Google announced last summer that Chrome apps were being discontinued. What does this mean for users of Google Keep, one of the company’s best tools? Here are some top tips for the notes app.
For those that have not yet discovered this brilliant tool, Google Keep is a great note-taking app that replaces the sticky notes type of utilities on your computer.
It enables you to jot down things you want to remember like URLs and text copied from web pages, thoughts and ideas, to do lists, shopping lists, reminders and so on.
It is much simpler and more lightweight than Google Keep alternatives OneNote and Evernote. These apps are fine in their own way, but Keep’s strongest features are speed and simplicity.
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* Speak Google Keep notes using voice recognition
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* Abandon sticky notes, put Google Keep on the desktop
* Recognise text in Google Keep images
Notes entered into Keep are stored online in your Google account.
This means that they are available on any computer and device that runs Keep.
This is pretty much everything and you can use a PC, Mac, iOS and Android phones and tablets.
The end of Chrome apps
Go to the Chrome Web Store and there are three categories of items - Extensions, Themes and Apps. The categories can be selected in the left sidebar.
Search for Keep and then select the Apps category on the left and you will find the Google Keep app and it can be installed into Chrome. Not for long though.
Google is removing support for Chrome apps and sooner or later the Apps category and all the apps in it will disappear. It turns out that Chrome apps was an experiment that didn’t work and Google is abandoning it.
It is still possible to install the Keep app into Chrome and it is possible to add a shortcut to the desktop to run the app in its own window, separate from the Chrome browser. However, it does not seem to work properly.
Either I have a bug or Google has already begun to remove support for the Keep app. All I get are the titles of notes, but no content in them. The notes are empty.
There is a Google Keep extension in the Chrome Web Store, but this is not the app, it is a simple way to grab stuff off web pages and store them in notes. It is different to the app itself.
Use the Google Keep web app
This does not mean that Keep is being abandoned. Chrome apps will disappear, but they can be turned into web apps that run in any browser instead.
For example, instead of running Keep on the desktop as an app, you just go to keep.google.com and it runs in the browser - any browser and not just Chrome. It works the same, but one difference is that there is no offline use. If you are offline you can’t access Keep on the web.
Run Keep on the desktop
The app has been abandoned, or soon will be, and if you have it on the desktop it might continue to work for a while, but eventually it will stop working. I’ve been using accessing it in a browser tab and when I tried to install the app again, it didn’t work.
However, there is a work-around.
Chrome can be made to run in a window without tabs, without the address box, without the menu and without the toolbar with extension icons.
Press Windows+R and in the Run box enter:
Chrome.exe -app=https://keep.google.com
Google Keep opens in a neat little window on the desktop exactly the same way it used to as an app.
It is not very convenient typing in that complicated command and you might make a typing slip. Let’s make a shortcut for the desktop or taskbar that will open Keep in this window.
Create a Google Keep desktop shortcut
Right click the desktop and select New, Shortcut.
Click the Browse button and find and select Chrome. It will be in:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe
or
C:\Program Files\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe
Add a space and then the -app=https://keep.google.com to the end of the path so it looks like this:
Click Next, set the name to Keep and click Finish.
The icon used for the Keep desktop shortcut is a standard web browser icon instead of the Keep icon, but double clicking the shortcut opens Keep in a neat little window without all the usual browser clutter.
Change the shortcut icon
There are two more things you can do. The first one is to change the icon.
Right click the Keep icon on the desktop that you created and select Properties.
Click the Change Icon button.
There are several alternative icons and one looks a bit like notes in Keep. Select it and close the windows.
Pin Keep to the taskbar
Now right click the icon again and there are two options. One is to pin Keep to the Start menu and the other is to pin Keep to the taskbar. Select them both.
Now you can easily start Keep in its own window on the desktop separate to the Chrome browser.
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I like it! thank you.
cool. But you lost the offline feature. Google are a bunch of quitters
Great - I have been trying to find a way to do that for ages
This is a really great article.
This is the solution I was looking for and it works really well. Thank you for writing and sharing this clear step-by-step guide. Hopefully, Google will allow us to continue using Keep. It’s one of my most used apps.
Thanks this is really nice information…
Glad I found this. I’ve been debating using Keep and one of the things I wanted was a sticky note feature. This just may do the trick.Thanks!
Thank you very much! Great article
What a great post. Google should pay for this. Thanks mate
Excellent Post!
P.S. You can find the keep icon here (in png): https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/11/Google_Keep_icon.png
Head over to http://convertico.com/ to convert it into .ico
Change the icon by heading to properties of the shortcut and you are good to go!
Thank you so much for this information! This process went very well, but after I changed the icon and pinned it to Start — the icon changed back to the default Chrome icon. How can I fix that? Thanks in advance!
Well, you need a different method to be able to do that. This ‘hack’ relies on creating a shortcut which opens the command line in the background and then tells the command line to open the windowed webpage. This allows you to set your own icon. Here are the steps:
1. Open Chrome, and navigate to chrome://apps. In another tab, open Google Keep or Google Calendar or whatever.
2. Highlight the URL of the Google Keep or Google Calendar or whatever in the chrome searchbox, and drag it into the chrome://apps tab you just opened, where all the other app icons are. A new square should appear with the icon and URL of the website you dragged in, next to your existing chrome apps.
3. Right click on this square, and click “Open as Window”. Also, select “Create Shortcuts” -> “Desktop” (“Start Menu” does not work right now)
4. Go to your desktop, right click on the new shortcut you just created, open “Properties”, and copy everything in the ‘Target’ box. Paste this somewhere to use later. That should look something like this:
“C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe” -profile- directory=Default -app-id=lfeaehhpmhbkaimpembmeeojpoohnpfl
5. Right click on your desktop, select “New” -> “Shortcut”
6. In the “type the location of the item box”, paste the following code:
%SystemRoot%\system32\cmd.exe /C start “” [‘Target’ copied earlier]
Replace [‘Target’ copied earlier] with what you copied in step 4.
7. Click ‘Next’. Name the shortcut whatever you want. Click “Finish”.
8. Now, select the shortcut you just created, right-click it, and open ‘Properties’. Under the ‘Run’ option, select ‘Minimized’. Here, you can also set your custom icon, which will also appear in the Start menu, by clicking “Change Icon” (this needs to be in .ico format). Close the properties panel.
9. Navigate to this folder: C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs. Drag the shortcut you just created into that folder. You will need admin privileges. Right click on the shortcut, select ‘Pin to Start’
10. For the icon you just set to also appear in the taskbar when the app is opened from the start menu, do the following:
- Open the app from the start menu.
- Right-click on the taskbar icon that appears
- Right-click on the name of the app in the right-click menu that just appeared (should be the first option above “Pin to Taskbar”).
- Select ‘Properties’ in the new right-click menu that just appeared.
- Click “Change Icon” in that window, and select the same icon you selected in step 8.
Done!
This is a huge time saver. Much appreciated mate.
Also, you can find the Keep icon in “ico” format here:
http://www.iconarchive.com/show/pacifica-icons-by-bokehlicia/google-keep-icon.html
This way you don’t need to go to another website to convert it from png to ico.
Again thanks for your great effort.
Thanks a million for this!
Wow, thank you so very much - that is the best tutorial I have followed in a long time! Simple, concise, just right amount of images.
Thank you so much. Helped alot ! 😉
Thank you so much! That works like a charm, and you ROCK!
It’s not working for me. this is the link i have as the target:
C:\Users\Joshua\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\Application -app=https://keep.google.com
I was able to access keep with the ctrl R method but I can’t seem to make the shortcut work. instead the desktop shortcut is only opening the file location in a windows browser
Update from previous comment. It works. i forgot to type Chrome.exe after i pointed to the folder. Thanks for the great post!
Your path to Chrome is different to mine. It could be wrong. Try adding an icon to the desktop to run Chrome, then right click it, select Properties and see what the path is. For me, it is C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe
JUST replace all yours with
“C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe” -app=https://keep.google.com
Wrong link - see in Program files for chrome.exe
I keep getting an error…
“The file C:\Program cannot be found.”
I made no typos, I even browsed for the file and am still getting the same error. I am so confused!
Or in other case
“C:\Program Files\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe” -app=https://keep.google.com
yeah same here
what a load of crap
how all the other people found this helpful is beyond me. My chrome exists at “C:\Program Files(x86)\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe” but when I try to add
–app=https://keep.google.com and click next it just says error cannot find program
so I have given up, probably something that no longer works in the fall creators update, google and microsoft have never played well together, no surprise there!
I got the same thing, “The file C:\Program cannot be found” until I actually followed the instructions and “Browsed” to the file location, selecting > This PC > SSD C:\ > etc. Then it worked. However I then discovered that Lisette’s method, using the “add to desktop” feature in the Chrome tools menu, works just as well and gives you a Keep icon automatically. So no worries!
Lisette says:
2018/01/08 AT 14:00
Isn’t the same without typing any command ?
– Open Chrome browser
– Go to the Keep Web Page (or any other)
– Open Chrome menu (3 vertical dots)
– Open “More tools” (approximative translation from french)
– Choose “Add to desktop”
– Modify the name if you want to
– Check “Open in a window”
I had to add 2 dashes to work… after the …chrome.exe” -app=http…
this should work.
I am happy with this workaround.
Thanks for awesome article, it really helps…
Perfect!!! Very valuable information.
Isn’t the same without typing any command ?
- Open Chrome browser
- Go to the Keep Web Page (or any other)
- Open Chrome menu (3 vertical dots)
- Open “More tools” (approximative translation from french)
- Choose “Add to desktop”
- Modify the name if you want to
- Check “Open in a window”
Yeah! It’s pretty much same as explained here!
Well done, Lisette, thanks so much, brilliant.
Formidable, much better way to do it!
You are absolutely brilliant. Thank you. A hidden gem in the big puddle of s***.
Thanks. The advantage of doing it this way is that the icon is correct (nothing else to download or search for). Plus this works for the other google apps.
Thank you so much! 🙂
This is an awesome article. Made my life so much more organized and easier! THANK YOU!
Thanks for taking the time to post and explain the process (w/ pics!)
Thank you very much!! Great tip 😉
Thank you so much! This works perfectly!
My Google Keep will not sync in Win 10. It was working but has stopped. I’m not running in Chrome (since I don’t like Chrome). Can anyone please help me out here. I would be most grateful. Sharon in Allentown ;0)
This worked really well until a recent update to Windows. Now when I try to use the run command “Chrome.exe –app=https://keep.google.com” I get an error message on the Chrome page that opens: “This site can’t be reached
xn--app%3Dhttps-lg3f’s server IP address could not be found.”
Any suggestions?
Im getting the same error…
I get the same error..
Linda, I just tried it and it worked. Are you using two dashes -? ‘Chrome.exe -app=https://keep.google.com’
Aggghhh! WordPress keeps change double dash to single dash in comments,
Thanks. It solved my problem. This double dash was the issue.
Thx a lot.
This works great, however, when you copy/paste the link provided above, the dash doesn’t paste correctly and that causes an error. To fix, once you’ve copy/pasted the file name
C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe” –app=https://keep.google.com
go back and delete the dash, then type it back in manually. It will work great after that!
THANK YOU HeathC.
Thank you very much, very usefull!
THANKS A LOT, ITS ONE OF THE KEY APPS WITH WHICH I RUN MY LIFE, AND IT STOPPED WORKING, WITH THIS WORK ARROUND YOU SOLVED IT !!!
This is great, but is there a way to create this shortcut with a label as target?
or you could just download the app from the windows 10 store.
What’s the reason for not timestamping the posts?
You started your post with “Google announced last summer that Chrome apps were being discontinued”. “Last summer” could be three months or six years ago.
Please, show the date of your posts.
Thanks
Perfect Thank You
Great solution, thank you
Hello.
Thank you… This worked with keep, Calendar and even with Gmail… Thank you for your help in this. I’d like to change the icon for other than those suggested. I downloaded a keep icon from the web (.png file) but it didn´t accept a the properties. How do I make my own icon? Can you help me in this. Thanks.
Thank you so much
Thank you so much! 🙂
Never use Google Keep for anything important. It has a tendency to dump your notes and they are not recoverable
This is really helpful. Thanks!
thank you ! that helped so much!
Awesome, many thanks!