Key Facts

• The author, Anu Joy, used Google Keep for years but found their note-taking system to be chaotic until they changed their habits and utilized features like master notes, labels, and formatting options.
• The author reduced clutter by maintaining a few master notes, such as a grocery list, travel checklist, and article idea repository, instead of creating new notes for each event or task.
• Google Keep's labeling system allows notes to belong to multiple categories, making it easier to find specific information using the search feature, and the author uses labels such as Articles, Travel, Shopping, and Reference.
• The author discovered that starting a line with symbols like *, -, or + in Google Keep automatically converts them into bulleted lists, and also uses headings, bold text, and bullet lists to make notes more scannable.
• Google Keep's OCR (optical character recognition) feature can extract text from images, making it searchable, and the author uses this feature by selecting "Grab image text" from the three-dot menu icon in image notes.