How to export notes from Google Keep to Notion (and put its AI to good use)

For a lack of anything else at hand, and perhaps a sprinkle of laziness, Google Keep has been my default note-taking tool for years. Overall, I have always found it good for what it is — effectively a digital alternative to the yellow post-it notes. Long story short, as a Notion neophyte, now graced by the knowledge management tool’s godly AI capabilities, I’ve discovered a method to transfer all my notes — and never looked back. If you’re considering switching from Google Keep to Notion, read on.

Notion does not offer a Native way to import Google Keep notes, but the workaround detailed below seems to be the next best thing.

☝️For the TLDR Google Keep > Notion integration steps, skip my self-indulgent intro and start from Step 1: Google takeout below.

My story

I hold nothing against keeping quick notes in Keep, but I’ve ventured far beyond the app’s intended use and hit a brick wall (more about the limitations of Keep in the next paragraph). Over the years, I’ve amassed a library of 1500+ notes: grocery lists, book clippings, funny anecdotes, personal diary entries, reminders, bookmarking, and everything in between. The sheer amount of notes combined with the intrinsic limitations of Keep made it a bit unwieldy for me. I started looking for an alternative. Notion had been on my radar for some time, but I only needed to see its Ask AI in action to jump on the bandwagon.

Notion vs Google Keep

Let’s just admit it: Keep is good enough for most people and you must remember that Notion is a freemium software which only unlocks its full potential (including AI features) to its paying users. But there are some specific reasons why you might want to shell out and switch:

• Google Keep only support exact-match search. It’s a genuine pain in the neck when dealing with hundreds or thousands of notes. If your search query does’t exactly match what you’re searching, you won’t be able to find the note in Google Keep. This has become a real nusiance for me. Notion has solved the problem.
• Keep has very limited organization features. Google Keep is simpler to use, but sacrifices a lot to achieve it. Its another shortcoming is that it doesn’t offer the deep hierarchical structure or the database functionalities that Notion does. This makes Keep much less suitable for complex project management or when detailed organization of a large number of notes and documents is required.
• Keep has only basic formatting options. Keep has limited formatting capabilities compared to Notion. Conversely, Notion allows for rich text editing, embedding of multimedia, and the creation of complex documents with headers, tables, and more.
• No built-in templates. Notion offers a wide range of templates for various uses (e.g., project management, personal goals, databases) that can be freely customized. Keep does not have this feature, which might limit its efficiency for structured tasks or projects.
• Lack of integration within documents. In Notion, you can create pages within pages, and link between different documents seamlessly, allowing you to build a cross referencing map of knowledge easily. Google Keep’s notes are more isolated from each other.
• Limited collaboration features. While Google Keep allows for only basic sharing of notes with other Google users, Notion’s collaboration features are far more advanced, with real-time editing, commenting, the ability to set permissions at granular levels, or even publish sites online. Suffice it to say Notion can be easily used to build interactive job boards (with automation).
• No advanced database functions. Notion’s ability to create and manage databases with various views (e.g., tables, kanban boards, calendars) is absent in Google Keep, making Keep less versatile for managing projects or tracking complex information.
• Lack of customization. Notion allows users to customize their workspace extensively, including the layout and appearance of notes and pages, which Google Keep does not offer to the same extent.

Step 1: Google Takeout

Let’s now cut to the chase, starting with bidding farewell to your old pal, Keep. To do this, you’ll need to export your Google Keep notes using Google’s takeout service.

1. Sign in to you Google account and go to https://takeout.google.com/
2. Scroll down. Select only Google Keep.

3. Scroll down. Click Next Step.

4. Click Create export.

5. Check your Gmail for the email with a link for your takeout download. In my case, it took 2 minutes to arrive, and the file was 20MB (sic!).

Download the .zip file. You don’t need to extract the files.

Step 2: Import into Notion

Now, head over to Notion (either web or desktop app). Click the three-dot icon in the top-right corner, Import or sync from > Upload from your computer. Select the Google takeout .zip file you just downloaded in the previous step. The import will take a few minutes.

Note: If import seems stuck (as it did for me), try importing your notes in smaller chunks.

Step 3. Ta-daaam

In your Notion, there will now be a new page named something along takeout-20241206T160440Z-001 Import Feb 16, 2023, where you’ll find all your Google Keep notes as subpages.

Note: If your original Google Keep note had no heading, the default heading in Notion will be the note’s timestamp. Ugly, but fair.

My (bogus) Google Keep notes in Notion (all visible notes have been randomly generated for the purpose of this article)

Technically speaking, that’s about it. Your Google Keep notes are safe and sound in Notion.

If you’re new to Notion, you must understand that “pages” are the fundamental building blocks for organizing content within the application. You can build pages within pages, much like you create folders inside folders on your PC. Pages can contain both other pages and content. That’s the gist of it.

Now, read on for some real Notion magic.

Step 4. Organizing things

Seeing your Google Keep notes in Notion is a qualified success, but the way the notes are displayed is not convenient at all and may make you want to revert to Keep.

Hold on just a moment. We’ll fix it.

1. First, rename the newly — created page from the unwieldy timestamp to anything you like, e.g. Notes.
2. Inside the page, at the top, type /full to create Database — Full page.

Converting Google Keep notes into a database (all visible notes have been randomly generated for the purpose of this article)

2. Grab your notes (individually or all at once) and drag-and-drop them into the newly created database. Then, inside the database you’ve just created, you should now see a list of all the notes, much like:

My database of notes (all visible notes have been randomly generated for the purpose of this article)

3. You can keep the Tags column if you think you’ll need it.

4. Create a new column using the + button at the top (next to …). From the list, select Text.

5. In the next step, turn on AI autofill and Fill with.. > Custom autofill.

This is where you enter the AI prompt that will process your notes. Spell out the instructions to format your notes as needed, improvise, or feel free to use mine:

Show the contents of the page linked in the first column as plain text
Remove “<br>” in the text
Remove line breaks
Remove empty lines
Remove date and time stamps 
Remove the first 2 lines
Remove page name
Remove bullet points

Custom autofill AI instructions to extract the content of notes

Now, click Try on this view to see if the prompt does the trick for you. This is an approximation of what you should get:

The text column includes notes contents (all visible notes have been randomly generated for the purpose of this article)

6. Save changes and Turn on auto-update when prompted. A neat purple AI icon will now appear at the top of the column, meaning that the entries are populated by AI.

As you can see, nifty AI features are sprinkled in different areas of Notion’s interface. Feel free to play around to adapt the views to your needs. Try adding new columns, tags, summaries, views, etc.

Sky is the limit.

Step 5. Try different views

The beauty of Notion lies in its flexibility. Not a fan on the list view above? No problem. Click the + icon (the row at the top of your table, beneath the title) to build a new view in Notion. You can choose from an array of different options (feel free to experiment and make it fit your needs).

I personally like the Google Keep-like Gallery view:

Notion’s Google Keep-like Gallery view for the sentimental ones.

Step 6. Using Notion’s Ask AI

Now, let’s talk about Notion’s killer feature: Ask AI (aka Q&A).

Notion lets use AI to find and make sense of all the information gathered across your Notion pages. No hallucination, no generic responses. The AI can access all your knowledge gathered in pages. All you have to do is ask.

Note: Notion AI functionalities are in slow rollout for all premium users and, in a limited capacity, to non-premium users. If you can’t see the two-star icon in the bottom-right corner, join the Notion AI waitlist here and check regularly if you got it. You can read about Notion Q&A here.

Notion Ask AI button (bottom-right corner)

Let’s now test the feature using the newly-imported Google Keep notes. Because the answers are specific to the notes stored in Notion, you can ask it anything related to them, for example:

Step 7. Using Notion on your mobile

In all fairness, Google Keep seems to be better designed for taking quick notes on Android than the feature-rich powerhouse Notion is. But there is a bunch of super useful widgets that make taking quick notes a little faster on Android (not sure about iOS though):

There are home screen widgets for Quick Note, Single Page, Recent Pages, and Favorite pages, see below:

Notion Android widgets: Quick Note, Single Page, Recent Pages, Favorites

Note: According to a random Redditor, Notion uses a combo of ChatGPT and Anthropic, depending on the prompt. This information has not been confirmed officially.

Last words

Organizing your knowledge in Notion, even leaving the AI wizardry aside, has been a game changer for me, both in my professional life and at home. The tool is a much-needed remedy for the chaos and onslaught of information I need to process each day. Sure, Notion is not free, but the productivity boost it’s giving you is unreal.

I believe that those who’ll skillfully learn to build a “second brain “ of sorts — and properly leverage the AI features for productivity — can survive in the digital age. Granted, Notion AI has its quirks as it is still in beta, but hey: it’s still the most impressive tool I’ve seen in a while.

If you liked the tips, buy me a coffee to keep me going, thanks!