Articles/Saving

Photos as notes: labels, whiteboards and receipts

Updated 13 October 2026. 2 minute read.

Look through your camera roll and count the pictures that are not memories. The label on a bottle of wine you liked. A whiteboard at the end of a meeting. A receipt. The serial number on the back of the router. The opening hours taped to a door. These are notes taken with a camera, and the camera roll is a poor place for notes.

Why the camera roll fails here

• It is sorted by date. You remember the wine, not the Thursday.
• Everything looks the same in the grid. A receipt is a white rectangle among a thousand thumbnails.
• It keeps growing. The photo-notes drown in actual photos.

Photos can find text in images when you search, which helps. But the picture still has no description, no category and no connection to the other things you saved about the same subject.

Take the picture where it will be kept

In Stashy you can take the photo inside the app:

1. Tap the plus button.
2. Choose Camera.
3. Take the picture and save.

Or choose Photos to bring in pictures you already took, several at a time. From the Photos app itself, use Share and pick Stashy.

For anything on paper that runs over more than one page, use Scan. It straightens the page and makes a PDF. See scanning paper to PDF.

What happens to it

The text in the picture is recognised on your device. Stashy then treats the photo like any other save: it gets a short summary, a category and hidden keywords. The wine label can be found by the name of the grape. The whiteboard turns up when you search for the project.

Nothing is uploaded to do this.

Photo-notes worth keeping this way

• Labels: wine, paint colours, the detergent that worked.
• Whiteboards and flipcharts after a meeting.
• Receipts and warranty cards.
• Serial numbers and model plates on appliances.
• Signs: opening hours, parking rules, a notice in the stairwell.
• Pages from books and magazines you do not own.
• Handwritten notes someone gave you.

Three small things that help

• Fill the frame. Get close enough that the text is the picture. Recognition works on what it can read.
• Add a line about why. "Had this at Anna's, around 15 francs" is what you will be glad of later.
• Delete the copy in Photos once it is saved, so the camera roll stays a place for memories.

When to keep it in Photos

Pictures of people, places and moments belong in Photos, with its albums and memories. The test is simple: would you ever look at this picture for its own sake? If not, it is a note. For the screenshots that pile up the same way, see how to organize screenshots.