Exporting

Scratch is a working surface, not a long-term home. When something is worth keeping, send it somewhere else.

Every export action lives in two places:

• The File menu in the macOS menu bar.
• An Export popover from the footer of the main window.

The footer also has a Copy buffer button that puts the raw Markdown on your clipboard — see Copy the buffer below.

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Copy the buffer

The Copy buffer button in the footer — the clipboard icon, first in the action cluster to the left of Export — copies the current buffer’s full Markdown to your clipboard. Scratch confirms with a Buffer copied toast. The button is disabled when the buffer is empty.

This is the raw Markdown, exactly as it sits on disk — nothing is converted. To reshape the formatting for another app, use Send to Obsidian or Send to Apple Notes below.

Export the current buffer

File → Export buffer (⌘E) writes the current buffer as a single .md file. Scratch shows a save dialog with the first line of the buffer as the suggested filename.

Export to a folder

File → Export to folder (⌘⇧E) writes the current buffer as a .md file into a folder you choose once — no save dialog each time. Set the destination in Settings → Export → Export folder; until you do, the action has nowhere to write.

The file is named after the buffer’s first line. Re-exporting a buffer overwrites the file with the same title, so the folder always holds your latest version.

Send to Obsidian

File → Send to Obsidian copies the current buffer as a Markdown file into your Obsidian vault. The first time you use this, Scratch asks you to pick the vault root; the choice is remembered.

The file is named after the first line of the buffer. Subsequent sends to a buffer with the same title overwrite — duplicate at the OS level if you want history.

Send to Apple Notes

File → Send to Apple Notes (macOS only) creates a new note in Apple Notes containing the current buffer. Headings, bold, italics, lists, and links are converted to Apple Notes’ native formatting; code blocks are sent as monospaced text.

The first time you use this, macOS prompts for permission to control Buffers. Grant it once and it sticks.

Reveal buffers folder

When you’d rather work directly with files, File → Reveal buffers folder (or Settings → General → Buffers → Reveal in Finder) opens your buffer folder — the default location, ~/Library/Application Support/Scratch/buffers/, or the folder you set in Settings → General → Buffer location — in Finder. Every buffer is a .md file you can open, copy, or move with anything that reads Markdown.