If something is more than a simple note, I work on it in Docs, which is actually designed to be a word processor. I'm not using Keep for budgeting, saving contacts, or organizing travel - nor am I using it to compose novel-length articles (like, erm, this one). Ultimately, all I want is something that makes it easy to jot down and find quick lists and ideas. That's great for people who need something especially robust for their virtual notebooks, but for me, Keep's simplicity is actually an asset rather than a limitation (for the most part, anyway - more on that in a sec). Most note-taking apps take a 'more is more' approach and present a complicated mishmosh of menus, features, and options. Specifically, Keep has three killer features that keep me in its grasp: And, as evidenced by the fact that I continue to use it, its positives outweigh its negatives for me and make it the best all-around option for my needs. We'll get to the critical part in a minute - but the truth is that Keep is incredibly close to being an ideal tool for me to collect and manage all of my personal and work-related notes. And around a year ago, Keep worked its way into being a core part of my mobile tech arsenal.Īs we approach the service's three-year anniversary, I thought it'd be a fine time to look at where Keep now excels - and where it could still stand to improve. I've used it on and off since then, flopping around between it and other note management services but always keeping a close eye on its evolution.

Keep has come a long way since its inauspicious-seeming debut in 2013. Google's aptly named Keep app has become my tool of choice for collecting and organizing anything and everything - from story ideas and project notes to random personal stuff like names of nurses from my daughter's birth (for future thank-you-card-writing purposes) to my now-wife's ring size, once upon a time (shh.don't tell her my trick!). I'm lucky, because mobile technology has made that process easier than ever.

Google keep for windows desktop