Lens keeps two views of what you have captured: a compact timeline in the popup for the active project, and a master timeline on the dashboard covering every project.
1. The popup timeline
Captures are grouped by day, newest first, with the time down the left. Each row shows a thumbnail, the file name, its type and the page title.
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| Thumbnail | Opens a larger preview with the page URL and capture time. The preview shows the real file, so a GIF plays and a recording gets a player |
| Copy | Puts the capture itself on the clipboard — the file, not the thumbnail. A GIF copies as its first frame, which is all a clipboard holds; a recording cannot be copied and says so |
| Save a copy | Writes the capture to your downloads. This is how a file leaves Lens when no folder is linked |
| Rename | Renames the file and its metadata entry |
| Delete | Removes the entry from the timeline |
| Search | Filters by file name, page title or URL |
| JSON | Exports project_metadata.json for the active project |
Copy re-encodes to PNG first. The clipboard accepts PNG everywhere and JPEG nowhere, so a JPEG copied as itself pastes nothing at all.
2. The dashboard
Open the dashboard from the arrow icon at the top right of the popup, or the gear beside it to land straight on Settings. It has four sections.
- Projects — every project as a card with its folder, capture count, last capture, access state, and anything the folder is waiting to receive.
- Timeline — every capture across all projects, grouped by project.
- Guides — every step-by-step guide, with import and export for the whole set. See Guides.
- Settings — all preferences, plus your keyboard shortcuts.
3. Searching and filtering
The master timeline's filter bar stays fixed as you scroll and combines free-text search across name, page title and URL, a project filter, and a type filter for PNG or GIF. The count on the right reflects what is currently shown.
4. Grouping
The master timeline is grouped by project by default. Projects are ordered by their most recent capture, so whatever you are working on now is at the top, and captures stay newest-first inside each one.
Group by day in the filter bar switches to date headings instead — useful for answering "what did I do yesterday" rather than "show me this project". Each card shows whichever of the two the heading does not: the date inside a project group, the project name inside a day group.
Your choice is remembered, so the timeline opens the way you left it.
5. Exporting
- Export timeline JSON on the dashboard writes every capture across all projects to a single file.
- JSON in the popup, or Export JSON on a project card, writes that one project's project_metadata.json.
6. Opening a capture
The dashboard's detail view shows the file, what it is, and — under Stored — where it actually is: kept by Lens, and mirrored to a named folder when there is one. Alongside it sit Copy, Save a copy and, for a still image, Edit image.
Edit image is hidden where it would not work. A recording cannot be opened by the image tools at all; a GIF can, but the tools open one frame and save one frame, so editing an animation would replace it with a still under the same name. Both are hidden rather than offered and then failing.
7. Thumbnails, and the file behind them
What the timeline shows beside each entry is a small JPEG of the first frame, held in extension storage so the list loads instantly. That is why a GIF sits still in the popup timeline and in the dashboard grid, and why a screenshot there is thumbnail-sized rather than full resolution. A recording's thumbnail is taken from the recording itself when you save it.
Open one and the preview reads the actual file instead: full size, a GIF that plays, a recording in a player. The project holds that file whether or not a folder is linked, so this works with nothing mounted.
Settings > Clear cached previews empties that cache. The captures themselves are untouched — only the thumbnails go, and the timeline then shows a placeholder icon in their place until you open one.
A recording saved before Lens took thumbnails from recordings has no picture on its row. Opening it still plays it.