If you care about privacy, these are the Google Keep alternatives to switch to
(www.androidauthority.com)
sabreW4K3
DeGoogle YourselfLogseq + syncthing
Yes. I have a dualboot machine and I have a shared partition accessible from both Linux and Windows.
My Logseq graph is stored there, so I can access it from both systems, and then I sync it to my GrapheneOS phone via syncthing.
Literally none of those are Google Keep alternatives. They're all trying to be much more, and as a result they're much worse at the very simple job Keep does.
I've said this many times. Everyone is trying to make a digital notebook. All I want are digital Post-Its.
Wow, you hit the nail on the head. I’ve kept Keep installed because it just does what it needs to, fire off a quick thought to pin for later. Maaaaaybe collaboration.
I would love a straight up Keep clone honestly
If you’re on Android you can take a look at Quillpad.
That is the most promising I've seen.
I need to look into NextCloud
Thank you!!! It’s crazy how I feel like no one is talking about it, but there isn’t a FOSS alternative to Google Keep. I tried Joplin, Standard Notes, Logseq, Anytype, etc., but none of them are pleasant to use on mobile. (On the other hand, they are good alternatives to Notion, but that’s not what I’m looking for)
I use Notesnook which I find is complete and not bad at all on pc, but the mobile interface is as unintuitive as the other ones mentioned before...
Beaver Notes seems to be a plausible alternative for now, but is today too unstable and too early in its state (as far as the iOS app is concerned anyway).
Try Anchor. Blazing fast. Offline support. Simple. Has Android app.
No affiliation, just a happy user. I was finally able to move all my keep notes.
https://github.com/ZhFahim/anchor
Wow looks nice. Sadly I’m on iOS but thanks for your answer !
Possibly still worth a go, it's quick to spin up and the site is mobile friendly!
Can I ask you how you imported your Keep notes? I cannot seem to find any instructions there.
Sorry, no way to import - you could use Google takeout I imagine, I've done it the hard way and cleaned up in the process.
That's fair. I myself migrated from Google Keep to Standard Notes and later to Joplin. I never thought that I needed for it to look like post-its :) But now that you said that I see why you wouldn't be happy with either of the non-alternatives.
I honestly don't even care if they look like post-it's.
What I mean is that each note is just a small, quick, disposable, spot to write a single thing for later. Anything that complicates or adds mental friction is a hinderance.
And the notes also need to be shareable and syncable with other people.
I used notesnook for while. I'm using standard notes now. But I still use Keep for its very specific strengths. Mainly as a shared shopping list. I've not found anything that's as good at that specific perpous.
For shopping lists I use Listonic. It's easy to use and better suited for shopping because it groups products into categories, so you don't have to sort them yourself and don't have to walk around the store back and forth because you picked up strawberries, moved to the toilet paper section and diary and then noticed you didn't pick apples. :) It syncs, so if you go shopping with somebody else, you can split and see what the other person already grabbed (as long as there's connectivity, of course).
Yah, I've played with that briefly once. Again, it's trying to do too much. And at the same time it's too limited. Not all shopping list are for groceries. The last things I want are recommendations, trackers or recipes. Even organization, because the app probably won't be able to guess right how to organize. For that use, I only want a simple text checklist, shared and synced. Nothing more.
Keep has basically been forgotten by Google. No new features, complications, or updates, almost since launch. I feel like that's one of its strengths. Nobody's trying to make it more powerful or fancy.
I've got similar requirements, and I'm still at least partially on Keep due to them. So far, the closest thing I've seen is Quillpad, and being able to stack it with Obsidian is an attractive feature, but the lack of nested checklists is a deal breaker for a few of my use cases.
And yes, I hate apps wanting to auto-categorize things for me, groceries, banking transactions, etc. I do 99% of my grocery shopping at one store, so I have a dedicated shopping list for it with categories set up to match the easiest path through the store that hits everything.
It's crazy to me that there aren't enough people living like that to make solutions for it ubiquitous...
Fossify Notes has been great for me so far. The ui is a little odd to get used to but its fantastic for the post-it seekers
Joplin has served me well for over a year now
I'm getting into this as well. Trying to transition work stuff over from OneNote, and also get better at documenting my own stuff.
Obsidian Sync is working well for me personally, and for me and my wife.
Now if I could just get work to adopt it!
Joplin not mentioned. It's like Standard Notes, but FREE, including cloud sync (many targets available). I used Standard Notes but their business model changed which drove me to look for alternatives and I landed with Joplin. Highly recommended!
Standard Notes no longer has a business model. Since they were bought by Proton they have been on life support.
Joplin is great, that's what I use as well. I just wish syncing was a bit more seemless.
I just wish syncing was a bit more seemless.
What problem do you have? I use OneDrive sync, which is not even recommended, because OneDrive doesn't work well with syncing many tiny files, but it works surprisingly good. If I need to sync NOW (rarely), there's a menu item for that. Otherwise the automated sync was good for me.
I use Nextcloud and the server is on the same network. My problem is mainly with the mobile app, I have to remember all the time to tap on the sync button just to make sure my notes are up to date. And it doesn't do it in the background, I have to do it when I launch the app. The result is that if I open my notes while disconnected from WiFi I am stuck to whatever version it last synced.
And similarly, if I edit something on my phone while offline it will never sync, unless I remember to actually launch the app when I am back online. If only it could sync on the background like DAVx5 does for my calendar it would solve most of my problems.
Oh, I guess I never ran into that problem myself. I do use Joplin on my PC and on my Android phone. Thanks for the info.
I tried a bunch of alternatives and also landed on Joplin. Been using it for a couple years and it works great!
I really like notallyx from fdroid cause it supports indentable checklists which I use constantly :)
Its a tad jank and unstable at times though
Did you know: you can fully sign out of Google on your phone and still use it? You can download an alt app store like F-Droid for most apps, or use APKeep from EFF to get those certain app installers. Or Aurora store, but I'm less familiar with that, and assume it's the same principle as APKeep. I also recommend NetGuard to individually handle what apps are allowed to use internet access.
Either way, you may not be able to fully remove Google from Android without a custom ROM, but there's still a lot you can do.
I haven't had a Google account on my phone for a long time now, although I'm not really sure how effective this strategy is in terms of privacy.
In any case, the downsides of this choice are minimal. Only apps that are closely tied to a Google account—like Keep, Calendar, Play Store, etc.—don't work; everything else works fine.
With this approach, for example, I can use Android Auto without any issues, for which there are currently no alternatives 😓
Thats a super helpful suggestion, thank you!
All of these seem like heavy weight note-taking apps.
The thing that kept me using Google Keep for a long time, and that there still is no good replacement for, was live collaborative notes editor with a mobile UI and a repository of owned/shared notes.
EDIT: I would love whoever downvoted to post a tool that can do that. I really want to be wrong here.
Huh those all kinda suck, I switched to Joplin but it's limited for collaboration.
I've tried a bunch of those prevalent options, but they're not a close enough replacement. Just found the lesser known Jotty-Page and it's pretty close.
Nextcloud Notes is the closest I've found and have been using for about 4 years now.
