September 2026
Answers you can check · Bower
Answers you can check
Bower now looks up genes, proteins, compounds and structures in NCBI, UniProt, Ensembl, ChEMBL and the PDB with a link to each record, and does sequence work in code. A DOI it never actually saw can no longer be saved into a note, and when code could not run, Bower says so above any figures it did not compute.Read more →Bower remembers · Bower
Bower remembers what you tell it
Bower now learns lasting details from your chats and live sessions, such as your research focus, the methods you prefer, and your lab’s conventions, and brings them into new conversations. Memories are private to you and stay in the workspace they came from. Review, edit, or delete them any time in Settings → Preferences → What Bower remembers.Read more →Better note tables · Capture
Tables that hold real data
Every column resizes, including the last one, which used to add a column instead. Banded rows from the table menu orCmd+Shift+K, carried into
shared read-only views. Selecting five rows and deleting now deletes five.
Fit to width is in the handle menu, wide tables stop compressing to
unreadable columns, and a second scrollbar sits above the table so the
right-hand columns stay reachable while you read the header.Read more →Word export and printing · Organization
Take your work out of Bower
Export a note to Word (.docx), generated in your browser.Cmd+P and PDF
export now produce the whole note rather than the first screen, and printing
always uses the light palette so a note written in dark mode is legible on
paper. Numbered lists keep their own starting number in Word, Markdown and
plain text.Read more →Figures and diagrams in chat · Bower
Figures, diagrams, and dropping a file into chat
Bower now produces publication-grade figures and mermaid diagrams directly in the conversation. You can also drag a file onto the chat box or paste a screenshot straight in, where dragging previously opened the file in a new tab. Generated R and Python code comes through cleanly.Read more →August 2026
Visual reference sets · Bower
Teach Bower your own visual categories
Build a visual reference set: your own labeled answer key, from your own images. You pick the categories and the reference images that define each one, and Bower compares new images against that set. Ask “which bleaching stage is this?” at the bench, hands-free in a live session. Bower never invents a taxonomy, reports match strength as high, medium or low rather than a percentage, and says so plainly when the comparison is inconclusive.Read more →Code in Bower · Capture and Bower
Your R scripts belong in Bower
Attach.R, .Rmd, .py, .ipynb, .sql and more. Scripts open
syntax-highlighted instead of sitting there as a download link, search
reads inside them, note code blocks carry a language, and Bower answers in
your language rather than translating your analysis into another one.Read more →July 2026
Privacy on every plan · Workspaces and permissions
Privacy controls are now on every plan
Per-entity privacy is no longer Team-only. On Starter, Individual and Team, open Manage access on any note, protocol, attachment or collection and set it to Workspace, Only specific people, or Just me. Deciding who can see a note is a safety property, not a premium feature.Read more →Command palette, expanded · Search
Cmd+K now takes you anywhere, and hands off to Bower
The command palette grows beyond search. Jump to any page or setting, get an exact match promoted to a pre-selected Top result, and press Tab to hand whatever you have typed straight to Bower. Search itself is unchanged, with the same hybrid keyword and semantic ranking.Read more →Pinned items · Organization
Pin your most-used notes and collections
A new Pinned section at the top of the sidebar keeps your go-to notes, protocols and collections one click away. Pins are personal: yours follow you across browsers and devices, and teammates never see them. Pin up to 50 items from any item’s ⋮ menu.Read more →Ask Bower to draw a diagram · Notes
Ask Bower to draw a diagram
Ask Bower, in a note, to diagram a process, pathway, cycle, mechanism, or comparison — “draw the CRISPR workflow”, “show the PCR cycle” — and it adds a real, editable diagram right where you’re working, not a flat picture. Nodes are color-coded by meaning with labeled arrows and grouped sections; click to open the editor and change anything. For plotting data, ask for a chart instead.Read more →Meeting summaries · Voice notes
Meeting summaries with action items
Record or upload a meeting and Bower writes a short summary at the top of the note — a one-line TL;DR, the key points, and the action items, each with the owner named. See what was decided and who’s doing what without reading the whole transcript. It’s plain note content, so you can edit or reword any part of it.Read more →June 2026
Connectors on every plan · Integrations
Connectors are now on every plan
Connectors are no longer paid-only. Starter includes up to 3 connectors, Individual 10, and Team stays unlimited — so anyone can connect Notion, Slack, Google Drive, OneNote and more, and import from them. Read-only at the source; saved to your knowledge base only when you ask.Read more →Meeting speaker labels · Voice notes
Speaker labels for meeting recordings
Turn on the new Meeting toggle before recording a conversation with more than one person, and Bower separates the voices and labels each turn — Speaker 1, Speaker 2, and so on — so the transcript reads as a clear back-and-forth. Rename speakers in the note; solo dictation is unchanged.Read more →Microsoft OneNote · Integrations
Microsoft OneNote — connect it, then import your notebooks
Connect OneNote and Bower gains read access to your notebooks, sections, and pages. Then, when you want them in Bower, import notebooks, sections, or pages — they become notes inside mirrored collections, with tables, to-do checkboxes, and inline images preserved. Read-only at the source; re-importing won’t duplicate.Read more →Protocol step videos · Protocols & Live Mode
Protocol step videos — show me, don’t tell me
Attach a video of a protocol being performed and mark where each step happens, YouTube-chapters style — markers save as you set them. Then ask Bower for the right moment by voice, hands-free: “show me this step”, “skip to step 3”, or “show me the vortex step”. The clip plays seeked to the marker on web, mobile, and AR glasses.Read more →May 2026
AI app access · Integrations
Claude.ai, ChatGPT and Cursor can connect to Bower
Connect your AI assistant to your Bower workspace so it can search, read and write to your notes and experiment data without switching context. All clients connect to the same endpoint over OAuth 2.1 and PKCE, and a new AI app access tab in Settings shows which ones are connected.Read more →Page tree organizing · Organization
Organize the page tree — drag to reorder, right-click menus
Drag any note or collection in the sidebar to reorder it within a level, or drop it onto a collection to nest it inside — collapsed collections auto-expand as you drag over them. Every item gets a ⋮ menu for rename, move, copy, copy link, manage access, and delete, without opening it first. Order is shared across the workspace.Read more →Rebuilt mobile experience · Mobile
A rebuilt mobile experience
Bower on your phone is now a proper app — a bottom-nav layout with Capture, Bower, and Workspace tabs, and a redesigned Quick Capture built around one ring and four modes: voice, photo, video, and text. Scan a QR code to sign in on your phone in seconds, and captures survive a dropped connection.Read more →Equipment Register · Organization
Catalog your instruments — Bower handles the rest
Add your lab instruments to the new Equipment Register. Bower learns what you have and where it is, then helps troubleshoot problems, walk through procedures, and explain error codes. Especially useful hands-free with smart glasses in Live Mode.Read more →Capture Stream · Capture
One feed for everything you have captured
A workspace-wide chronological feed of every capture: voice notes, photos, OCR’d images, live recordings, AI-written summaries and file uploads, in the order they happened. Four multi-select filters round-trip through the URL, so you can send a teammate a link to exactly the view you are looking at.Read more →Wider, deeper research · Bower
Bower now reads across eight open scientific sources
OpenAlex, Semantic Scholar, Crossref, Unpaywall, arXiv, Europe PMC, ORCID and the open web, with no setup or connection step. Bower can also walk the citation graph out from any seed paper.Read more →Knowledge graph visualizer · Visualisation
See your workspace as a graph
A new Knowledge Graph page renders every note, protocol, attachment, and project — with their relationships — as a force-directed graph. Permission-filtered, light and dark mode, with an opt-in 3D view for large workspaces.Read more →ORCID iD + OpenAlex DOI lookup · AI
Your publications, one ORCID iD away
Save your ORCID iD on your profile and Bower pulls from your public publication list whenever it’s relevant. Drop a DOI in a chat and Bower fetches the full record from OpenAlex. Works in chat and live mode, with no connector to set up.Read more →Live video recording · Live Mode
Hands-free video clips during a live session
Ask Bower to record a video clip during a live session — say “record this” and Bower captures a 2-minute audio + video clip straight to your workspace attachments. No taps, no buttons, with a visible REC indicator while it’s running.Read more →Connectors platform · Integrations
Bower searches the tools your lab already uses
Connect Drive, Notion, Slack, Linear, GitHub and more from Account Settings → Connectors. Bower does federated search across your connections live, returns answers with citations, and only writes to your knowledge base when you explicitly save a result. Per-user, per-workspace, OAuth-bound, read-only by default.Read more →April 2026
Workspace roles · Permissions
Owner, Admin, Member, Guest — a role for every relationship
Four workspace roles with a clean separation of duties: billing for Owner, member management for Admin, day-to-day work for Member, read-only for Guest. Last-Owner protection and an atomic ownership-transfer flow keep the workspace safe.Read more →Granular permissions · Permissions
Permissions on every note and collection
Three privacy modes per note and collection — Anyone in the workspace, Only specific people, or Just me. Per-person View, Edit, or Manage grants. Inheritance from parent collections, a compliance toggle for regulated workspaces, and a polite request-access flow on restricted content.Read more →Inferred relationships · AI
Bower connects related notes for you, automatically
Bower now reads your notes in the background and suggests links to related protocols, prior experiments, attachments, and concepts. Inline link chips on the note view make jumping between related work a single click.Read more →Personal preferences + Workspace instructions · AI
Teach Bower how you and your lab actually work
Two editable documents inject straight into every Bower conversation: Personal preferences (just for you — your style, units, focus area) and Workspace instructions (shared with your team — protocols, conventions, policies).Read more →Version history for every note · Capture
Every save, recoverable
Every note now has full version history with a side-by-side diff viewer. See exactly what changed, when, and by whom — and roll back to any prior version with one click.Read more →Native spreadsheet analysis · AI
Drop a spreadsheet, ask Bower
Bower reads CSVs and Excel files natively, summarizes what’s in them, compares across files, and cross-references with your notes when answering.Read more →Inline charts in Bower · AI
Bower draws charts when a chart is the right answer
Bar, line, and scatter plots rendered directly in the chat, with axes and units pulled from the source data. Refine through follow-up questions.Read more →Audit log redesigned as a timeline · Trust & compliance
Who did what, when — at a glance
A clean activity timeline with multi-select filters, full-text search, and richer event details. Login deduplication keeps the feed readable.Read more →UI refresh · Brand
Softer surfaces, sharper details
A pass over Bower’s interface: modern theme primitives, segmented controls, cleaner card previews, per-user avatar colors, and a refreshed data table.Read more →Hybrid search is now always on · Search
Find by meaning, not just keywords
Global search now runs keyword and semantic similarity in parallel by default. No toggle, no second query — type what you remember, get what you meant.Read more →Editor power-ups · Editor
Equations, collapsible toggles, table of contents
Three additions to the note editor: LaTeX/KaTeX equations,/details
collapsible blocks, and a table-of-contents sidebar that builds itself
from your headings.Read more →Image annotations + diagrams · Capture
Draw on anything, build diagrams from scratch
A built-in drawing editor (powered by Excalidraw) lets you annotate any image and build full diagrams from a blank canvas. Annotations save as a separate layer.Read more →Voice dictation in Bower Chat · AI
Speak your questions to Bower
The Bower Chat input has a microphone button — tap it, speak your prompt, and Bower transcribes it directly into the input field, ready to edit and send.Read more →Trash and one-click restore · Workspace
Delete with a safety net
Deletes are now soft-deletes, recoverable from the trash for 30 days. Bulk restore, undo toasts on every delete, and a scheduled background purge keep things tidy.Read more →Merge two notes into one · Workspace
Combine duplicate or related notes
Pick a target, pick a source: content, attachments, tags, and links flow in. Tags and links de-duplicate automatically. The source moves to trash, recoverable if you change your mind.Read more →Bower searches the web — with citations · AI
Beyond your workspace, with sources
Bower can now reach external sources when a question requires them, and brings back inline citations linking back to the original.Read more →Restricted mode (HIPAA-ready) and GDPR controls · Trust & compliance
Compliance controls in place, not on a roadmap
Restricted mode (HIPAA-ready) with a workspace toggle, GDPR consent and data export, account deletion, retention controls, and a public sub-processors list.Read more →March 2026
Bower on mobile, Bower on glasses · Live Mode
Bower where your hands are
A dedicated Bower page on mobile, and Live Mode support for Ray-Ban Meta glasses with high-resolution photo capture.Read more →Onboarding checklist · Workspace
A guided first week, in the sidebar
A short, evidence-based checklist of the steps that predict whether someone gets value out of Bower in their first week — with a circular progress indicator in the sidebar.Read more →Public share links · Permissions
Share an artifact via a public link
Generate a read-only public link for any note, attachment, or collection. Recipients open the link in their browser; no Bower account needed. Revocable any time.Read more →Wake-word standby · Live Mode
Talk to Bower hands-free
Standby mode lets Bower stay quiet during a long protocol and wake up the moment you call it.Read more →Help Center launched · Workspace
A proper Help Center at docs.bowerlabs.ai
Searchable guides for capture, AI, organization, workspaces, and the Trust Center. In-app “Learn more” links point straight to the relevant page.Read more →Sharper OCR for scientific text · AI
Built for lab notebooks, not receipts
Photo-to-text extraction now runs on Gemini 2.5/3 Pro with a scientific-lab prompt. Better on handwriting, instrument readouts, units, and chemical formulae — and honest about its uncertainty when a region is unclear.Read more →Smart notes vs. attachments · Capture
Bower picks the right artifact type for you
Voice and Word documents become notes. Images become notes when their text is clear. PDFs stay as PDFs but become searchable. No more decision-making at import time.Read more →Mobile workspace · Mobile
Bower on your phone, fully
Every page in Bower has a responsive layout tuned for one-handed use. Read a note on the bus. Reorganize a collection while waiting for a centrifuge.Read more →Linked entities · Workspace
Wire your workspace together
Any artifact can be linked to any other — notes to protocols, protocols to collections, attachments to anything they’re relevant to. Links are bidirectional.Read more →Protocols become a first-class artifact · Workspace
A dedicated home for your lab procedures
Protocols are now a first-class artifact type with their own library, detail pages, and knowledge-graph relationships to the experiments that ran them.Read more →Async batch import · Capture
Drop a folder, Bower handles it
Batch import runs in the background via Cloud Tasks. Drag dozens of files in, close the dialog, and keep working — completed artifacts appear as they finish.Read more →AI titles and descriptions · AI
Bower names your work for you
Auto-generated titles for notes and short descriptions for attachments, so you don’t stop mid-capture to think of a name. Always editable.Read more →Proactive confidence flags · AI
Bower flags low-confidence captures
After every voice transcription and photo OCR, Bower scores the result and surfaces a quiet notification when it’s uncertain — so silent errors stop slipping through.Read more →Better attachment viewing · Capture
Split-view, DOCX preview, photo lightbox
OCR notes open beside their source attachment for easy comparison; Word documents preview inline; image attachments open in a proper full-screen viewer with pinch-to-zoom and swipe.Read more →A new look for Bower · Brand
Refreshed logo, palette, and typography
DM Sans for body, Playfair Display for headings, a refined accent palette, and a new mark across the app and email comms.Read more →February 2026
Cmd+K opens everything · Search
A unified command palette
Press Cmd+K anywhere in Bower for global search, navigation, and quick actions. Search blends keyword and semantic ranking; move, copy, and jump-to without leaving the keyboard.Read more →Project → Collection · Workspace
“Project” is now “Collection”
We renamed Bower’s grouping artifact from Project to Collection across the UI, URLs, and API. Same thing, clearer term. Old URLs redirect.Read more →Semantic search across your workspace · Search
Find notes by meaning, not just exact words
A vector store and an agentic RAG pipeline mean Bower and global search retrieve by meaning. Hybrid ranking blends semantic and keyword scores so exact matches still win when they should.Read more →Voice transcription upgrade · Capture
Sharper transcription, better with lab vocabulary
Speech-to-text moves to Chirp 3, with markedly better punctuation, formatting, and recognition of scientific vocabulary, units, and reagent names.Read more →Bower arrives · AI