Do you want to get even more out of Google Keep? Let me show you seven features that every Keep user needs to know.
Hello, everyone. Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress.
Bulk Edit Notes
And let's get started off with something that many Keep users are unaware of. And that is when it comes to editing our notes, you don't need to come into this note and make a change and then come over to this note and make another change and click and go in and out.
If there's something you'd like to apply to several notes, you can make a bulk change. Here, you'll see as I hover over my notes, there's a little check mark in the top left hand corner. If I select it, let's say I want to select these three notes and I want to pin them.
Now that they're all selected here at the top right, I can pin them, I can set the same reminder, I could change them all to the same color. I can archive them, and if I select the More dropdown, there's even more things I can do with these notes.
Let's say I want to change them all to this pink color here. That's great and I'm going to pin them. That was so much faster than going into each and every one of those notes individually.
Group Checklists
Number two, let's see how we can get more out of our checklists. Here I have a note called a packing list, and I hope that you already know that you can convert any of your notes into a checklist.
I just quickly jotted these down, but if I want to turn it into a checklist, I can select the more dropdown and say show checkboxes, and immediately it's going to turn it into a nice checklist.
If I want to go back, I can do that and come down here and say hide check boxes, but let's stick with our checklist. Now, I've got a bunch of clothes here and I've got some electronics. The tough thing here is that I haven't really grouped them together.
Well, did you know that you can select the left hand side of any checklist item and drag it to the right if you want to indent that item? So here I have all of my jeans, shirts, and jacket underneath my clothes checklist.
And under electronics, I'm just going to indent these three items as well.
Not only is this so much easier to look at and manage, but let's say I just finished packing all of my electronics. I'm just going to select the one checkbox and now everything is checked off and is down below.
Even if I just check off one or two of these items under clothes, and then I check off the clothes, it's still going to keep everything nice and grouped together.
Now, if you want to hide those items, you can do so here by selecting this little arrow here. It's going to tell us how many completed items are there.
The other great thing is if I want to repurpose this list, I only have to uncheck this checkbox and this checkbox, and now I am ready to go. It's ready for me to use this packing list again.
And because these items are indented within this electronics header, I can move them as a group. Maybe I want to pack my electronics first. Perfect. I can move that to the top of my checklist and it's kept everything together, so don't forget to indent some of your checklists.
Move Notes to Google Drive
Next, let's take a look at a tip that not only every Google Keep user should know, but every Google Drive user should know as well. Here I have a much lengthier note where I've been collecting a number of definitions.
Maybe I'm going to put this into a blog article or some other reference document. Now, what I could do is simply select all of the text here and then copy and paste it into a Google Doc, but Keep makes it that much easier.
At the bottom of the screen, if I select on More, I can say copy to Google Docs, and in just a few seconds, it's going to turn it into a Google Doc.
Here, I can select open up that doc, and now I have all of that information, including the title of the Keep note and everything else here ready for me to continue to edit or get ready to publish and perhaps share with someone else.
But now that we are here within Google Docs, there are some additional things we can take advantage of. On the Google side panel here on the right hand side, we have access to all of our Keep notes, meaning if we want to input other pieces of information, we can do so here as well.
So, remember that checklist that we've been using? I can actually drag and bring that checklist directly into my document. Maybe I'm working on some type of article and I want to include this image.
No problem. I can simply drag and drop that image directly into the document as well. So all of that information that you've been collecting within Keep, you are simply one click away, or one drag away from bringing it into your Google Docs.
Clip with Chrome Extension
Next, let's take a look at how we can easily grab information from other websites so that we can access it from within Keep. By installing the Google Keep Chrome extension, you can quickly and easily grab information from any webpage.
Here, for example, I've come across this article about Google's new AI search tool, and I'd like to both read this article a little later, but also have a direct link. With that extension installed, I can come up here and click on Save to Keep, and before creating the note, I can actually add a few more details.
Maybe I'll say read this by the end of the week, for example, I can give it a title if I want.
I can even add a specific label before creating the note. So maybe this is work related. I will select that label here, and now I can select create that note. It gives me a quick confirmation that my note was saved successfully, and then I can go back to doing whatever it is I want to here on this website.
But if we jump back to Google Keep, here, you can see near the top of my screen is that direct link to that page. I also get a quick preview of what that page looks like as well. So I am only one click away from returning to that webpage.
Grab Text from Images
Now, since we are grabbing information from so many different places, whether it is websites, whether it is images or other lists, this next tip is one of my all-time favorites, and that has to do with grabbing text directly from an image.
Here you can see I grabbed this image a little while ago, which is actually an advertisement, but it has a fair amount of text on it, and I don't want to just copy it down or type it out myself. I'd rather grab it directly from this image. So with this note open, I can come down to the bottom and select the More option.
And this time we're going to select grab image text, and almost instantly it will scour the image and grab all of the texts that it can find, including words such as photography, even though it was overlaid over this person and has some different colors in the background.
It grabbed the button here. It even grabbed the Adobe logo, including the letter A within that logo. So if you want to take a picture of a document, a poster, a menu, or anything else that you come across, you can easily grab that text by using Grab Image Text.
Edit Images
Now, speaking of images, another feature is the ability to edit or annotate any of our images. Here's another image that I have here, and if I click directly on the image, I will be given a full screen preview. But up in the top right hand corner, you can see that we have the ability to edit this image by selecting Edit Drawing.
Here, we are brought into an editor. So if we want to highlight certain sections of the image, for example, or maybe I want to use an actual highlighter feature here, maybe I want to say something about the letter C and the letter R, I can do so here as well.
I can edit in a number of different ways, and you always have an Undo button here if you want to go back as well. And if you want to reset, you can choose this dropdown and say clear the page. This can be a great way to make some simple changes or simple edits to any of the images you upload to Keep.
Set Reminder Defaults
Next, let's don't forget the power of setting reminders. If you have a particular to-do or task, or something that you just don't want to forget, you can click on any of your notes. Come down here to the left hand corner and select remind me.
But in particular, we want to look at making it faster and easier for you to set these reminders. Now, you can always come down and select a particular date and time, but these defaults can be very handy, later today, tomorrow, or next week.
But wait a minute, 8:00 PM today, 6:30 tomorrow morning. Where are these times coming from?
Well, if we come up here to the right hand corner and select Settings and then select Settings at the top, here is where we can change or adjust our reminder defaults. So maybe 6:30 AM is a little too early for me. I want to change that to 8:00 AM.
I'm going to hit Save, and now the next time I want to set a reminder tomorrow at 8:00 AM or next week at 8:00 AM, that suits my schedule that much better. But there's one important warning.
The changes you make within Google Keep when it comes to your reminder times also affect the snooze reminder times within your Gmail account.
For example, if I want to come over here and snooze this message, I'm going to select these Snooze icon, and here you can see the 8:00 PM and the 8:00 AM applies over here as well.
So you may want to ask yourself, where do you use reminders more often, within Google Keep, or by using the Snooze function within Gmail? Either way, you'll need to make that change within Google Keep Settings.
Now, I would love to hear from you next. Did you know all seven of these Google Keep tips? If so, let me know in the comments, or share with me some of your favorite tips right here within Google Keep.
Thank you so much for watching today's video. And remember, being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.
