There must be an internal contest at Google for creating Chrome extensions that save links. After "Save to Google" and "Save to Inbox", there's now a Chrome extension for Google Keep that lets you create notes about the page you're currently visiting. "The next time you're on a website that you want to remember or reference later on, use the new Keep Chrome extension to add it — or any part of it — to a note in Keep. Just click the Keep badge to add a site's link to a note, or select some text or an image and create a new note from the right-click menu," suggests Google.


If you have an Android device, you can now create notes directly from your favorite browser: just use the sharing feature and pick Google Keep. You'll be able to write your note right inside Chrome and other browsers, without having to open Google Keep.

Another useful feature in Google Keep: you can now add labels to your notes as #hashtags. For example, you can write: "#work #todo #readlater" and Google Keep will add 3 labels to your note. The nice thing is that Google Keep uses autocomplete, so you can quickly select an existing label. If the label doesn't exist, you need to click the "create" option and the hashtag will become a link.



{ Thanks, Allan Medeiros de Azevedo. }

The latest version of the Google Keep app for Android lets you export your notes to Google Docs, just like the desktop site. Open a note, tap the menu button and pick "copy to Google Doc".


You can also select multiple notes and use the same feature to export your notes to a Google Docs document.

If you don't have the latest version of the Google Keep app yet (3.1.313), you can download the APK file from APK Mirror. According to Android Police, "the APK is signed by Google and upgrades your existing app".

How to export all your notes from Google Keep? I found two ways to do this.

One option is to use a feature that converts one or more notes to a Google Docs document.

1. Select all your notes: go to Google Keep and press Ctrl+A (or Cmd-A for Mac).

Important: This only selects the notes from the current view, so archived notes aren't included. You can repeat these steps for archived notes or select all your archived notes and unarchive them.


2. Click the 3-dot icon from the top of the page and pick "Copy to Google Doc".

3. Wait a few seconds and you should see a link at the bottom of the page that says: "Open doc". Click that link to open the document that includes all your notes.


Another option is to use Google Takeout and export all your notes as HTML files. Google Takeout exports all your notes, including archived notes and notes from the Trash.


You'll get a ZIP archive with HTML files for each note. The archive may also includes image and audio files. If a note doesn't have a title, the exported HTML file will use the date in the filename.

Google Keep now lets you add labels to your notes. Just click the 3-dot icon below the note and select "add label". There are 3 default labels (inspiration, personal, work), but you can add your own labels.


Google Keep's navigation menu shows your labels, so you can quickly find related notes.


You can now export notes to Google Docs: just click "copy to Google Doc" and Google will create a document from your note.


Reminders are more useful. Google Keep lets you create recurring reminders, just like in Google Calendar. You can create reminders that repeat daily, weekly, monthly, yearly or use the custom option for more complex reminders


The new features are available in Google Keep's web app, Chrome app and Android app (Google Keep 3.1).

Google Keep has a new interface powered by Material Design. Google also added some new features: sharing notes, real-time collaboration and search filters.



Just like in the old Google Notebook, you can share notes with other people and allow them to read your notes and edit them. Notes update automatically when other people edit them and there's no way to revert the changes. You can't share a note in read-only mode.


"Searching for your notes is simpler now too. You can filter notes by color and other attributes such as whether they're shared, have a reminder, are lists, or have an image or audio," explains Google.


Google started to roll out the new version of the Google Keep app for Android, but the new features are also available in the desktop web app and the Chrome app.

Google Keep for the desktop shows an interesting feature in the menu: a "debug tools" section with a single item: "show client log".


Google Keep opens a dialog that shows some information about your notes, some details about "upsync", "downsync", preloaded chunks and app init. If you enable "Show user text content", the debug page will also include the text of your notes.


I'm not sure if Google actually intended to show this debugging option in Google Keep's navigation menu. This looks like an internal debugging feature that's used by Google employees. Google Keep's Chrome app and Android app don't include this feature.

Update (a day later): It's gone.

Google Keep has recently added a few new features. You can now upload images and Google automatically performs OCR and indexes the text, so you can quickly find images by searching for a few words from the images. This is not the smart visual search feature from Google Drive and Google+ Photos, but it's still useful. You can also transcribe the text, so that you can actually extract the text from the image. Another options lets you "make a copy" of a note.



If you click the 3-dot menu icon from a note that includes a list, you can change list settings. New list items can be added at the top or at the bottom and checked items can be moved to the bottom. By default, the changes also apply to new lists, but you can uncheck this setting.


Here's what happens after enabling "move to the bottom" for checked items:


When you delete a note, it's now moved to the Trash and it will be permanently removed after 7 days. Go to the Trash to empty it or restore some of the notes you've accidentally deleted.


The Android app was also updated with support for multiple accounts, a yellow action bar that changes color with notes and the same new features from the desktop interface.

Google Keep was supposed to integrate with Google Drive, but it's still a distinct app. Google Keep is a pretty basic app and doesn't have a lot of features, so you can't expect that it will improve.

Right now, you can only insert images and save audio files when using the dictation feature from the mobile app. Google Keep's code includes multiple references to an upcoming feature that lets you upload any file to Google Drive and add it to a note, preview the file using the Google Drive Viewer or open it using various apps. You'll also be able to add videos (YouTube URLs or videos uploaded to Google Drive) and play them inside Google Keep.




While this isn't the Drive integration I expected, it's still a cool feature. Hopefully, Keep will become a Google Drive app and you'll be able to open and edit your notes from Google Drive.

Update: The screenshots are from the Chrome app for Google Keep, but there are similar references in the desktop Google Keep web app.

Google Keep now allows you to add reminders to your notes. Just like in Google Now, you can add time-based reminders and location-based reminders. "Time reminders work on all devices, but location reminders will only be triggered on mobile devices," mentions the help center.

"To get started, select the 'Remind me' button from the bottom of any note and choose the type of reminder you want to add. You can add time-based reminders for a specific date and time, or a more general time of day, like tomorrow morning. Adding a location reminder is incredibly easy too — as soon as you start typing Google Keep suggests places nearby," explains Google.

Here's the desktop Google Keep site:



The Android app has been updated and now supports reminders. There's a new navigation drawer with separate sections for archived notes and reminders and you can now add photos from the Gallery without using the "share" feature.



Google Keep integrates with Google Now, so all the Keep reminders are added to Google Now. You'll find them in Settings > My Stuff > Reminders. For some reason, the reminders added from Google Now aren't available in Google Keep.

You'll get notifications in Google Now, the Google Keep app for Android, the Google Keep app for Chrome (desktop notification) and the Google Keep desktop site (alert box), but you won't see redundant notifications. If you have both the Google Search app and Google Keep, you'll only get notifications from Google Keep.

When Google Tasks is discontinued (it will happen eventually), Google Keep will be the replacement. It's optimized for mobile and it doesn't integrate with Gmail or Google Calendar, but at least it's constantly improving and it has a cool mobile app.

Here are some tips for Google Keep. Since it's a service designed for mobile devices, most of the tips are for the Android app.

Mobile

1. Convert an existing list to a to-do list by tapping "show checkboxes" in the Keep menu.

2. A simple way to add images to a new note: select one or more images in the gallery app or a file manager, use the share feature and select Keep.

3. Copy text from a web page to a new note. Select the text, use the share feature and choose Keep.

4. Save the title of a web page and the URL to a new note. Use the share option from your favorite browser.

5. Add a Keep widget with the latest notes. Resize the widget to show more notes.

6. Reorder notes: long press a note and drag it to a different position.

7. Use colors to organize notes. For example, blue notes are related to work.

8. Take multiple photos from a note. You can then upload the album to Google+ using the share feature.

9. Write short notes quickly: tap "add quick note", type the note and tap "Done".

10. Duplicate a note: open it, tap the share button and select Keep.

11. Tap the microphone to dictate your note and to save your voice recording. You can use Keep as a voice recording app.

12. Find notes with voice recordings: they have a small play icon next to the date.

13. Remove a recording by tapping "x" next to the audio player. You can also remove photos in the same way.

14. Dictate notes without saving audio files by tapping the microphone button from the keyboard.

15. Use Google Voice Search to dictate notes. Start with "note to self" and select Keep from the list of applications after dictating the note.

16. Change the default background color: tap "add quick note", type something, then tap the color palette icon and pick a color.

17. Use the minus operator to exclude keywords when you use the search feature. Use quotes for exact matches. Examples: [milk -buy], ["buy milk"].

Desktop

18. Read your notes online from any device at drive.google.com/keep.

19. Install the Chrome app to read your notes offline when you use your computer.

20. Get permalinks for your notes: open the Google Keep site in a desktop browser, switch to the grid view and click a note.

21. Download voice recordings: open Keep in a desktop browser, click a note, mouse over the voice recording and click "Download".

22. Keyboard shortcuts:

j/k - navigate to the next/previous note
n/p - same as j/k, but also useful for navigating between list items
c - compose a new note
/ - use the search feature
e - archive selected note
# - delete selected note
o - open selected note
Enter - edit selected note
Ctrl+g - toggle between list and grid view
Esc - finish editing a note.

Speaking of new-style packaged apps for Chrome, here's a new app: Google Keep. It's another way to access the recently launched service for taking notes.


The app looks just like the Google Keep site, but it works offline. This means that you can access your notes or create new notes even if you don't have an Internet connection. Unfortunately, you can't insert images when you're offline. Another limitation is that new notes aren't uploaded in the background when you're back online, so you need to open the app.


{ via Chrome Blog }

Google Keep has been launched: it's Google's latest attempt to create a service for taking notes. Unlike Google Notebook, Keep is a Google Drive app (the Drive integration is not yet ready for public release), it doesn't have a rich-text editor and it's optimized for mobile.

There's an Android app and a desktop site. Both use the sticky notes metaphor and you can choose the color for each note, add text, images, lists and voice recordings that are automatically converted to text in the mobile app. Both interfaces let you choose between the grid view and the list view.



Google Keep lacks many of the features that were available in Google Notebook: labels, sorting, comments, multiple notebooks, rich-text editor, sharing. It looks like a lightweight Google Notebook for mobile devices.

"With Keep you can quickly jot ideas down when you think of them and even include checklists and photos to keep track of what's important to you. Your notes are safely stored in Google Drive and synced to all your devices so you can always have them at hand," informs Google.

It's likely that each Google Keep note will be a file in Google Drive, so you'll be able to share it with other people, add it to a folder, download it etc.

For now, Google Keep is the only Google Drive service that has more features in the Android app than in the desktop interface.


{ Thanks, Sterling. }

Carlos Jeurissen found some interesting hints about a new Google Drive app called Keep. There are multiple references to Google Keep in the GDrive code, including some URLs like: https://drive.google.com/keep/?note. In fact, the codename for Google Keep is "memento" and the MIME type for Google Keep files is "application/vnd.google-apps.note". Obviously, Google Keep is a replacement for Google Notebook, a service that has been discontinued back in 2009.


Carlos also found the service's icon and a short URL that redirects to the Play Store page for a non-existent Google Keep app.


Google has a cool Chrome extension called Scratchpad. It's great for taking notes and it syncs with Google Docs. Let's hope that Keep is better than both Scratchpad and Google Notebook.

Update: Android Police has some screenshots of the new service.

{ Thanks, Carlos. }