I replaced my Notes widget with Google Keep; it was a disaster
Android Police 2026-07-23 12:15:15
Context: The author, Tom Bedford, a technology journalist based in London, UK, recently attempted to replace his phone's Notes widget with Google Keep's widget, hoping to utilize its cloud-based features to access and edit notes across devices. He had been using his phone's Notes app and its widgets extensively for managing lists and notes. However, his experience with Google Keep's widgets was disappointing.
Key Facts
- The author's phone home screen was heavily customized with various list widgets, including shopping lists, work to-do lists, and story ideas, which he found extremely useful for quick access and organization.
- Google Keep offers three types of widgets: Single note, Note collection, and QuickCapture, but the author found that these widgets had significant limitations, including non-resizable font sizes and slow update times.
- The Single note widget displayed text in a large font, making it possible to see only one ingredient at a time, and lacked the ability to resize the font, making it impractical for the author's needs.
- The QuickCapture widget, although resizable, had a low-resolution display at larger sizes and was not useful for the author, as he rarely started new notes and mostly edited existing ones.
- The Note collection widget, which displayed a carousel of all notes, had a more readable font size but was too large, taking up 4x3 slots on the author's phone screen, and did not allow ticking off items from the list.