Seven Best Ways to Organize Notes in Google Keep
Taking Notes Jedi know the power of organization. Creating a system for your Google Keep notes is no different, even if the notes app doesn’t have an obvious layer of folders and subfolders. Google Keep is intentionally minimal, but there are enough tips and tricks you can use to avoid drowning in a sea of digital stickers.
Seven Tips for Organizing Google Keep
It’s important to set up your system before the sea of notes starts to overwhelm you, but you can do this after the fact. Start by eliminating unnecessary notes and moving relatively important notes to more permanent locations. For example, a shopping list is not a permanent note, but a list of contact numbers might be. Then start by creating a schema or rules (that work for you) with these features in Keep.
Color-code your notes using colors and backgrounds
Since Google Keep doesn’t have folders, use background colors and options instead. I suggest you reserve the darker peach color for urgent tasks or notes. There are specific background patterns for products, recipes, places, travel, etc. You can drag and drop notes and organize them by color.
If you use Google Keep to track projects, certain colors can also help you create a Kanban board .
Advice. Keeping track of family activities with a Kanban board is achievable thanks to Google Keep’s checklists and collaboration capabilities.
Use shortcuts to mark your notes
You can think of shortcuts as “folder names,” so think carefully about your Google Keep shortcut system. Tag related notes. Any note can have multiple tags, so you can connect related notes. “/” or “|” could be a smart way to visualize related notes with different labels.
For example, notes might have a primary label such as “Personal Development.” You can then create individual, related notes with labels such as Personal Development/Health; “Personal Development/Nutrition”; “Personal Development/Projects” etc. You can also add tags using “#” (hashtag).
You can use a similar tagging system to keep a note private and share a related one with a collaborator.
Think carefully about your shortcuts, as Google Keep allows a maximum of 50 shortcuts.
Number your labels
The heart of Google Keep’s organization lies in its tagging system. While you can’t rearrange the labels by dragging them, you can use numbers to arrange them in the order you want.
Add numbers to label names in the order in which you use them. So, if it’s “Work”, then “1 – Work” will move that label up, followed by whatever label you number “2”… and so on.
Make notes (and tags) more visual with emojis.
Don’t let the lack of formatting options keep you from taking visual notes. You can insert any emoticons and symbols into Google Keep. Inserting the desired emoji into a note is also easy on the desktop thanks to the Windows + key combination, which opens the emoji keyboard .
Advice. Add emojis to your shortcuts and make your Google Keep sidebar interesting.
Pin only important notes to the top
Attach notes that are absolutely necessary. Ideally, limit the number of pinned notes to a number that doesn’t require scrolling. My iOS screen allows me to see four or five notes at a time in the Tile view. I usually attach notes that are reminders or timely, such as a shopping list.
Use cleaning reminders
Reminders are a great way to remember important tasks and deadlines. You can also set reminders for recurring daily or weekly tasks. But why not use reminders to clear out notes you no longer need?
Select a time in the future to view a specific note. If it is no longer useful, throw it away.
Archival notes for a cleaner home look
One of the problems with Google Keep is that all your notes appear on the home screen, even if you have marked them. This clutter can be overwhelming if you have a lot of notes.
A good tip from the YouTube channel Simpletivity suggests using the archive feature for cleaning. You can archive all your notes as long as they are tagged correctly. They’ll still be searchable and editable, but they’ll no longer clutter up your home screen. You can unzip any note at any time.
After that, only important pinned notes can be displayed on the main screen.
Advice . Google Keep has a powerful search with multiple filters. It can look through your stack and find notes by type , tag , item , and color .