Can Harbor file my scans into the right notebook?

Yes, if they come in through a watched folder. Turn on Guess the notebook from the file’s contents for that folder, and Harbor reads each scan and moves it to the notebook it fits best. The water bill goes to Utilities, the report card to School, and you don’t drag a thing.

Where the switch is

Go to Settings → Watched folders and find the folder. The switch sits right under Notebook, because it changes what that setting means: with the guess on, the folder’s notebook is where files land first, and where they stay when nothing fits.

It works on Google Drive and Dropbox folders, and on folders on your Mac or PC. A local folder works a little differently, below.

It’s in the web app now. The Mac, iPhone, iPad, Android and Windows apps get it in their next update. Until yours has it, turn it on from the web: Harbor’s servers import a Drive or Dropbox folder, so the switch works whichever app you use. A folder on your Mac or PC has to wait for the update, because only the app on that computer can see it.

It’s off by default, and you turn it on one folder at a time.

Like every other folder setting, it’s locked while Watching is on. Turn Watching off, flip the switch, turn Watching back on.

What happens to each file

A file lands in the folder, and Harbor imports it into the folder’s Notebook, same as always.
OCR reads the words on the page. That takes a few moments.
Harbor sends what the scan says to TypeSafe, an AI company, along with your notebooks’ names, their stacks, and the titles of a few notes in each. TypeSafe says which notebook fits best. More on what’s sent, below.
If one fits well, the note moves there. Your other devices see the move like any other.
If none fits well, the note stays in the folder’s notebook.

So you’ll see a note appear in one notebook and then leave it. That’s the switch working, not a glitch.

Harbor only moves a note when it’s fairly sure. A wrong guess is worse than no guess, so when it’s unsure it leaves the note where you’d look for it anyway.

Your move wins

Move the note yourself before Harbor gets to it, here or on another device, and Harbor leaves it alone. It only ever moves a note that’s still sitting where the import put it.

Once a note has moved, it’s an ordinary note. Move it somewhere else and it stays there.

Getting good guesses

The guess is only as good as what your notebooks tell it.

Give notebooks clear names. “Car” and “Taxes” are easy to match a scan to. “Stuff” and “Misc 2” aren’t.
Put a few notes in a notebook first. Harbor looks at recent note titles to see what a notebook holds. An empty notebook is only a name, so it gets picked less often.
Make the folder’s notebook a holding place. Something like Inbox or Scans. Whatever Harbor can’t place waits there, and you can sort it by hand when you get to it.
English works best. The guess is surest on English text.

What stays put

A file with no readable text. A photo with no words in it, or a page OCR couldn’t read, stays in the folder’s notebook. There’s nothing to guess from.
Anything you’ve already moved. See above.
Anything headed for an encrypted notebook. A notebook that encrypts by default is never picked. Harbor’s servers can’t write into one, for the same reason a Drive or Dropbox folder can’t file into one.

Folders on your Mac or PC

A Google Drive or Dropbox folder is imported by Harbor’s servers, so they ask for the guess too, with no app open at all.

A folder on your Mac or PC is imported by the Harbor app on that computer. With the switch on, the app uploads each file first, then asks Harbor’s servers to guess. From there it’s the same guess, and TypeSafe gets the same things. The move comes back to your computer through sync, like a move made on any other device.

Three things are different:

Harbor has to stay running and online for a couple of minutes after it imports a file, long enough to upload it and ask. Quit in that window, or lose the connection for longer than that, and the note stays in the folder’s notebook.
It doesn’t work if the folder’s notebook encrypts new notes. Only a local folder can file into a notebook like that, and when it does, the switch is grayed out. Harbor can’t read an encrypted note to guess where it goes.
There’s a daily limit of 500 files, across every Mac and PC folder on your account. It’s there so an app stuck in a loop can’t run up a bill, and a big scanning day won’t come near it. Past it, files still import. They just stay in the folder’s notebook.

What gets sent, and to whom

Yes, this is AI. The guess comes from a company called TypeSafe, not from Harbor’s own servers. For each file a folder with this switch on imports, TypeSafe receives:

the file’s OCR text, up to the first 8,000 characters;
the file’s name;
the names and stacks of your notebooks;
up to 15 recent note titles from each notebook.

It’s the same list for a Drive, Dropbox or local folder. TypeSafe sends back which notebook the file fits. Nothing else in your library goes to TypeSafe, and nothing goes at all unless you’ve switched this on for that folder.

A notebook that encrypts by default is never sent, and an encrypted note’s title is never sent. TypeSafe says it doesn’t train on customer data, and we don’t either. Every company that touches your data, and what each one gets, is in the privacy policy.

This is separate from Suggest title, which names a note rather than filing it and uses OpenAI. A folder can have either switch on, both, or neither.

What we’d actually do with it

Point your scanner at a Drive or Dropbox folder, give it a notebook called Scans, and turn this on along with the title suggestion. Check that the notebooks you file paper into have plain names and a few notes in them already.

Then scan the pile. What Harbor can place arrives named and filed. The rest waits in Scans for you.