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Importing Your Notes from Google Keep

What it does

If you are coming from Google Keep, you can bring your notes across rather than retyping them. The import is one-way and it only ever creates notes in warpSpeed: nothing you already have is changed, replaced or deleted.

It is not an ongoing connection. Unlike your email or calendar, Keep is not synced. You export your notes once, upload the file, and what arrives is yours to edit in warpSpeed from then on.

Before you start: get your notes out of Google

Google does not let apps read Keep directly, so you export your notes yourself using Google Takeout.

  1. In warpSpeed, go to User Centre → Integrated services and tap Google Keep. The import screen explains the steps and has an Open Google Takeout button.
  2. At takeout.google.com, tap Deselect all at the top of the product list. Takeout starts with every Google product ticked, and leaving them all on gives you an enormous archive full of things you do not want.
  3. Scroll down and tick only Keep.
  4. Choose Send download link by email and .zip as the file type.
  5. Request the export.

Then wait, and do not sit on the screen. Google emails you when the archive is ready. A small library can be minutes; a large one can be several hours; a very large account occasionally takes a day or more. Nothing is happening in warpSpeed during this time, so close the app and come back when the email arrives.

When it does, download the .zip to the device you use warpSpeed on. You need the file on the phone or tablet you are importing from.

Running the import

  1. Go back to User Centre → Integrated services → Google Keep.
  2. Tap Choose file and pick the .zip you downloaded. The file appears with its size, and a Change link if you picked the wrong one.
  3. Optionally set Maximum notes to import. Leave it empty to import everything. If you want to try a small batch first, put a number here: it accepts a whole number from 1 to 5000.
  4. Tap Start import.
  5. The screen shows the file name and "Importing your Google Keep notes" while it works. Large exports take a minute or so. There is a Cancel button if you change your mind.
  6. When it finishes you land on the results screen. See Understanding Your Google Keep Import Results.

Which file to upload

  • The .zip from Takeout is the one to use. It carries your notes and their attachments together.
  • A .json file works too, if you have already pulled one out of the archive yourself. It imports the note text but no attachments.
  • Maximum file size either way is 100 MB.

If you pick something else you are told straight away: "Only .zip or .json files are supported.", "File exceeds the 100 MB limit." or "File is empty."

What comes across

Note text, titles and timestamps are imported in every case. From the .zip, images and audio attached to a note come too.

Several things you set in Keep carry over rather than being flattened:

  • Labels become tags in warpSpeed, so the way you organised Keep survives the move.
  • Note colours are kept.
  • Pinned notes stay pinned.
  • Archived notes arrive archived, rather than landing in your main list.

Tips & shortcuts

  • Do the Takeout export first and start it early. It is the slow part, and it happens entirely on Google's side.
  • Import the .zip rather than extracting a .json from it. The only thing you gain by extracting is losing your attachments.
  • Trying a Maximum notes value of 10 or 20 first is a cheap way to see how your notes look in warpSpeed before committing the lot.
  • Running the import twice is safe. Notes already brought across are recognised and skipped rather than duplicated, so if you are unsure whether the first run finished, run it again.