I’ve been an avid Google Keep user for the better part of five years. I love the note-taking service for its simplicity, its clean user interface, and its ease of access across all my mobile devices as well as on the web.
While Google Keep is relatively less feature-rich than some competing note-taking applications out there, there are still plenty of advanced tools and features stowed away within its streamlined UI.
In fact, I’ve managed to unleash the power of Google Keep to help organize various aspects of my life with ease. Here are three tricks I use to up my productivity using nothing more than the Keep app itself.
Make use of Keep’s tagging system
Organize your Keep library with labels
When I first started using Google Keep, I didn’t take advantage of its in-built labeling system. This was a serious mistake on my part, as I soon ran into the problem of having an overwhelming number of notes and no way to parse through them aside from searching.
Ever since I started deliberately tagging my notes, my note-taking flow has been on another level. I now have a variety of ‘themes’ to choose from when adding new notes to my library, which has helped immensely with organization.
To get started with labeling notes on the Google Keep app, follow these steps:
- Tap or click on the hamburger (triple line) button in the top left-hand corner.
- Next, tap or click on Create new label.
- From within the interface that appears, you can type new labels directly into Keep. Confirm each label by tapping or clicking on the checkmark icon next to it.
Now, whenever you create a new note, you can add an associated label to it by hitting the ellipsis (three dot) button and then selecting Labels from the menu that appears.
Access Keep without opening up the app
Google Keep offers a selection of useful home screen widgets on Android. As a quick way to start inputting a new note, the app’s widgets are an indispensable tool.
On Android, the following widgets are available:
- Note collection (4 x 3): View a set of your notes
- Single note (4 x 3): Pin a specific note or list to your Home screen
- Quick capture (4 x 1): Quickly create any type of Keep note
Unfortunately, Keep currently doesn’t support widgets on iOS or iPadOS. I’d love for Google to introduce some widgets here, as it already offers iPhone and iPad widgets for a number of its other first-party applications, including Chrome and YouTube.
If you’re on Android, at least, then I highly recommend adding a Keep widget to your home screen. It helps streamline the entire note-taking process, speeding things up quite considerably. Pinning specific notes for reference is incredibly useful, and I’m also fond of the Quick capture widget for when it comes to taking new notes.
Make use of Keep’s Gemini integration
Imbue Keep with some artificial intelligence
It’s possible to connect Gemini, Google’s large language model (LLM)-powered AI assistant, directly to Keep. Doing so allows you to leverage Keep’s feature set directly from within the Gemini interface, which is extremely convenient.
To connect Keep to Gemini, which is an opt-in process, follow these steps on your phone or tablet to enable Gemini Apps Activity:
- Launch the Gemini application.
- Ensure that you’re signed in to the same Google Account that you use with Google Workspace / Keep.
- Ask the Gemini app to create or find a list from within Google Keep.
- From here, you’ll be automatically prompted to connect your Google Workspace to Gemini.
Once connected, you can create and edit notes directly from within Gemini, and you can prompt the AI assistant to create notes with preset items. Google offers up examples in a dedicated support page, including some of the following:
- Recommend some activities for [event] and save this to Keep.
- Tell me what steps I need to take to [goal or task]. Then create a list in Keep.
- Find a recipe for [dish] and create a list of the ingredients in Keep.
Note that by connecting Gemini with Keep via Gemini Apps Activity, your prompts and data may be used by Google for AI training purposes. For more information on what specific data is shared, check out Google’s official support document on the subject.
At the time of writing, there are still some limitations when using Google Keep within Gemini. For example, Gemini Apps is currently unable to share notes, view images, or add new images to your notes. I’m hopeful that these quirks will be ironed out in the near future, as they put a slight damper on what is otherwise a very powerful method of interacting with Google Keep.
