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Google announces 'Keep' note-taking app

Google announces 'Keep' note-taking app

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Google Keep for Android
Google Keep for Android

Google Keep, the note-taking and list-making app that briefly showed up in Drive earlier this week, is back for good. Google has just announced Keep in a blog post, launching it officially both on the web and on Android. The tool, which can be found at drive.google.com/keep or in the Play Store for Android 4.0 and up, is meant to replace physical notepads by giving users a quick place to jot down reminders or lists. Since it's on Drive, they'll sync across devices (unless, at least right now, you're on iOS or Windows Phone), and notes can be organized in multiple colors, then archived or deleted when they're no longer needed. There's also a transcription tool, which will turn your voice memos into text.

Dedicated to-do enthusiasts will find this setup much like Evernote, and Google already integrates task lists into Gmail, though Tasks may well end up a victim of Google's next spring cleaning. Keep has the advantage of being both a unified app and one that's integrated into Google's existing portfolio. While it's possible to upload images, though, you can't pull them in from Google+ — in fact, there are no social features at all besides Android's standard "share" tool, a surprising move considering how hard the company has been pushing collaboration and sharing.