Products · Product
Google Keep
Raised as a usability problem by 28 people on Hacker News over 12 years (2014–2025), in 31 threads.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads this year.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads in the last 5 years.
Every issue, all time, most people first
Notes become unusable unless kept rigorously organizedUnreviewed
20142026- Notes take days to sync, so changes don't show up on other devices2019-06-28
- Every notes sync re-downloads thousands of notes on each open, making it unusable2018-09-26
- Notes become unusable quickly unless user keeps them rigorously organized2018-07-15
Web app loads entire note history, stalling the browser for 20-30 secondsUnreviewed
20142026- Web notes apps freeze and crash when pasted text is long2025-03-30
- Web app takes very long to start, bad for quick note taking2017-01-03
- Web app loads entire note history, stalling the browser for 20-30 seconds and feeling sluggish2015-11-17
Unreviewed issues were grouped by machine: Claude Haiku labelled each comment as a usability complaint, named what it's about and summed up the problem in a line, and a small model grouped similar problems. Nobody has checked them by hand. Expect mistakes.
The newest 32 complaints
- Web notes apps freeze and crash when pasted text is long2025-03-30
- Cannot sign in unless accepting the data sharing prompt; cancelling blocks login2022-11-24
- Can't sort notes by most recently edited, so must manually drag them to the top2022-08-31
- Extra whitespace around list items halves how many items fit on screen2022-08-28
- Notes list layout is terrible and lacks folders alongside labels2022-04-24
- Ink drawing on the device lagged so badly it was hard to use2022-01-18
- Google Keep's UX doesn't work well for saving articles to read later2021-12-27
- Must press the search box twice to search free text2021-07-12
- New note opens in body instead of title, which the author finds awkward2021-06-30
- Described as pretty terrible, with no Markdown support in the app2021-06-17
- Web app is so slow on mobile it is practically unusable2020-12-09
- Accidentally deleted note parts with no history or undo2020-10-24
- Becomes sluggish with many saved items and tags are hard to use2020-07-19
- Google Keep is incredibly slow to use2020-05-09
- Notes take days to sync, so changes don't show up on other devices2019-06-28
- No sort by most recently edited, so notes must be dragged to the top manually2019-02-03
- Loses cursor place in notes whenever the phone sleeps2018-10-05
- Every notes sync re-downloads thousands of notes on each open, making it unusable2018-09-26
- Notes become unusable quickly unless user keeps them rigorously organized2018-07-15
- No sort by most recently edited, so notes must be manually moved to top2018-05-09
- Moving notes out of Google Keep to markdown required a painful manual conversion2017-11-09
- Can't copy and paste text into or out of the list2017-04-20
- Web interface is too slow and annoying for adding todos2017-04-20
- Desktop UI is poor and cluttered for note-taking2017-01-17
- Web app takes very long to start, bad for quick note taking2017-01-03
- Notes become practically unusable in the web browser after accumulating years of notes2016-03-15
- Web app loads entire note history, stalling the browser for 20-30 seconds and feeling sluggish2015-11-17
- Web app becomes practically unusable on an iPad with a large amount of data2015-09-30
- Adding a note now requires pressing buttons twice2015-05-28
- Task lists are hard to find among notes and photos2015-05-05
- No tags or folders, so notes end up as an unorganized pile in one window2015-03-06
- Can't find a way to share notes with anyone2014-08-01