Google Cursive users can now manually rename notes and enable “Scroll lock” to prevent zooming

Artificial intelligence and machine learning have all sorts of incredible applications across Google’s apps and services. One such instance is text automatically being grabbed from the first line of a Google Doc in order to magically name the file if a user does not specify one ahead of time. Google’s new notetaking app Cursive did this as well until recently.

While this was an interesting feature for the fledgling digital bullet journal alternative, it actually turned out to be one of the things I disliked the most. If I’m creating a bunch of notes, I would prefer to rename them to something more identifiable. Add to that the fact that the progressive web app also had trouble accurately grabbing text, so note names ended up looking very strange, and you can see why it’s not really ideal for most people – especially those coming from Google Keep.

That problem has been solved though, as you can now tap the three dots “more” menu on any note and choose a “Rename” option to input your own text. Although I’m not sure when this feature update rolled out as web apps are updated automatically since they require no download, I’m super glad to see it introduced.

There’s something else too – Cursive just received something pretty indispensable for those of us jotting notes down on a Chromebook with terrible palm rejection. Tapping the three dots menu at the top-right of an open and active note will reveal a new “Scroll Lock” option! This means that you can lock the page in place so you won’t zoom or pan around with your wrist as you naturally rest it on the screen.

Again, I’m not sure how long ago this was added either, but it certainly wasn’t present when I last used the site to write out some game design ideas. In all honesty, if Google Keep adopted a scroll lock option such as this, it would be so much more worth using for sketching and notetaking, but alas, it’s busy receiving its markdown support updates. Hopefully, we’ll get this and more Cursive features in Keep in the future. My ultimate desire is to see Keep gobble up Cursive entirely and gain all of its tools and awesomeness, especially turning labels into journal icons that scroll horizontally across the top.