You have already decided to leave Keep — this page is the practical part. Export your notes with Google Takeout, set them up in InkSync, turn your labels into shared lists, and invite your household. No sales pitch, just the steps, including the honest manual part.
Try InkSync for FreeA switch has two halves: getting your notes out of Keep, and setting them up in InkSync. Do the export first, while your Google account is untouched — and do not delete anything in Keep until you have checked the new home. Keep has no export button inside the app itself, so the way out runs through Google Takeout, Google’s download-your-data service. It is the official route, it is free, and it works even though Keep never advertised it.
Start by counting what you actually have. Open Keep and write down how many notes there are, which labels you rely on, and which notes are shared with other people. The number matters because InkSync’s free plan holds 50 notes and checklists — the same ceiling as Evernote’s free plan, and the one number that decides whether the switch costs anything. If you are over 50, the export is also your triage list: the notes you open every week move first, the rest can wait in the archive.
Know what the export keeps and what it drops before you start, so nothing surprises you. Each note arrives as its own pair of files — an .html rendering you can open in any browser and a .json file with the structured data: title, text, checklist items with their ticks, labels, colour, and timestamps — plus attachments like photos, drawings, and voice memos in their original form. Google’s own help page confirms that coverage, including pinned and archived state, collaborators, and labels. What does not survive: checklist indentation — indented sub-items come out flat, at the same level as everything else — reminders, and rich-text styling when a note is read as plain text. The words all survive; the nesting does not.
And check the shared notes before you move anything. Keep shares a note with a collaborator’s Google account, and everyone gets the same full edit-and-delete access — there is no view-only sharing, and deleting a shared note deletes it for everyone. Open each shared note and check who owns it, and agree with the other person who keeps the canonical copy. Labels are the other wall: they are Keep’s entire organisation system, and they buckle under a household — no folders, no real structure, just a scroll of coloured squares. That is the wall this switch climbs over.
Takeout is the only way out of Keep, and it takes about five minutes to request. Keep alone usually exports in minutes, not hours — the long waits you read about belong to full-account exports with years of photos.
Unzip the file and look inside Takeout/Keep/: one .html and one .json per note, plus the attachments. Open a couple of .html files in your browser to confirm they are yours, and count them against the number you wrote down. Then check one checklist with indented sub-items — you will see the items flat, all at the same level. That is expected, not a broken export: Keep’s export format carries no indentation, so plan to re-nest those by hand in step 3. Keep the .zip as your backup — do not delete it until the move is done and checked.
Create your free InkSync account from Google Play on Android, or open app.inksyncnote.com in any browser — the web app works on any device, and a native iOS app is coming soon, so iPhone members of the household join on the web for now. No credit card, no trial clock: the free plan is free.
The free plan covers up to 50 notes and checklists, with real-time sync across your Android and web devices, local-first offline access, tags, color-coded notebooks, note locking, and instant search. That 50 deserves a straight answer: if you counted more than 50 notes in step 1, either clear out ruthlessly first or go Premium — $0.99 a week or $33.99 a year for unlimited notes. It is the one number that decides what the switch costs.
Set up your structure before you move anything: one color-coded notebook per area of life — home, work, family — and tags for everything that used to be a Keep label. A note in InkSync can carry several tags at once, so “groceries”, “house”, and “christmas-2026” can all live on the same note instead of forcing it under one label. If you are still weighing the decision, the Google Keep alternative page covers the why; this guide is the how.
Here is the honest part, stated plainly: InkSync has no one-click Keep importer, so this step is manual. Open each exported note — the .html file opens in any browser — and recreate it in InkSync: paste the text, re-attach the files that matter, set its tags. For most households it is an evening’s work, and it doubles as a clear-out you have been avoiding for years. Some apps do offer a Takeout importer; InkSync does not, and this guide will not pretend otherwise.
Work one label at a time so you can stop and start without losing your place. Move the notes you actually open first — the lists, the ideas, the reference notes — and leave the rest in the .zip archive. You do not have to move everything to leave Keep; the archive is yours to keep, and the notes you move are the ones that earn their place.
This is also where labels become something better. A Keep label like “groceries” becomes a tag in InkSync — but the recurring lists become shared checklists: the weekly shop, the packing list, the household chores. A checklist in InkSync checks off and syncs, so the list you rebuild once keeps working every week. Rebuild the indentation Takeout flattened: split sub-items onto their own lines or into their own notes, and recreate any reminders — Keep’s reminders do not come over in the export, but InkSync checklists carry their own.
What will not come across: Keep’s drawings and voice memos as editable content — they arrive in the export as files, so keep the ones that matter in the archive; and Keep’s tie-ins to Google Docs and Calendar. InkSync is notes and lists, not a sketchbook or a Google Workspace sidebar — if drawings are load-bearing for you, that is a real loss to weigh before you commit.
Sharing a note with your household is a Premium feature — $0.99 a week or $33.99 a year — and it is the part that makes the switch stick. Open any note or list, share it, and invite each person by email. They get their own account and edit the same note in real time with you: one grocery list, one packing list, one set of household notes, always current on every phone. And nobody needs a Google account to join — family members outside Google’s ecosystem can finally be on the same list, which is the exact wall Keep put up.
Start with a single shared list and let it prove itself — the weekly groceries are the classic first one. Then add the rest: the chores, the holiday packing, the notes you used to text back and forth. Everyone joins from Android or any browser at app.inksyncnote.com; iPhone members use the web until the native app lands.
Do not delete Keep yet. Wait until everyone in the household has the lists they need and the shared lists have survived a real week. Then delete: your notes are in InkSync, they sync in real time, they work offline, and you can export them any time. A notes app should not hold your words hostage — leaving should be as easy as arriving was.
In four steps: export your notes from Google Keep with Google Takeout — takeout.google.com, Keep only, .zip; create your free InkSync account on Android or the web; recreate your notes in InkSync — manually, since there is no one-click importer — turning labels into tags and recurring lists into shared checklists; and invite your household by email to share the lists. Keep your Takeout .zip and your Keep account until you have checked everything, then delete Keep last.
No — InkSync has no one-click Keep importer, and this guide will not pretend otherwise. Export your notes with Google Takeout first (a .zip of one .html and one .json file per note), then move them into InkSync manually. It is the least fun part of switching, and most households finish in an evening. It also doubles as a long-overdue clear-out of notes you have not opened in years — and the Takeout .zip stays as your archive either way.
Your labels become tags in InkSync, and a note can hold several at once — which replaces Keep’s one-label habit with real organisation. Your notebooks become color-coded notebooks. Checklist ticks survive the export, but indented sub-items come out flat, so re-nest them by hand, and reminders do not come over — recreate them on the InkSync checklist. What does not survive: Keep’s drawings and voice memos as editable content (they arrive as files in the export), and Keep’s Google Docs and Calendar tie-ins.
Create your free InkSync account — up to 50 notes, real-time sync, offline mode, no credit card — and move your first label this evening.
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