Google Keep allows you to jot down notes from your Android tablet’s lock screen

Android tablets can be great productivity tools when you use a robust note-taking app like Google Keep. Pairing a stylus to your tablet further improves Keep’s note-taking capabilities by allowing you to draw notes using a pen instead of your finger.

However, to access Keep’s drawing mode, you must unlock your tablet, tap the Keep home screen icon, and tap the paintbrush icon. This three-step process makes jotting down notes a hassle in no time. That’s why Google introduced a new feature in Android 14 that makes it easy to launch note-taking apps like Keep directly from your lock screen.

shortcuts for taking notes

As detailed previously, one of the key features of Android 14 is the ability to customize the shortcuts that appear on your lock screen. However, this feature is disabled on Pixel tablets. Google’s tablets have a single shortcut on the bottom left of the lock screen that launches Android’s smart home “device control” interface. When you enable force enable Notes role However, if you set it up on the Android Developer Options page, a second shortcut will appear at the bottom right of the lock screen. This is his 9th hidden lock screen shortcut for Android. note-taking.

To enable force enable Notes role However, this setting alone is not enough to make this memo shortcut actually work. First, you need to set Google Keep as your default notes app on Android. Settings > Apps > Default apps. This has been possible since version 5.23.482.04 of the Keep app released in December.

However, at the time, launching Google Keep from a lock screen shortcut would simply display a message that Keep needs to be updated. Recently, this message was updated to “Coming Soon”, suggesting the feature is almost ready for release. In fact, Keep’s lock screen note-taking feature is already mostly functional, and with a little tweaking we were able to partially enable the experience.

In the video embedded above, tipster Anh on Discord long-presses the note-taking shortcut on his Pixel Tablet’s lock screen. This will launch Google Keep in drawing mode and display the message “Create a Keep drawing when your device is locked.” Our tipster can use the stylus to draw on the Keep, but the device remains locked even after the drawing is complete.

Starting Keep from your lock screen makes it much easier to quickly jot down notes. This is all thanks to Android 14’s new note-taking lock screen shortcut. But Keep isn’t the only note-taking app that can benefit from this new Android 14 feature. Because you can set a third-party note-taking app as your default note-taking app on Android as long as it meets the following requirements:

More than just a lock screen shortcut

Becoming your default Notes app has several benefits beyond being able to launch it from the lock screen. For example, you can also launch the default Notes app when you press the tail button on supported styluses. This will launch your app in a floating bubble that hovers above the app currently on screen.

Another benefit is that the default Notes app now has access to Android 14’s new Capture Content for Notes API. This API allows the default Notes app to insert a screenshot of the current page into a note. Only the default Notes app has access to this API, which prevents other apps from saving screenshots of what you’re looking at at any time.

Because of the roundabout way we enabled this feature, we can’t press the tail button on the stylus or insert a screenshot into a note to show off the experience of launching Keep inside a floating bubble. However, you can show what the experience is like by displaying these features in third-party apps that have been updated to fully support Android 14’s note-taking API.

As you can see in the video embedded above, you can open the default Notes app in a floating bubble on Google Chrome. Now you can insert a screenshot of the current screen into your notes. On Android, you can also crop the screenshot before passing it to Notes. Keep’s UI is clearly different from this third-party app, but the overall flow should remain the same.

When will this item go on sale?

I’m sure you’re wondering, “When will it be released?” Unfortunately, I don’t actually know. Given that this feature is mostly working, we may only have a few days or weeks left until release. Maybe it will launch with his next Pixel feature drop in March. However, I think it’s likely that Google will release this with Android 15 later this year. The reason is that the default Notes app role is disabled by default and you need to toggle a setting in Developer Options to enable it. My guess is that Google will push a change in his future Android builds to enable this role by default so that users no longer have to dive into developer options to enable this role. Sho.

Google may also be waiting until it’s ready to release a first-party stylus accessory for the Pixel Tablet. We’ve seen evidence that it’s been in development for quite some time, but it hasn’t been released yet. It could be delayed until the release of the rumored Pixel Tablet 2, which could be a more productivity-focused device. However, there’s no evidence that Google will do this, and it’s possible that Google will release this feature without much fanfare, similar to Gboard’s stylus handwriting feature.

in any case, Android permissions We will continue to monitor this feature closely and will notify you when it is released.

Thanks to Rodrigo on Telegram for sharing how to partially enable this feature and Anh on Discord for recording a video of this feature on a Pixel tablet.