Google Keep
Will Stapley explains how Keep lets him store (and search) all his receipts
How often do you take a photo of a piece of text with the intention of reading it later? Whether it’s a notice in a shop window, a newspaper article or a list of instructions, next time try using Google Keep instead of your phone’s camera app (download Keep for Android or IOS at www.google.
com/keep). Not only will this mean those images won’t clutter your phone’s photo gallery, but they’ll also be much easier to find at a later date.
I primarily use Keep to store digital copies of my receipts. Capturing them is easy enough. I open Keep, tap the photo button at the bottom (see screenshot right), then select ‘Take photo’ and point my phone at the receipt. What’s really impressive is that Keep performs optical character recognition ( OCR) to add all text on the receipt to its search index. This means I can hunt down any receipt simply by entering a keyword such as the name of the item or the shop where I purchased it.
Of course, I try to store the original paper receipts too, but if I can’t find one when needed I’m reasonably sure a shop would take the digital copy as proof of purchase. If nothing else, it would help me track down the purchase on my credit-card statement.
Keep also lets me copy text from my photos, which is particularly useful when I need to use a Royal Mail tracking number to check whether a package has been delivered. I first find the relevant photo, then select it by tapping it once. Then I tap the Edit button (small pen icon, top right), followed by the three vertical dots and finally ‘Grab image text’ (see screenshot above right). All text in the photo then appears in the note’s description below the image, which I can then copy to my clipboard.
You can add multiple items to a single note, but in my experience this is best avoided because it makes them much harder to manage. For example, when
I first started using Keep, I created a single note for all my receipts. However, I soon discovered this made it harder to add a new receipt (I first had to find the Receipts note, then upload the new photo) and it was more difficult to search them. Searching for a specific receipt would simply return the general Receipts note, leaving me to sift through all the receipt photos to find the one I wanted.
Also, by tapping the microphone button when creating a new note,
I can use it like an old-fashioned dictaphone. Keep transcribes spoken words with impressive accuracy, meaning I can even search those spoken notes using keywords. It’s perfect for recording spontaneous ideas - whether work-related or homeimprovement plans that will never see the light of day.