A PDF in a note is more than a file to open. Grape reads the text out of it once, on the device the PDF is on, and keeps it there, so everything that works with your notes works with what the PDF says too.
What uses it
- The AI chat answers from the PDF's text, page by page, without sending the file to the model again
- Flashcards, quizzes and mind maps are made from the note and its PDFs together
- Slide decks, infographics and Brainrot videos take it along as well
- Search finds a note by a word that is only inside its PDF, and shows the page it is on
A note that is a PDF with a line or two of your own works with all of them, so dropping in the lecture slides and asking for flashcards is enough.
When it happens
A PDF is read in the background a moment after you add it. The PDFs already in your notes are read a little after the app opens, one at a time, and a PDF that arrives from another device is read once it finishes downloading. Most take a second or two. If an AI tool needs a PDF the background reading has not reached yet, it reads that one first.
Scanned pages
A scan or a photographed page has no text in it, only a picture of text. On iPhone, iPad and Android, Grape reads those pages with the phone's own text recognition, up to 60 pages of a PDF. On desktop a scan stays unread: the chat sends the file itself to a model that reads PDFs, and the study tools work from what you wrote in the note.
What stays on your device
The reading happens on your device and needs no internet connection and no AI model. The text stays on the device that read it and does not sync: each device reads the PDFs it has, so nothing extra travels between them. Signing out and back in keeps it, so nothing is read twice. Grape reads a PDF again only on a device that has not read it yet, after the file changes, or when you delete everything on a device, which clears the text along with the PDFs. When you ask the AI about a note, what its PDF says goes to the model with the note, the same way your own words do. A locked note never reaches the AI.
How much it reads
Up to 1,000 pages of a PDF. The chat takes in about 60,000 characters at a time, a long paper or a whole lecture's slides, and reads on page by page when the question is about a part further in. The study tools sample a long PDF across all of its pages, so flashcards for a textbook chapter cover the whole chapter rather than its first few pages. A password protected PDF cannot be read.