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Workspace Essentials Posts
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Google Keep
| #219

Google Keep: The mistake 90% of Googlers make

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Hey friends,

Back when I was still at Google 90% of my colleagues did NOT know how to use Google Keep correctly. And for some reason 🤔, they got annoyed at me for trying to teach them the correct way, so weird…

Anyways, here are two dead-simple tricks I use that take less than five minutes to set up but will completely change how you use the app.

The Friction

Google Keep is great for jotting down quick thoughts, but it has two major weaknesses:

  1. First, capturing information from the web is clunky and often creates a mess.
  2. Second, as your notes pile up, the app becomes extremely messy and becomes almost impossible to find the info you need.

Tip #1: The Quick-Capture Workflow

Stop using Keep as your primary note-taking tool and start using it as a "quick capture" tool.

  1. Install the free Google Keep Chrome extension. This lets you save URLs, text snippets, or images from any webpage with one click.
  2. Create a dedicated label for web clippings. I use one called "03 clipped".
  3. When you clip something, immediately add your "clipped" label to it.
  4. Archive the note. This keeps your main view clean, but the note is still perfectly organized and findable under its label.
💡
For my full workflow for Google Workspace check out the Workspace Academy!

Trick #2: The Color-Coding Bookmark System

You probably know you can color-code Keep notes, but how do we make that actually useful?

  1. Assign specific colors to categories. For example, Blue = Pinned Notes, Red = Urgent Ideas, Yellow = Project Research.
  2. Use the direct search URL to filter by a specific color:
  3. Create a bookmark folder in your browser named "Keep" and save each color-search URL as a bookmark. Now you have a one-click dashboard to instantly filter your notes.

Let me know which of these tricks you end up trying!