After introducing Google Keep, we will now see the notes more in detail.
On Android, a new note looks like the picture above. Each note has three icons in the top right, which I presented in my previous post.
You can see at the bottom of a note a status bar with two icons, a square with the plus sign to the left and a square with three points to the right. These are menus.
The left one allows to change the note or to add elements, for example a recording or an image. It also makes possible to transform a note into a checklist.
The right one allows actions to be taken on the note: placing it in the trash (from which it will be destroyed seven days later), making a copy, exporting it, sharing it with a contact or with family, classifying it with labels and finally assigning it a color. These last two options are useful for classifying and retrieving notes.
It is unfortunately not possible to retrieve a link or an identifier in order to link a note with another, as can be done with Evernote or with a wiki.
The main note type of Google Keep is the text note. This is the one that has the biggest button in the Android and the Web version. It is not possible to format the text. But it is easy to export a note to Google Docs if you want to make a real formating.
The list is very handy because each item has a checkbox that strikes it when the task is done and moves it to the bottom of the note (this behavior can be unset). You can also move an item by pressing the six points to its left to reorder the list according to priorities.
You can easily transform a text into a list by clicking the + icon and then “Checkboxes”.
The recording is very useful because it allows you to dictate to Google Keep what you want to keep and it transcribes it into text. It is not available on the web version of Google Keep, only on the Android version and maybe iOS, which I have not tested. As I use a lot of recording, I’d like to be able to set up the Google Keep button bar so that I can have this option by default.
Google Keep also allows you to draw. There is a drawing area with different types of pencils as well as an eraser and the ability to select.
If you want to return to a previously saved note, you must tap the drawing twice.
Finally, you can take a picture (on mobile) or import one into a note. It is also possible to dra on it, as well as to extract a text from the image, which is very practical if we want to dematerialize documents.
These are the different types of notes. I hope you will find Keep as useful as I do.