Switching
From Google Keep to Plainva
Keep exports through Google Takeout, and Plainva reads the result — notes, checklists, labels and the dates. If you liked Keep for its board of coloured cards, Plainva has a pinboard that works the same way, except every card is a Markdown file you can open in anything.
Getting your notes out
- Open Google Takeout at
takeout.google.comand choose Deselect all. - Select Keep only, then request the export. Google emails you a download link — this can take a few minutes or a few hours, depending on how much is in there.
- Point Plainva at the ZIP — or at the unpacked
.jsonfiles. Either works; it recognises Keep by what is inside.
What comes across
- Your notes, as Markdown.
- Checklists, with their ticked state.
- Labels, as tags.
- The created and modified dates.
- Colour, pinned and archived, written into the note as frontmatter — see below for what that does and does not do yet.
What does not come across
- Images are not imported. They are in the Takeout ZIP and stay there; the report names them.
- Deleted notes stay deleted. Takeout includes the trash, and Plainva leaves it alone — you decided against those notes once. The report says what was left behind, and a switch in the wizard brings them along if you want them.
- The colour does not reach the pinboard yet. It is written into the note, but as a plain
colorfield, and the pinboard reads a different one — so imported notes arrive uncoloured and unpinned. The values are in the file for when that is connected. - Reminders, collaborators and drawings have no counterpart.
Why bother
The board is still there
The pinboard shows notes as cards you can rearrange and colour — except each card is a Markdown file you can open in anything.
Notes that can grow up
A quick capture stays a quick capture until you want more: links between notes, tags, a database view over them. Nothing has to be decided at the moment of writing.
Yours, not rented
The files sit on your disk. Sync is optional and runs through storage you already have — Google Drive included, if that is where you want them.
Try it with a copy first
The import can write into a brand-new vault, so nothing you already have can be touched — and undoing the whole thing is deleting one folder.