Search in App with Grape's results, tap it and Grape opens its own search with your words already typed in.
What stays out
- Locked notes, even while they are unlocked, the same as in the app's own search
- Notes in Recently Deleted
- Notes with no words at all: a blank note, a note that holds only a picture, or a handwriting note whose ink has not been read yet
- Chats with nothing in them
Keeping it up to date
There is nothing to run. A new note, an edit, a move, a renamed folder, a delete, a note you lock, anything a sync brings from your other devices and a restored backup all reach Spotlight within a couple of seconds, and at once when you leave the app. The first time Grape opens after the update that brought Spotlight, it adds your whole library in the background a few seconds in, so a big library can take a little while to be fully searchable.
Results are written in the app's language, and switching the language rewrites them. The tiles follow your accent color the same way.
Signing out
Signing out and keeping the notes on the device leaves them searchable, since they are still in the app. The folders and notes other people shared with you leave Spotlight with the account. Deleting the notes from the device as you sign out, or Delete All Data in Settings under Data, takes everything out of Spotlight straight away.
Turning it off
There is no switch for it inside Grape. Open the Settings app, go to Search, tap Grape and turn off Show Content in Search. Turning off Show App in Search as well hides the Grape app itself from Search. On older versions of iOS the same two switches are in Settings under Grape, then Siri & Search.
On Android and on desktop
Android has no Spotlight, and the desktop app does not add your notes to Spotlight on a Mac. On a computer, Grape's own search is the tool: Cmd K on Mac, Ctrl K on Windows and Linux, see Search your notes.