How to run Google Keep in a window on the desktop like a Mac app

Google Keep is a great app for storing notes and some people prefer it to the Notes Mac app. This guide shows how you can run it on the desktop like a regular Mac app. It is much more convenient.

A long time ago and with an old version of OS X I showed how to add a Google Keep icon to the Dock to enable it to be opened in its own window.

Sadly, Google is discontinuing desktop apps and everything that used to be an app must be converted to the web. What if you want to run Keep like an app?

When Keep is accessed in a browser at keep.google.com it opens with all the usual browser clutter like an address box, tabs, toolbar buttons and so on. It is OK, but it is not as nice as it used to be.

When it was possible to run Keep as an app, it opened in a small, neat window on the desktop without all the usual browser window clutter. It was like Keep was a regular Mac app.

How do you do that now?

By creating an application using Automator to start Google Chrome in app mode without the browser clutter.

1 Use Automator

Open Automator in the Applications folder and click the New Document button. When it asks you to choose a document type, select Application.

2 Use a shell script

Type shell into the search box and then click and drag Run Shell Script to the right hand side. This is where your app is built.

Type, or better still, copy and paste this command into it. It is all one command and all on one line (it might break in two on the web page).

"/applications/Google Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google Chrome" --app=https://keep.google.com

3 Save it

Go to the File menu and select Save. Save it to the Applications folder and name it Google Keep.app.

Run your app and Keep opens in its own window on the desktop like a Mac app.

4 Add Keep to the Dock

Adding an icon to the Doc is now a trivial task. Drag the Google Keep app you created from the Applications folder and drop it on the Dock. The other icons shuffle around to make space for it.

How does it work?

It is the --app=https://keep.google.com that makes Chrome open a window like an app without the usual browser clutter. (You could replace that URL with a different one - it isn't specific to Keep.)

All we have to do is pass this to the Google Chrome app when starting it.

There is a problem here and an app is not really a program. It is a folder and this complicates matters.

If you Ctrl+click the Google Chrome.app in the Applications folder there is a menu option to Show Package Contents. Select it and Finder opens the app folder. Open the MacOS folder within this and in there is the real Google Chrome app.

This is what we must run and the command is:

"/applications/Google Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google Chrome"

Quotes are needed because there are spaces in the name. You can type this, or the whole Automator command, at a Terminal command prompt and you’ll see that it opens Chrome.