Dropping, pasting, or inserting a file works the same with the document disguise on or off. Docognito adds a small attachment chip that turns Uploading into Attached, or Sent with your message, so the upload is visibly confirmed rather than left as a guess. Watch that chip rather than the page underneath it.
Why file upload needed its own fix
An overlay that redraws the page has to sit between you and the real composer, which is exactly where a dropped file also needs to land. Get that wrong and a file either never reaches the site, or reaches it twice, and either way you have no way to tell which happened just by looking at a disguised page that hides the site's own upload preview along with everything else.
Docognito solves this by watching for the file to arrive in the site itself, not by assuming a drop succeeded because nothing threw an error. The chip above the typing line only advances once something real has happened, which is what makes it worth trusting.
The same problem shows up on both supported sites, since each one renders its own upload preview somewhere in the composer, and an opaque overlay sitting on top of the page would otherwise hide that preview completely. Docognito looks past its own drawing to find that evidence directly, rather than assuming a drop worked because nothing visibly went wrong.
The three ways to attach something
Drag and drop
Drag a file or image from your desktop or file manager onto the document page. It lands the same way it would on the plain site, whether the disguise is showing or not.
Paste from the clipboard
Copy an image, then paste it into the typing area with the usual paste shortcut. A screenshot copied straight from a screenshot tool works the same way.
Use the insert control in the menu bar
Opening the file picker through the document's own insert menu reaches the same underlying upload as a drag and drop, for anyone who prefers a click to a drag.
Reading the three chip states
Each attachment gets its own small chip in a tray above the typing line, showing a thumbnail for an image or a name and size for anything else. The label on it changes as the upload actually progresses, and each label means something specific rather than being decorative.
| Label on the chip | What it means |
|---|---|
| Uploading | The file has been handed to the site and Docognito is watching for the site's own confirmation that it arrived |
| Attached | The site has shown real evidence the file reached its composer, a preview, a filename, or a thumbnail that was not there before |
| Sent with your message | The message went out before that confirmation appeared, so the chip records what happened rather than guessing at a state it never saw |
The middle row is the one worth trusting completely, since it only appears once something new and real has been observed. The third row exists so the chip never claims more certainty than Docognito actually has.
A chip that says Uploading while an answer is already coming back has still worked
If the assistant is clearly responding to what you attached, the upload succeeded regardless of what the chip currently reads. The label is a best-effort account of what Docognito could confirm at that moment, not the only source of truth about whether the site received your file.
What happens to the chip once you send
Once a message goes out, its attachment chips move into your own message in the document, the same way they would sit next to the real message on the plain site. That keeps a visible record inside the conversation of what you attached alongside what you typed, rather than the file disappearing from view the moment it is sent.
This matters most for a longer conversation, where you might attach several files across a number of messages and want to check, later on, exactly which file went with which question. Because the chip travels into the message rather than staying in a tray that empties after sending, that record stays readable the whole way down the document.
When an upload genuinely fails
An upload that never advances past Uploading, and eventually shows that it did not complete, points to the same causes it would on the plain site: a file too large for the current plan, a type the assistant does not accept, or a slow or interrupted connection. None of those are things the disguise introduces, and none of them are things it can work around either, since the upload itself always happens through the real site underneath.
If a specific file will not attach at all, try it again with the disguise switched off. If it still fails, the cause sits with the file or the connection rather than with anything Docognito is doing to the page.
Read the chip, not just the drop
Attach a file the same way you always would, by dragging it, pasting it, or using the insert control, and let the chip above the typing line tell you what actually happened rather than assuming from the drop alone. Attached means confirmed. Sent with your message means it likely worked but was not watched the whole way through.
Use Docognito for the document view, and trust the chip over the page underneath it for whether a file actually went through.