How to Use Google Keep Effectively | Tips & Tricks

You’ve chosen Google Keep to be your digital notes program, but what about those little ‘hidden’ tips and trips that really show you how to use Google Keep effectively? 😉 Time to take a look at them.

(1) Bulk Editing Your Notes

As you continue adding notes in, your list can get quite full.

Once at that point, working on a single note at a time can become tedious and a waste of time.

So it’s pretty useful, that for some commands, you can select a number of notes and apply these settings to all of them – at the same time.

Selecting Multiple Notes

Firs thing to do is, of course, select the notes that you want to work with. There’s three main ways to select multiple notes:

Select All

This is the easiest option, although it’s got a few ‘options’ that you can make use of.

To select all of your notes – use the shortcut key:

Windows = CTRL + A

Mac = CMD + A

Here’s where you can be clever – the shortcuts will select all notes on screen…

But what notes have you got displayed?

Here’s where you can make use of some of the options from a previous post (How to Organize Notes in Google Keep Notes) to display specific types of notes.

Say you display a certain label, and then select all of those notes?

How about the search results?

Manually Selecting

Click and Drag

You can also use the ‘ole’ click and drag method. 😊

Starting from ‘a corner’ outside of a note, click and drag to cover the relevant notes – which will select them.

You’ll notice that a tick appears in the corner of each note, to show you which ones you’ve selected.

At the top of the web browser, on the left, it shows you the number of notes selected (in this case 5), and the options available to use/apply on the right.

Select Specific Notes

The final option, while easy, is one that you need to be a little careful with. Simply because a click in the wrong place can undo all your careful work.

Hover over the top left corner of a note to see a tick appear. Click to select the note.

You can click anywhere in the note to select it, the black tick stays on screen.

Move to the next note (to be selected) and click on the note to also select it.

The black tick appears for all selected notes. Keep clicking on the notes until you’ve selected all the notes that you want.

Note: As I mentioned if you accidentally click away from a note, all of them will be deselected. And then you’ll need to start again selecting the notes…

Available Options

While it’s not every option in Google Notes, what can you use?

With the relevant notes now selected, as I mentioned above, the options appear in the top right-hand corner of the web browser.

They are all options that you’ve already seen, and I’ve listed them out here:

• Pin (to the top)
• Remind Me
• Background Options
• Archive
• Delete Notes (in More)
• Change Labels (in More)
• Make a Copy (in More)
• Copy to Google Docs (in More)

Simply click on the command that you want to apply, select any further options and you’re done.

Note: Whatever you choose will be applied to all of the selected notes.

(2) Focus with a Single Column

Depending on how you prefer to work, you might be finding the ‘mess’ of the notes in grid view unhelpful.

The good news is that you can change the view.

Perhaps a single column would help you in how to use Google Keep effectively?

If so, then you’re in luck, as that’s the alternative view.

To the left of the cog there’s the ‘view’ button.

Depending on which view you are using, the icon shows the alternative. In the image above, the one of the left is for the single column view, with the one on the right returning to the grid view.

Switch between the views as you need, to help your focus.

Extra Tip: Use the shortcut key – CTRL + G to switch between these views.

(3) Grab Image Text

We know that you can add images to your notes, but did you know that you can take the text from within the image and add it to the main note?

Add the image to a note, as normal.

Click on the ellipse (three dots) to open the menu.

From the options, select Grab image text.

Keep reads the text, and adds it to the selected note.

In the image above, you can see it as the final bullet in the list.

Like cooking? How about taking an image of a new recipe, and adding the ingredients into a shopping list?

I wonder how you’ll make use of this option? 😃

(4) Dark Theme

It can be difficult to stare at a white screen for long periods of time – especially when you’re not in a well lit area.

While Google doesn’t have their dark mode across all the apps – Google Keep is one of the ones where the Dark Theme is available.

Click on the cog for the settings menu (see the image for #5).

The second option is Enable dark theme.

The background immediately switches to black, with the text becoming a light gray (rather than a bright white).

When or if, you want to switch back, click on the cog again, the menu now offers ‘Disable Dark Theme’.

(5) Keep’s Keyboard Shortcuts

You know how much I love keyboard shortcuts, or shortcut keys, and one of the best kept Google Keep tips and tricks, is that they have their own list of these.

In the top right of the web-browser, click on the cog to open the Settings list.

And there at the bottom is the option for the Keyboard Shortcuts.

There’s a few to choose from, two screens to be specific, which will be displayed in a dialog box, or you can look at them listed below ⬇️

Next Steps

You’ve got the knowledge to keep your notes organised and make the most of all the features – now you know how to use Google Keep effectively!

While these blogs have focused on the web-browser option (simply because I work on a laptop most of the time), remember that most, if not all of these options are also available on the app. Install Google Keep on your phone to have your notes to hand and a place to add those ideas as they come to you.

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