Marginalia — Support
Getting started
How do I add a book? Tap the + button on the home screen. You can scan the barcode on the back of the book (fastest), enter the ISBN manually, or type the title and author yourself.
How do I capture a passage? Open a book, tap the camera button, and photograph the page. The app will transcribe the text and detect any highlighting automatically. After processing, you can review the passage, assign a category, and add a personal note before saving.
What highlighter colors does the app detect? Marginalia detects six colors: orange, yellow, pink, blue, green, and purple. Each maps to one of your six camera-detectable categories. You can rename these categories in Settings to match however you think about your reading.
Highlighting detection
The app didn’t detect my highlighting. What do I do? A few things help:
Light matters most. Photograph in good natural light or under a bright lamp. Dim or warm-toned lighting (like a bedside lamp) reduces detection accuracy significantly.
Hold the phone flat directly above the page, as parallel to it as possible.
Give it a moment after the shutter — processing takes a second or two.
Try the sensitivity setting. In Settings → Capture → Highlighter Sensitivity, try switching to Heavy if you highlight lightly or use older, less saturated highlighters.
The app detected highlighting that wasn’t there. This usually happens in low light or when part of the page is in shadow — shadows can look like highlights to the camera. Try retaking in better, more even lighting. You can also switch to Light sensitivity in Settings → Capture → Highlighter Sensitivity.
The wrong color was detected. Orange and blue are the most reliably detected colors. Pink, green, and purple can occasionally be misidentified depending on lighting and paper color. If a color is consistently misidentified, try retaking with more even lighting, or assign the correct category manually after capture.
Genuinely dark photos won’t work. If a photo is significantly underexposed — taken in a very dim room — the highlighted pixels may not be bright enough for the app to detect. The fix is to retake in better light. This is a real limitation and we’re working on improving low-light performance in a future update.
Categories
Can I rename my categories? Yes — and at two levels. Go to Settings → Categories to rename any of the ten categories globally. Those names appear everywhere in the app by default.
But you can also override category names on a per-book basis. Open any book, go to its settings, and set different category names just for that book. So if “Quote” is your global default but you’re reading a philosophy book where you want that color to mean “Premise,” you can make that change without affecting the rest of your library. Book-level names take precedence over global names everywhere that book appears.
What’s the difference between the six camera-detectable categories and the other four? The first six categories (Personal Favorite, Quote, Fact, To Verify, Definition, Anecdote) each correspond to a highlighter color the camera can detect automatically. The other four (Research Lead, Data Point, Argument, Writing Craft) are assigned manually — tap the category pill on any passage to change it.
Your data
Is my data backed up? Yes — Marginalia uses iCloud to sync and back up your data automatically. Your books, passages, and notes are stored in your personal iCloud account. If you get a new phone or reinstall the app, your data will be there.
If you have iCloud disabled on your device, your data stays local only. In that case, use Settings → Export regularly to save a copy.
Does Marginalia interact with my Photos library? In two ways:
Choosing a cover photo — when you pick an existing photo from your library as a book cover, Marginalia reads that specific photo. It only accesses the photo you select, nothing else in your library.
Saving page photos — when enabled, Marginalia saves copies of captured page photos and book covers into a “Marginalia” folder in your Photos library, organized into per-book albums. To turn this off: go to Settings → App Settings and toggle off “Save page photos to Apple Photos.” Turning it off stops future saves but doesn’t delete photos already saved.
You’ll be asked for Photos permission the first time you use either feature. You can revoke it anytime in iOS Settings → Privacy → Photos.
You may also be prompted to pin the “Marginalia” folder in Photos for quick access. Marginalia can’t pin it automatically, but you can: open Photos, go to Albums, touch and hold the “Marginalia” folder, and choose Pin.
How do I export my passages? Go to Settings → Export. You can export as CSV (opens in any spreadsheet app) or XLSX (Excel format). The export includes all your books, passages, categories, page numbers, chapter titles, and personal notes.
How do I import passages? Go to Settings → Import and select a CSV or XLSX file. A few things to know before importing:
After import, your books may have incomplete metadata — cover image, genre, publisher, and other details won’t carry over from a spreadsheet. To fill these in, tap any imported book, tap the search icon, find the book, and save — this pulls the full book information automatically.
Photos of pages don’t import. Passages come in as text only — the original page photos can’t be recovered from a spreadsheet. If you have the photos, you can recapture them manually from within each passage.
How do I delete all my data? To delete your Marginalia data from your device, delete the app. To also remove it from iCloud, go to iOS Settings → your name → iCloud → Manage Account Storage → Marginalia → Delete Data.
Still stuck?
Email us at nathan@idratherberight.com and we’ll get back to you.
Marginalia is made by one person who reads a lot of books. Response times may vary but every email gets a real reply.