I had been using a variety of note-taking apps for quite a while now. From the now-defunct Springpad (my first note saved was in August 2010!) to Evernote (which I exported all my Springpad notes in 2014).
Plus, every other software/hardware manufacturer had their own version of note-keeping app, so I was inundated and had to choose one to maintain some consistency and portability (a key lesson learnt when I moved from using first generation devices like the Palm PDA, to iPhone 3/4, then to Android phones like the Samsung Galaxy S5 and Huawei nova 2i)
I decided I would probably stick to the Android ecosystem, so I decided to try to keep all my content within the Google system. I loved Evernote (and still do) for its powerful search function but it was troublesome as I could not use it offline (esp during our quarterly daytrips to JB for shopping. Thus, I started to keep some of the info I needed on those trips in Google Keep instead, as the information could be accessed offline.
In recent years, I added more stuff as I could easily share with other users (like my daughter, who has a Google account), as well as across multiple platforms that I was using (Mac Mini as my home desktop, Windows laptop for working at home, Windows PC in office, Android personal phone and Android tablet for entertainment) 😁 Here's my take on it.
Pros:
- can be used across multiple platforms, and synced almost seamlessly
- Color-coding helps me reduce the number of labels I need. I use different colors for different contexts (e.g. work-related, cooking/food related)
- takes a variety of formats. For example, I can keep a recipe with a picture and tick boxes for ingredients list.
- Turning on tick boxes allows me to use a single note as my shopping list-cum-kitchen inventory. I tick it off when I have used up the ingredient, so I can see at a glance what ingredients I have on hand to plan meals on the go.
- automatically arranges multiple photos, which is helpful when I use it to keep track of items I have bought, say for my annual Christmas presents list.
- Best of all, I realised that I could use it as a handy OCR tool. I often take a picture of items to inventorise, but it takes too much effort to remember to transfer the photo to my phone, edit it and file it in wherever its supposed to go. By adding a photo to a Google Keep note, and choose "Grab Image Text", the text in the picture is added as text in the note itself, which makes it handy when doing searches.
Cons:
- search results cannot be filtered by more than 1 tag at a time
- notes are arranged by latest edited note, by default.
- note size limit
