Export & bookmarks

Export a chat

Open the chat’s ⋯ menu and choose Export Chat…, or on macOS use File ▸ Export Chat… (⇧ ⌘ E).

Pick a format:

• Markdown: headings per message, code fences and thinking in collapsible sections.
• Plain Text: the same conversation without any markup.
• PDF: a printable copy.

Two switches decide what goes in beyond the messages themselves. Both are off by default:

• Include thinking adds the agent’s reasoning.
• Include tool calls adds each call with its arguments and output. Long output is cut so one large file read doesn’t swamp the export.

Messages that haven’t been sent yet are left out, and context compaction and new-session markers appear as dividers.

A completed cache read from before a history reset or chat dehydration cannot restore older rows or paging state afterward.

If the initial history is unavailable, export fails instead of creating a header-only file. A complete cached transcript can still be exported offline, including a genuinely empty chat.

The export covers the whole history, not only the part on screen. Pincer pages in the older messages first, which can take a moment in a long chat. Markdown and plain-text file preparation then runs in the background while the export sheet shows progress.

On a Mac, Pincer opens a save panel. On iPhone and iPad it opens the share sheet, so you can save to Files, send it in Messages or hand it to another app. The temporary file for the iOS share sheet is written in the background. Leaving the chat while that file is being prepared cancels its presentation and removes the unused file.

Bookmark a message

Right-click a message (Mac) or long-press it (iPhone and iPad) and choose Bookmark. Do the same and choose Remove Bookmark to undo it.

A bookmarked message shows a filled star (★) at the start of the line under it, next to Copy. Click or tap the star to remove the bookmark. VoiceOver reads the message as “Bookmarked”.

The star changes immediately while the short message preview is prepared in the background. Removing a bookmark takes effect immediately, including while its preview is still being prepared. For unusually large messages (over 256 KiB of text or 64 content blocks), text without contiguous UTF-8 storage, unusually long message locators, or a full preview queue, the bookmark remains saved with an empty preview. A preview that exceeds 2 KiB, such as text with very long Unicode combining sequences, also stays empty. Pincer keeps one preview worker shared across gateways, at most 32 waiting previews and at most 8 MiB of retained text and locators.

To find your bookmarks, either:

• press ⌘ K and look in the Bookmarks section of the command palette, or
• open the chat’s ⋯ menu and choose Bookmarks… to see that chat’s bookmarks.

Choosing a bookmark opens the chat and jumps to the message. Bookmarks whose chat has not loaded yet show Saved chat in the command palette until its title arrives.

Once the gateway confirms a chat was deleted, Pincer removes its bookmarks from this device and synced preferences, including when reconnecting after being offline. Clearing a local transcript cache keeps its bookmarks.

Note

Bookmarks sync between your devices through your gateway, separately for each gateway (see Synced preferences). Removing one removes it everywhere. Other devices show the first 60 characters of the message. There’s room for about 100–150 bookmarks per gateway; once it’s full, a new bookmark removes an older one (the oldest in its full sync shard, or the oldest overall at the 150-bookmark cap), and Pincer tells you when that happens. If the gateway has no durable identity for your connection, bookmarks stay on the current device.

Bookmark stars update immediately. Pincer encodes the full local saved collection in the background, coalescing newer edits; clearing bookmarks prevents an older pending save from restoring them.

Quick Look previews keep separate temporary files for each chat window. Replacing or closing a preview removes only that preview’s file; leaving its chat also retires the current file. Cleanup runs in the background. Files left by an interrupted app session are not swept by this cleanup.