Scratchpad

Scratchpad

The Scratchpad is a quick-capture workspace for when you are away from the app — at a bookstore, in a library, browsing a shelf at a friend’s place — and want to remember a book without typing anything.

Take a photo, and Tsumihon runs OCR on it in the background to extract the title text. From there, the app suggests candidate matches against your installed sources and your existing library, so you can decide whether to skip a book you already have or add a new one.

How It Works

  1. Open the Scratchpad tab from the navigation.
  2. Tap Add photo. You can take a photo or pick one from your library.
  3. The image is saved to the Scratchpad’s Active tab.
  4. A background OCR task processes the image to extract text. This runs even when the app is closed.
  5. Once OCR completes, the entry shows candidate titles. Tap an entry to review the candidates.
  6. From an entry’s detail view, you can:
    • Search for the book using the extracted text to find sources you can add it from.
    • Confirm a match against an existing library entry (the book is then archived).
    • Discard the entry if it is not useful.

Active vs. Added

The Scratchpad has two tabs:

  • Active — entries you have captured but not yet acted on. Awaiting OCR, awaiting review, or simply parked for later.
  • Added — entries you have linked to a library book or imported. These are archived automatically and kept for reference.

Tips

  • Capture multiple covers in one session and review them all at once when you are back home.
  • The OCR works best with a clear, well-lit photo of the title text. Glare or extreme angles reduce accuracy.
  • Background OCR depends on the device’s task scheduler. On mobile, results may arrive immediately or after a short delay, depending on OS battery rules.
  • Once a Scratchpad entry has matched a book, you can find that book in your library by tapping the entry on the Added tab.

Privacy

Scratchpad images are stored locally on the device that captured them. They are not uploaded or synced. OCR runs through the same configured AI provider as OCR search — if no AI key is configured, the OCR step is skipped and you can still use the entry to type a search manually.