Google Keep.
Capturing ideas, Quickly and Seamlessly
Well let me trying something different today. let me show in to one of the ways i capture my ideas for blogs, podcast and all the other stuff i do.
I do use other programs for taking notes like Obsidian , but before i write stuff down to my obsidian vault and add them to my Second Brain i usually need a place to store those ideas, so i can further think about them, expand on them. Make sure if i really want to read more about them dive deeper.
So what is Google Keep let me enlighten you a bit, Google Keep is Googles ecosystem note taking app, it does not support mark down which is quite disappointing but i do get why they tried to do that just trying to appeal to a larger audience, cause most of the people around the globe take their notes in plain text. But if you really insist on the need of mark down there are workarounds like installing the Google Keep Power Up browser extension which extends the feature of google keep by adding markdown support and another workaround might be writing the note in markdown exporting to Plain Text and adding it to your google keep. Which for me seems silly and misses the whole point of capturing ideas raw and quickly as they pop up in your head, writing in another note taking app exporting and adding to google keeps seems really inefficient but what ever sails your boat who am i to judge.
There are a few small features built into Google Keep that makes is really amazing like changing the colors of your note and the auto-saving feature but non the less this are small points to point out. I do have my own points i took into consideration before making up my mind on using google keep as my capturing app. To list a few:
- Offline - Google keep does not force you to be online to write notes. you can just write a note and connect to the internet later on and google keep will handle the synchronization feature on it’s own.
- Synchronization - This is really one the features that just keeps me locked into using google keep, it has RTS(Real Time Synchronization) you can open google keep on your laptop and be typing on your phone and see the words pop up on your laptop screen as you type them.
- Integration - as a strenuous android user, and Google owning android and most other used services around the globe it seems fair to use something that is tightly integrated with other Google products such as Drive, Calendar and Assistant. So you just have your notes what ever you are doing when ever you are doing it and don’t have to worry about integrations and backwards compatibility.
- Flexibility - Google keep notes can be created in variety of formats you can use audio if your in the toilet when inspiration hits, images, drawings. which makes it ready on the go.
- Collaboration - you can work on the same not with othe people. Just add their email addresses and then you can start working together. The things i wished google keep had were desktop applications, you can still access it as PWA (progressive web app) via Tangram or any other method you want but having that desktop program for most platforms like windows, mac & Linux and adding the offline functionality similar to the phone would really be nice.
Reading the pros i mentioned you probably have an idea why i prefer to use google keep as a capturing app and note a note taking one.
So how do i do it ? I have google keep installed on phone and i always have a quick capture widget on my home screen. so right when i open up my phone i have this create a quick note on my home screen
so when ever an idea pops up into my head i just open up my phone and right there on the go using the widget i can create a Note, List, Voice, Paint, Camera and if i am on my laptop i do have Firefox (my favorite browser) always open in the background and if some idea pops up in my head i just open up a new tab and go straight to Google Keep and start jotting down my ideas in the web interface
or keep on continuing writing on the idea i have captured on my phone or vise versa.
So everything i write, i first capture on Google Keeps which is an messy, unorganized train of thought and then if it is good move onto obsidian when developing the idea more, expanding on it linking it to previous ideas and so on. So before i move out here is a sneak peek into how i use my google keeps for collecting ideas on blogs i am thinking of writing next. Assuming you don’t steal my idea 👀
and all this unorganized and captured snippets turn into something beautiful.
Hope you enjoyed this, and Give Google Keep a try and be sure to let me know how it goes on for you.