A computing device includes a digital ink system that provides digital ink support to applications on the computing device. Digital ink inputs are received by the digital ink system, which provides ink stroke data for the digital ink inputs to the application for storage in a manner and format the application desires. The digital ink system also generates a digital ink container associated with the digital ink input, and communicates the digital ink container to a digital ink repository. The digital ink repository stores digital ink containers for multiple applications, and can be searched from a computing device to identify digital ink input to an application regardless of which application the digital ink was input to.