# Ask your Mac what you saw.

Ask is Earlyn's search and question box: type a word or a question in plain language and Earlyn answers from your own screen and meeting history, showing the moments it used.

[Video: Asking Earlyn a question and opening the moments it cites.](https://www.earlyn.app/video/clips/clip-ask)

## Search by word, by meaning or by time

Press ⇧⌥Space anywhere. Results arrive as you type, grouped by day, with the app, the window title and the matching words. Search runs on SQLite's full-text index on your Mac and returns in milliseconds.

- **By meaning.** With the search model installed (EmbeddingGemma, 334 MB), “music” finds the YouTube tab and a Turkish question finds an English page. See [how we chose the model](https://www.earlyn.app/research/local-semantic-search).
- **By time.** Words like “yesterday”, “last week” or “dün” narrow the search to that period.
- **With operators.** `app:Safari`, `title:invoice`, `before:friday`, `after:2026-09-01`, `is:pinned`, `is:copied`, `is:meeting` and "exact phrases".
- **Across sources.** Screen moments, meeting transcripts and the documents in folders you chose appear in one list.

## Ask a question, get an answer with sources

Press ⌥↵ to ask instead of search. Earlyn finds the moments that match, hands them to the model you chose and shows the answer with numbered links back to each moment. If nothing matches, it says so instead of guessing.

The Chat page in the main window keeps a thread: follow-up questions see the last answers. Its empty page shows today as a strip of 15-minute bars; drag across a stretch to ask about just that part of the day.

## Which model answers

Settings → Models shows what is sent before a cloud key is saved. The local choices send nothing.

| Model | Where it runs | What it needs |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Apple on-device model | On your Mac | macOS 26 with Apple Intelligence on |
| Earlyn model (Qwen3 1.7B) | On your Mac, with Metal | A one-time 1.1 GB download |
| Ollama | On your Mac, your own server | Ollama running on localhost |
| Claude or OpenAI | The provider's servers | Your own API key; the question and the memories retrieved for it are sent |

## Questions

### Can Ask answer about meetings too?

Yes. Meeting transcripts are searched with your screen history, and a question like “what did we decide yesterday” uses both.

### Does Ask make things up?

It is told to answer only from the numbered memories it was given and to say when they do not contain the answer. With no memory at all for a period, Earlyn answers that it has none without calling the model.

### Can I search in Turkish or other languages?

Yes. Full-text search ignores accents, so “sukur” finds “şükür”, and search by meaning works across languages.

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Canonical: https://www.earlyn.app/features/ask · Updated 2026-10-02