a google keep alternative without the google account

how the two behave

google keep is a board of cards. quick notes, checklists, labels, colours and reminders, tied to a google account and to the rest of google. it is fast to write into, and the board grows until the search box is the only way back in.

shizumu opens on an empty page and asks nothing. you write, and when a line turns out to matter, you pin it. a pin is a pointer back into the page where you were thinking, not another card in the pile. the pins view, in the picture above, is where those come together.

who it fits, and who it doesn't

if you live on reminders, location alerts and a shared grocery list, keep does that well, and you should leave those there. shizumu is a place to write, not to be nudged. it fits the person whose keep became a few hundred cards of half-thoughts, and who wants the thinking to go somewhere it can be found again.

platforms and sync

shizumu runs on linux (flathub, x86_64 and arm64) and windows as a real desktop app, not a browser tab. android is a closed test on google play: ask to join. mac is a beta download and iphone is a testflight beta.

sync is optional and end-to-end encrypted. the relay holds what it cannot read, and neither can we. hosted sync is free on two devices, and a relay you run yourself is free on every device: pricing. a sentence you type on your phone is on your desk the next time you sit down. what the relay can and cannot see is written down in the threat model and how sync is encrypted.

people looking for apps like google keep that are free often mean free of the account as much as free of charge. both hold here: the app is free, the code is open source (apache-2.0 on the client, agpl-3.0-or-later on the relay), and sync starts from a recovery phrase on your device rather than a profile.

moving over

google takeout exports your keep notes, so the move is simple: copy the notes you still use and paste them onto a page. a markdown list comes in as a list, a checklist as tasks. labels and reminders stay with google. on the way out, shizumu writes every page as a markdown file into a folder you choose, plus a full backup of the database.

what a page does instead

a new page starts empty. you write to think and pin what matters. a trail is for a project, not a day: a book, a job search, anything you'll come back to tomorrow. choose a trail and the page picks up context: the pins you already kept there, already on the page. everything else lives in memory: search it, or open one trail, one date, pages, or pins.

quick notes still have to be quick. the page opens straight into the writing, with no dialog in the way, and / gives a checklist, a table or a block of code when a card would not have held it.

app that handles checklists like google keep?

type / on any line and choose tasks. the line becomes a checklist that you tick off from the keyboard, with no card to open first. the same key brings in tables, code, decisions, recipes, charts and images, so a list can sit right beside the paragraph that explains it.

keep finds a list by scrolling the board. here a list belongs to a page, and a page belongs to a trail. put a job search or a book on its trail, and its tasks sit next to its writing. link one page to another by typing @ and its name, and each page lists the pages that link to it. a packing list for a trip links to the page where you planned the trip, and the plan links back.

when you want an old checklist, full-text search runs over every page, newest first, so it comes back without you filing it anywhere. you can also open a page and find it by date or trail. a long project can be one continuous document with each day marked, and ctrl+k jumps between days, so the list you started on monday is a keystroke away on friday.

try before you move

the app runs in your browser with a few weeks of writing already in it: try it. also worth a look: a simplenote alternative and journal app for android.