Your Chromebook will lose this feature in February – here’s what you need to do

Google Keep is a great tool for jotting down quick thoughts or taking notes in school where a full document would likely be too much for the job. I have a little series planned for you all on ways that you can use and get the most out of Keep in your daily life. Today, I wanted to let you know about a feature related to Keep that’s disappearing from your Chromebook in the near future – lock screen note-taking.

Being able to open a quick note and draw in keep without unlocking your Chromebook was a pretty sweet feature, but I don’t really know many people who actually used it. Because Chrome apps are going away in February of 2021 as Google transitions them to the web, and because this feature is native to the Keep Chrome app that comes pre-installed on your Chromebook, it is sadly going away with it. You will also no longer be able to use this version of Keep offline, though if you have the Google Play version of Keep installed you will still be able to use your notes offline. If you’re on Chrome 86, you will be prompted with a notice at the top of the app that says “Keep will be moving from the Chrome app to your browser soon: update to keep.google.com. Learn more.”

This is hardly surprising as the web has become pretty powerful and extremely capable of handling most tasks over the past few years. I believe that someday, because of this shift, Google will turn Keep on the web into a progressive web application, granting it the ability to work offline, even though it is just a website. Google services like Docs, Sheets, and Slides can already this and it’s slowly becoming more popular with third-party web developers too. To be clear, there’s currently no plan to do, and there’s also zero mention of lock screen note-taking being added to the Keep web app if were even somehow possible.

If you’re still using the Google Keep Chrome app that came with your Chromebook, uninstall it. To change over to the Keep web app, you’ll need to visit it on the web and turn it into a shortcut. Don’t worry, all of your notes are stored in the cloud and will be immediately available to you again in a moment. Just follow the steps below and you’ll be back up and running in no time. I’ve even included a screenshot of the process to make things easier. Let us know in the comments if you actually took notes on your lock screen and if you’ll be sad to see this feature go in February.

1. visit https://keep.google.com
2. At the top right of the web browser, click the three vertical dots (the ‘more’ menu)
3. Three-quarters of the way down the menu, you’ll see ‘More tools’ – click that
4. Move your mouse over to the new menu that’s popped up to the left of it and click ‘Create Shortcut…’
5. You’ll see a dialog box appear at the top center of your screen. Check the box that says ‘open as window’ and click the blue ‘Create’ button.
6. That’s it! You’ll see the newly created Google Keep icon on your Chromebook shelf at the bottom and you can continue to access your notes! Enjoy!