Google Keep, The note-taking app, which has been quite good but often overlooked, is now getting better text formatting choices and other improvements. The ability to make text bold, italic, and change its appearance is being added to the app, and you should start seeing it on your app soon. Some users, like Mishaal Rahman, have already noticed this feature before its official release, suggesting it’s coming out quickly.
These new features for Keep are things that should have been there from the start, rather than completely new things, but they are still very welcomed. It’s interesting that Google has recently been paying more attention to Keep. Users received a new widget for their home screen earlier this year, and now you can open multiple Keep windows on your device at the same time. Google is also gradually introducing a version history feature, which will let you see all the changes you’ve made to your notes over time.
In case you didn’t know, Keep is an excellent app for taking notes. It’s fast, works on Android, iOS, and the web, and it’s both simple and clever. When you paste a link into a note, the note transforms into a preview so you can see what the link is about. Short notes look like digital Post-it notes, while longer ones resemble documents. You can even draw or record audio in a note, and set reminders. And because it’s made by Google, you can search for your notes and access them from various other Google products.
The main issue with Keep is that its future doesn’t seem very certain. It doesn’t receive a lot of attention or updates – the app is already 10 years old, and this might be its biggest update so far! Unlike other Google apps that get talked about a lot, Keep doesn’t get that much attention, making users worry that Google might discontinue it at any moment to save money or focus on other things. Keep is better at certain things than Google Docs, but Docs is more likely to stick around in the long run.
This is why it’s reassuring to see that Google is still updating Keep and acknowledging its existence, just like it has also remembered about Tasks this year. (Google, please make Keep reminders show up in Tasks. It would be so helpful!) The formatting options will probably become available on the web and iOS too, which will make Keep even more useful without losing its simple design.