Notes and the Note Glossary

Every fragrance is built from notes: the individual smells like bergamot, rose, cedar, or vanilla that make up its character. Orrique gives each note a place to live. You can read a short encyclopedia entry for a note, see where it sits in a scent (top, heart, or base), and find out which fragrances in your own collection use it. This article explains how notes work in the app, how to browse the note encyclopedia, and how the colors you see throughout Orrique come from the character of a scent.

In short

Tap any note to read its glossary entry, and the colors a scent wears everywhere come from its own notes, not a random palette. The built-in notes work offline, while curated glossary updates and note pictures refresh from the shared CloudKit catalog when a connection is available.

When to use this

Reach for this part of the app when you want to understand what you are smelling.

• You see a note in a fragrance and want to know what it actually is.
• You want to learn the difference between top, heart, and base notes.
• You are curious which of your own fragrances share a particular note.
• You wonder why a scent shows up in a certain color across the app.

How to use it

Read a note's entry

Tap a note to open its calm, read-only glossary page. See Reading a note’s glossary entry.

Browse the encyclopedia

Search the full reference of notes, grouped by family. See Browsing the note encyclopedia.

See how colors are chosen

Learn where a scent’s color comes from. See How scent character drives the colors.

Reading a note’s glossary entry

Tapping a note name opens its glossary entry, a calm read-only page about that single note. To open a note from a fragrance:

1. Open a fragrance’s detail page from your Collection.
2. Scroll to the “Note pyramid” section.
3. Tap any note in the pyramid.

The note opens with its picture, its name, and a set of details when they are available.

The fields on a note’s page fall into two groups. The everyday ones are the ones most people read; the rest are technical extras.

Everyday field	What it tells you
Description	A short written explanation of the note.
Odor profile	Small word chips that capture how it smells (for example “citrus”, “bright”, “bitter”).
Position	A “Top note”, “Heart note”, or “Base note” badge for where it sits in a fragrance. See the Glossary for what those mean.
Smell family	The curated scent family for the note, such as Citrus, Floral, Woody, or Gourmand.
Also known as	Other names for the same note.

Chemistry and safety field	What it tells you
Source and regions	Its botanical source, the regions where it is produced, and its odor strength.
IFRA status	Either “IFRA restricted” or “IFRA: no restrictions”, based on the entry.
Chemistry	A CAS number and molecular formula, for the technically curious.

Not every note has all of these. Some notes have a full entry, and some show only a name and picture. When a note has no extra details yet, the page says “No glossary entry yet for this note.” That is normal, not a bug. Entries are maintained by Orrique’s catalog curators, so the reference grows over time.

A tapped note may land on a near-empty page

A note inside a pyramid is matched to its entry by name, including its other known names. A fragrance that stores Mandarin therefore opens the Mandarin Orange entry and uses its shared picture, summary, family, and collection count automatically. If you tap a note and land on a page with just a name and picture, the canonical note simply does not have a full write-up yet. Ambiguous names stay separate until a curator records which note owns them.

Seeing which of your fragrances use a note

Near the bottom of a note’s page there is an “In your collection” section. It lists the fragrances you own that include that note, sorted by name. Tap any one to jump straight to its detail page. If none of your fragrances use the note, this section does not appear.

Reporting a note error

Note entries are read-only. If something is wrong, open the note’s Options menu, tap Report an issue, choose Wrong or misleading information, and add the correction. It enters review before the shared entry changes.

Browsing the note encyclopedia

The book icon may not be there

The “Note encyclopedia” book icon in the Discover toolbar appears only when the feature is turned on for your app. If you do not see it, you can still open any note’s glossary entry by tapping a note inside a fragrance’s pyramid.

When it is available, the note encyclopedia is a full, searchable reference of fragrance notes (more than 2,000 of them) that you can browse on its own. Family groups start open, can be collapsed when you want a shorter browse, and open automatically while search is active so matching notes are never hidden. The searchable list keeps one continuous warm canvas from the navigation bar through the final family, without a separate fade covering the first rows.

Browse the family groups, expand a family to scan its notes, or search across canonical names, alternate names, and odor words.

1. Open the Discover tab.
2. Tap the Note encyclopedia book in the toolbar.
3. Scroll through the sections, which are grouped into the catalog’s note families (such as Citrus, Flowers, White Flowers, Woods & Mosses, and Resins & Balsams). Each section header shows a count of its notes, a colored dot whose color comes from the eight color families described below, and a chevron you can tap to collapse or expand that family.
4. To find a specific note, use the search field at the top and type a name. Search matches the note’s name, its other known names, odor words from its entry, and close one-letter misspellings on useful-length searches.
5. Tap any note row to open its full glossary entry.

A small book marker on the right of a note row means that note has a full encyclopedia entry to read. When a curator has written a summary, the row shows that summary first; otherwise it falls back to odor words or aliases. If your collection already uses that note, the row also shows how many of your scents include it. This is a different thing from the toolbar book icon in step 2: the toolbar icon opens the encyclopedia, while the row marker flags an individual note.

How scent character drives the colors

Throughout Orrique, scents are shown with colors that come from their actual character, not from a random palette. A scent’s family and accords are themselves calculated from its notes on your device (see the calculated family), and the app folds that character into eight smell families: Citrus, Fresh, Floral, Green, Spicy, Woody, Amber, and Gourmand. Each of these families has its own steady color:

Smell family	Color
Citrus	Bright lemon yellow
Fresh	Aquatic cyan
Floral	Rosy pink
Green	Herbal green
Spicy	Warm red
Woody	Deep brown
Amber	Amber gold
Gourmand	Caramel

A scent’s overall color is a blend of the families it draws on, leaning toward its strongest one. You do not set these colors, and they are not adjustable. In the note encyclopedia, you can see them as the colored dots in section headers and as the thin color rail down the left edge of each note row. The same family colors carry through to collection cards, scent charts, fragrance detail headers, and other places, so a scent tends to look like itself wherever it appears.

Two kinds of “family”, and how the colors are worked out

The word “family” appears in two roles here. The section groups in the encyclopedia are the catalog’s note folders (for example Flowers, White Flowers, Woods & Mosses). The colored dots and rails map each of those folders onto one of the eight color families above. So the folders organize the list, and the eight color families pick the color. A fragrance’s own scent family (the floral, woody, gourmand label you see on a scent) is a third, separate thing: it is calculated from that scent’s notes and is the family the rest of the app groups and colors it by.

The family colors and a scent’s blended color are worked out from the scent’s own character each time, not stored. That is why they stay consistent without needing sync. When a scent’s notes are not recognized, the app falls back to a steady color so it still reads distinctly.

What to expect

• Tapping a note from a fragrance pyramid opens its glossary entry. Tapping a fragrance in the “In your collection” section opens that fragrance’s detail page.
• The Options menu on a note lets you report an error or suggest a correction without editing the shared glossary directly.
• The “In your collection” list refreshes when your collection changes or when you open a different note.
• In the encyclopedia, the full list of notes stays smooth to scroll. Family headers collapse and expand with one tap, search keeps matching families open, and note pictures load in thumbnail-sized form as nearby rows come into view.
• You can leave the encyclopedia while rows or pictures are still loading. Orrique stops work for the hidden screen so the next tab can respond, then resumes any needed pictures when you return.
• Clearing the search returns you to the full list right away.
• On a first load, note-shaped placeholders show where rows will appear. If saved notes are already available, they stay on screen while Orrique refreshes them. A failed refresh offers Try Again instead of leaving a blank page.
• Canonical notes, their alternate names, and their encyclopedia entries stay linked by one note identity, including when shared updates arrive close together. If a shared refresh is interrupted, Orrique keeps the last complete relationship and retries instead of advancing only the encyclopedia side.
• If iCloud cannot confirm whether a shared note exists, Orrique keeps the last confirmed entry and asks for a retry. It does not treat an uncertain read as a new or missing note.
• At accessibility text sizes, note chips and the Top, Heart, and Base groups grow and wrap instead of shrinking their words into one line.

Good to know

Nothing here to change or lose

Note glossary entries are read-only for you. You read them; you do not edit them directly. The note encyclopedia and the glossary are a shared reference, not a personal field, so there is nothing here you can change or lose. Entries are maintained by Orrique’s catalog curators. If something looks wrong, use the note’s report option and a curator reviews the correction.

• Notes work offline and refresh when shared updates are available. The built-in catalog remains readable without a connection. Shared note names, glossary entries, folders, and pictures can refresh when the device is online.
• Pictures may appear after the words. A fresh install can finish loading note and family pictures after the text is already usable. A picture already on screen remains in place while Orrique checks for a shared update.
• Colors are calculated, not stored. The family colors and a scent’s blended color are worked out from the scent’s own character each time, so they stay consistent without needing sync. When a scent’s notes are not recognized, the app falls back to a steady color so it still reads distinctly.
• Some notes have little or no detail. A glossary entry is optional. A note may show only its name and picture, and the page will say so plainly rather than guessing.
• Search covers names, aliases, and odor words. In the encyclopedia, search looks at a note’s name, its other known names, and the odor profile words in its entry. It also tolerates a close one-letter misspelling on useful-length searches. It does not search the full written descriptions. If nothing matches, the screen offers a clear search reset.
• Aliases lead back to one complete note. Recognized spelling variants and alternate names open the same canonical entry and find the same fragrances in Collection, note filters, Log Wear, Siri, and Shortcuts. Repeated spellings do not create extra visible notes. Old names continue to find the maintained entry after shared updates arrive.
• Color is not the only signal. Because color carries meaning here, the cues have spoken-word equivalents for VoiceOver. The thin color rail is decorative and skipped by VoiceOver, and the row book marker reads as “Has an encyclopedia entry”, so the list works without relying on color alone.
• The same experience across devices. The note encyclopedia and glossary look and work the same on iPhone, iPad, and Mac, adjusting their layout to the screen size.

Related articles

GlossaryPlain-language definitions of note, note pyramid, and top, heart, and base notes.

Fragrance DetailsThe detail page where the note pyramid lives.

Discover and DupesWhere the Note encyclopedia button lives, when it is available.

Scent Atlas and InsightsHow scent character turns into colors, charts, and maps.

Search and FilteringFinding fragrances by note and other fields across the app.