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Google Keep

Notes, reminders, and organization reference for Google Keep.

Keep is for capture, not for filing

Its strength is getting something out of your head in under three seconds — keep.new in the address bar, or the widget on a phone. It syncs instantly across every device and it is free with any Google account.

Its weakness is everything that comes after. There are no folders, no sub-notes, no rich formatting, and no linking between notes. Treat it as an inbox that feeds Docs, Tasks, and Calendar — not as the place your reference material lives permanently.

Note type	What it does	Notes
Text note	Title plus a plain body.	No bold, italic, or headings. Formatting is genuinely absent, not hidden.
List	Checkbox items, drag to reorder, indent for sub-items.	Completed items collapse to the bottom. A text note converts to a list from the ⋮ menu and back again.
Drawing	Freehand sketch with pen, marker, highlighter.	Handwriting inside a drawing is searchable — Keep runs OCR over it.
Image note	Photo or uploaded image, alone or attached to a note.	Text inside images is OCR'd and searchable. Use ⋮ → Grab image text to extract it into the note body.
Voice note	Mobile only. Records audio and transcribes it.	You get both the recording and searchable text. The single most underused feature in Keep.

Reminders

Time-based: pick a date and time, or a recurring schedule.
Location-based: fires when you arrive somewhere — genuinely useful for "buy milk" at a supermarket. Requires location permission on mobile.
Reminders set in Keep now surface in Google Tasks and Calendar rather than living only in Keep.
An overdue reminder shows in red on the note but does not re-notify. Keep is not a task manager — if something must not be missed, put it in Tasks or Calendar.

Collaboration

The collaborator icon shares a note with any Google account. Edits sync live.
There are no permission levels. Every collaborator has full edit rights, including the right to remove other collaborators.
Only the owner can delete the note outright. A collaborator removing themselves just leaves.
Shared shopping lists and packing lists are the sweet spot. Anything needing controlled access belongs in Docs.

Add labels inline while typing

Type #labelname directly in the note body and Keep offers to apply it. Far faster than the ⋮ menu, and it works on mobile too.

Use colour as a second, orthogonal axis

Labels for topic, colour for state — for example red for urgent, grey for archived-but-kept. Because colour is filterable in search, it works as a lightweight status field.

Pin the few notes that are genuinely active

Pinned notes sit above everything else. If more than about five are pinned, nothing is — demote aggressively.

Archive rather than delete

Archived notes leave the main grid but stay fully searchable. Deleted notes sit in Trash for 7 days and are then gone permanently — a much shorter window than Drive's 30.

Search by attribute, not just text

The search box filters by type, colour, label, and shared status. Clicking those chips is usually faster than remembering the words in a note.

Getting notes out of Keep

Note ⋮ → Copy to Google Docs creates a Doc from the note. The correct move once a note outgrows Keep.
In Docs, Slides, and Sheets: Tools → Keep notepad opens a side panel; drag a note straight into the document.
Keep content is included in Google Takeout as HTML plus JSON, with images as separate files.
There is no import. Moving into Keep from another app means copy and paste, note by note.
The Keep API exists but is Workspace-only and read-oriented — not a general sync route for personal accounts.

Group	Action	Shortcut
Create	New note	`C`
Create	New list	`L`
Create	Finish editing the current note	`Esc`
Navigate	Search notes	`/`
Navigate	Move between notes	`J` / `K`
Navigate	Toggle list / grid view	`⌘/Ctrl + G`
Navigate	Show all shortcuts	`⌘/Ctrl + /`
Actions	Archive selected note	`E`
Actions	Pin / unpin selected note	`F`
Actions	Select / deselect note	`X`
Actions	Send selected note to trash	`#`
Editing	Indent / outdent a list item	`Tab` / `⇧ + Tab`
Editing	Toggle checkbox on current item	`⌘/Ctrl + ⇧ + 8`
Editing	Undo / redo	`⌘/Ctrl + Z` / `⌘/Ctrl + ⇧ + Z`

Tips

Photograph text instead of typing it

Snap a whiteboard, receipt, book page, or business card. Keep OCRs it, and ⋮ → Grab image text pulls the words into the note body as editable text. Accuracy on printed text is very good.

Voice notes give you both

On mobile, a voice note stores the audio and a text transcript. Ideal for capturing something while walking or driving — and the transcript makes it findable later.

Keep panel inside Docs

Tools → Keep notepad in any Docs, Sheets, or Slides file. Drag research notes straight into the document — the intended bridge from capture to writing.

Label as you type

#projectx anywhere in the body applies the label without touching a menu. Fastest way to keep capture friction near zero.

Duplicate as a template

Keep has no templates, but ⋮ → Make a copy on a structured list gets you the same thing — packing lists, shift checklists, recurring agendas.

keep.new

Types straight into a fresh note from the browser address bar. Pair it with the mobile home-screen widget and capture stops being a decision.

Limits & gotchas

Hard limits

~19,999 characters per note body, and 1,000 characters for the title.
~999 list items per note.
Trash empties automatically after 7 days — much shorter than Drive's 30. A wrongly deleted note is easy to lose.
Keep notes do not count against Drive storage, but they also don't appear in Drive.
No version history whatsoever. An overwritten note is gone — this is the biggest single reason not to keep anything important here.

What Keep deliberately doesn't do

No text formatting — no bold, italic, headings, or tables.
No folders or nesting, and no links between notes. It is not a wiki or a Zettelkasten.
No file attachments beyond images and drawings. No PDFs.
No offline editing on the web beyond what the browser has cached; the mobile apps handle offline properly.
Sharing has no read-only mode — every collaborator can edit and can remove others.
If you need any of the above, the note has outgrown Keep. Copy it to Docs.

Privacy

Notes are encrypted in transit and at rest, but not end-to-end encrypted — Google can access content, and it is subject to legal process.
There is no note-level lock, PIN, or biometric protection. Anyone with your unlocked device has every note.
Never store passwords, recovery codes, card numbers, or ID numbers in Keep. Use a password manager.
On a Workspace account, notes are org data — admins can access them via Vault and they are covered by retention policy.

Resources

Google Keep Help Center Official documentation for notes, reminders, labels, and sharing. support.google.com Keyboard shortcuts The full list — also in-app with ⌘/Ctrl + /. support.google.com Google Takeout Export every note as HTML and JSON — the only real backup route, and worth doing given there's no version history. takeout.google.com Google Keep API Workspace-only, oriented at admin and DLP use rather than personal sync. developers.google.com Google Docs Where a note goes once it needs formatting, structure, or version history. build.ty1er.com Google Workspace Admin Vault retention and org policy covering Keep notes on managed accounts. build.ty1er.com