How to export Google Keep notes and move them to Barside

Google Keep is great for quick notes and lists on a phone, but its notes live in your Google account. Google Takeout exports them as a ZIP file, and Barside turns that ZIP into notes on your computer, with checklists, labels, links and pictures. This guide shows each step and what changes.

Before you start

Barside is a free desktop app for Windows, Linux and Mac. Notes live in a library on your own computer, with no account. Compared with Keep, Barside notes can be long documents with headings, tables, boards and charts, and checklists become real tasks with due dates, reminders and a task board.

Barside has no phone app. If you capture most notes on your phone, you can keep Keep for that and move notes to Barside in batches.

Step 1: Export Keep with Google Takeout

Google's help page lists what a Keep export includes: note content (text and list items), attachments (voice recordings, drawings and images), note color, pinned and archived state, collaborators, and your list of labels.

1. Go to Google Takeout while signed in to your Google account. The products you use are selected already.
2. Uncheck everything except Keep.
3. Choose Next step.
4. Pick a delivery method, such as Send download link via email or Add to Drive.
5. Choose Zip as the file type.
6. Choose the archive size; small accounts fit in one file.
7. Choose Create export.

When Google's email arrives, download the ZIP. Google says the archive expires in about 7 days, and that work or school accounts may not be able to download some data.

Step 2: Import the ZIP into Barside

1. Open Settings & backups → Notes from other apps → Import next to Import notes, or type import in the search bar.
2. Find Google Keep and choose Choose ZIP.
3. Pick the Takeout ZIP.
4. Barside shows Ready to import: the number of notes and pictures and things to know.
5. Under Import into, keep A new workspace (From Google Keep) or choose an existing one.
6. Choose Import, then Open workspace.

What comes along, and what changes

Every checklist item becomes a task you can give a due date and a reminder. They all show on the task board, grouped by when they are due.

If something looks wrong

• Barside says the file is not a Keep export. You may have picked the TGZ format, or an archive with other Google products. Export again with only Keep and the Zip file type.
• Some notes are missing. Notes in the trash are left out by design, and Takeout exports only what has not been deleted. Check Keep's archive section too: archived notes are included in the export.
• Very many small notes. Keep users often have hundreds of short notes. Import them into one workspace, then use search to gather related notes, or ask the AI assistant to merge them, with the AI account you connect.

Turning quick notes into a system

Keep is built for quick capture; Barside is built for keeping and using what you capture. After the move:

• Merge related notes. Five shopping lists can become one note with a checklist per store.
• Link ideas with [[ and see them on the note graph.
• Pin what matters to the top of a workspace.
• Start from templates in the template gallery: a to-do list, a meal planner, a reading list.
• Capture on the computer from anywhere with the search bar and hotkeys, and copy text from the screen with OCR.

Keep and Barside, side by side

Google Keep is free, fast on phones, shares lists with family and syncs everywhere through your Google account. Barside keeps your library on your computer, works offline, and grows with you: long notes, tables, boards, a calendar, reading, recordings and AI features that use your own AI account. It has no phone app. For other options, see the best note-taking apps, and for how Barside keeps your data, the local-first app guide.