Manuals — the whole book in your pocket, always editable
Keep every owner's, service and installation manual as a living PDF you can add pages to, reorder, search inside, and pin to the system it belongs to.
Manuals is the shelf for the books that came with the boat — the engine owner's manual, the generator's service manual, the watermaker's installation guide, the wiring diagrams. Each one is a real PDF that lives on this phone, and unlike a document in the vault it is never finished: you can add pages, reorder them and delete them at any time, so the book grows as you find the missing chapter or scan the sheet the mechanic left behind.
Open Manuals from the menu (☰) → Operational records → Manuals, from the Manuals card at the top of Documents, or from a system's own screen under Manuals. The menu row, the search box's Manuals door and the Manuals screen all go by the Manuals key (Manuals: see) — by default the owner, management and the captain, and any crew member the owner gives it to. Without it the row is not on the menu and a link into it shows "Not available".
There are three ways in. Import PDF picks a file from Files (iCloud Drive, Dropbox, on-device). Any PDF you open into theONE from Mail, Files or AirDrop — Open in theONE on the share sheet — shows a preview and asks New manual or Add to an existing manual. Scan pages opens the camera and captures a chapter at a time; tap Scan more pages to keep going.
Every manual can be added to later. Add pages imports another PDF or scans more; Edit pages lets you tap a page and move it up or down, delete the blanks, or scan new pages straight into the middle of the book.
The moment a manual arrives, theONE starts reading its text in the background — the row says "Reading the text… 40%", then Searchable. A printed PDF brings its own text; a scan is read from the page image. After that, search inside the reader lists every page that mentions the word with a line of context, and the search box — the magnifier, top right of any screen — surfaces the manual for any word inside it.
Link a manual to a system from Info → Linked system, and the generator's manual lives on the generator's screen.
Manuals are files, not records, so a backup carries them along with the photos. Each manual can be up to 250 MB. Delete a manual and the undo banner offers to bring it back, pages and all.
The Vessel Handbook (menu (☰) → Operational records → Vessel Handbook) lists the manuals on this shelf under the system each one is linked to — title and page count, so a surveyor or a new captain can see which books are aboard — without copying a single page into the PDF.
Steps
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Import the PDF
Menu (☰) → Operational records → Manuals → Import PDF. Pick the file from Files (iCloud Drive, Dropbox, on-device), check the preview, give it a title, and tap New manual.
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Open a PDF from Mail
Tap the attachment in Mail (or a file in Files, or something AirDropped to you) → share → Open in theONE. The preview asks New manual or Add to an existing manual — the second appends the pages to the book you pick.
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Scan a chapter
Manuals → Scan pages. The camera finds the edges of each page; capture the chapter, tap Scan more pages for the next one, then Done. Name it — the default is Scanned manual with today's date.
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Add pages later
Open the manual → Add pages → Import PDF or Scan pages. To put pages in order, Edit pages: tap a page and use Move up or Move down, delete a page, or Scan in before it. The text is read again after every change.
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Find a page
In the reader, tap search and type the word — every page that mentions it appears with a line of context; tap one to jump there. Or type the word in the search box on Mission Control and the manual appears under Manuals.
To go to a page, tap the page number between the arrows and type it. A number that is not a page of this manual leaves Go greyed out, and the box says so with the pages there are (Pages 1 to 120).
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Link to a system
Open the manual → Info → Linked system → pick the generator. From then on the generator's screen (Vessel Briefing → the system) shows the manual under Manuals, and a search for the generator finds its book.
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On your other devices
Signed in, a manual reaches everyone who holds the Manuals key — by default the owner, the captain and the manager. Crew do not, unless the owner gives them the key; vendors and guests never do. The PDF follows on its own once the phone that holds it is online: up to 25 MB, which covers most service manuals. A bigger one travels as its name and page count, and its PDF stays on the device that added it — the reader says so instead of showing a blank page. Edit the pages on one phone and the new version replaces the old on the others. Search inside a manual that arrived this way starts working once this phone has read its text.
Related
- Document Vault — manuals, warranties, registrationsWhere to put PDF manuals and how to scan paper documents.
- Scan a paper documenttheONE uses iOS's built-in document scanner (the same one Notes uses). You'll see a 'Scan' tile inside the attachment picker — but only on screens that accept paperwork.
- Backup & Restore — your whole boat in one fileWrite everything theONE knows about your boat to one file you keep, and bring it all back after a lost phone or a fresh install.
- Find anything with the search boxOne box, behind the magnifier in the top right of every screen — a screen, a record, or a question. You never have to learn the menu.
- Vessel Handbook — one PDF about the boat, for whoever needs itBuild one PDF about the boat from what is already in theONE — for a surveyor, a buyer, new crew, or all of it — and hand it over from the share sheet.