Keep It 2.1 is now available for Mac, iPad and iPhone. This version is updated for macOS Ventura, adds Find & Replace on iOS and iPadOS 16, and follows up on the new features added in Keep It 2.0 to bring improvements to toolbars and format bars on Mac, Compact Mode, the Share extension on iPad and iPhone, note styles, Reader mode, Quick Look and Quick Open, Shortcuts, AppleScript, and more.
Notes & Text Editing
When finding text in notes and other editable text files on iOS 16 and iPadOS 16, tap the magnifying glass icon and choose Find & Replace from the menu shown. Here you can also choose to match whole words and to match case sensitively.
On macOS Ventura, clicking the color button in the format bar for notes and rich text documents will show a popover for quickly accessing colors — the full color palette can be shown by clicking Show Colors.
It’s now possible to change whether heading and custom note styles are underlined, and custom styles can also be set to be struck through — it was always possible to save custom styles from selected text with underline and strikethrough attributes, but not to change those once saved. In addition, these attributes are now shown in the preview and notes dropdown menu in the format bar on Mac (they were already shown in the new format view on iOS).
Web Pages & PDFs
On macOS Ventura, iOS 16 and iPadOS 16.1, text in scanned PDFs can now be selected, highlighted, copied and found on the page in languages and on devices that support Live Text.
When finding text in PDFs and web pages on iOS and iPadOS 16, tap the magnifying glass icon to choose options to match whole words and to match case sensitively.
Whether or not a web page was viewed in reader mode will now be remembered and restored the next time the web page is viewed — this applies across devices.
Format Bars & Toolbars
On macOS, format bars (shown above the preview) will now show an overflow item when the buttons will not fit the available width, and it’s now possible to show toolbars either as just icons (as in all prior versions of Keep It) or as icon and text.
Items
On iOS and iPadOS 16, tap the current item’s name in the navigation bar to see options to change its name, export, and print the item.
When multiple items are selected on iOS and iPadOS 16, tapping and holding (or right-clicking) will now show a context menu appropriate for all of the selected items.
When changing how items are sorted on Mac, the sort direction (whether ascending / descending, or newest / oldest first) will be preserved.
Imports
On iPad and iPhone both the Import view and the Share extension can now filter the destination list or item. Also on iPad and iPhone, if you attempt to add a bookmarks HTML file, such as the kind exported by a web browser, Keep It will offer to import each of those bookmarks as web links. Keep It will preserve the folder structure and tags in the bookmarks file.
Automation
In Shortcuts, the “Find Keep It Items” action can now match items with highlighted text or checklists, and the highlighted text, and completed and outstanding checklist items can be accessed in both Shortcuts on Mac, iOS and iPadOS, and AppleScript on Mac, and there are improvements for adding text to Keep It using Automator or AppleScript on Mac.
And More…
Quick Look and Quick Open no longer match against the exact order of the words typed, making the search more flexible. Set a color when creating folders and bundles. It’s now easier to navigate between items in Compact Mode on Mac. Sound files now show a scrubber for going to a particular time. Markdown source can be printed with syntax highlighting on iOS. Keep It supports the new Share sheet capabilities on macOS Ventura and on iOS and iPadOS 16.
Keep It 2.0 is now available. This major new version adds Finder integration on Mac, Quick Open, Quick File, minimal web pages, the ability to reorder lists in the sidebar, a redesigned items list with favorites at the top, a streamlined UI for editing and viewing items on iPad and iPhone, redesigned text formatting controls on iPad and iPhone, instant search suggestions, improved PDF viewing and Markdown previews, improved linking between items, the ability to duplicate items, and much greater consistency between Mac and iOS.
Finder Integration
On Mac, Keep It can now be shown as a separate location in the Finder’s sidebar, Go menu, and in standard Open and Save panels, making Keep It’s files easily accessible to other apps. Previously Keep It could expose its folders in the Finder and allow files to be added, opened and tagged there, but little else. With Finder integration, it’s now possible to do everything you normally can with files and folders, and see those changes reflected in the app.
When Keep It is using iCloud, Finder integration also makes it possible for files to no longer be stored on your Mac to save space, while still appearing in the Finder, searchable by Spotlight, and backed up with Time Machine. When an app needs to access a file it will be downloaded automatically. Similarly, the system can now remove downloads when space is tight, or if the files haven’t been accessed in a while. By default Keep It always downloads items and doesn’t allow them to be removed, but this can be changed in its Advanced preferences when Finder integration is in use.
Finder integration will be enabled by default for new Keep It libraries; people upgrading from Keep It 1.x will be offered to enable Finder integration when first using Keep It 2.
Enabling Finder integration moves the files to a location managed by the system, and so it may break existing workflows that rely on Keep It’s files being in the legacy default location, and cannot be used with custom library locations. However, Finder integration solves issues such as the Preview app refusing to save the changes to files stored in Keep It 1.x’s default location — a common reason for using a custom location in the first place. That, along with the ability to offload content to iCloud to save space could mean a custom location is no longer necessary.
Keep It will continue to support the legacy default location and custom locations, and Finder integration can be enabled or disabled at any time.
Quick Open and Quick File
Quick Open and Quick File provide keyboard-driven ways to quickly open lists and items, and file items, on both Mac and iPad.
Press ⇧⌘O to show Quick Open on Mac or on iPad with a hardware keyboard. Quick Open allows you to open any item or list by typing its name. Select from the results using the up / down arrow keys, and confirm with the Return key. Quick Open can be customized to include both lists and items, or only items or lists.
Press ^⌥⌘F to show Quick File on Mac or an iPad with a hardware keyboard, which allows you to file the selected items in any folder or bundle in the same way, and also conveniently navigate the hierarchy using the arrow keys.
On Mac, Quick File can also be accessed from an optional toolbar item, and will be shown when choosing Add To Bundle or Move to Folder while multiple items are selected. On iPad and iPhone, the Move to Folder, Add to Bundle, and Change Label sheets are now searchable.
Lists
It’s now possible to manually reorder folders, bundles and nested saved searches in the sidebar, and this ordering will be used everywhere those lists are shown.
Nested bundles, folders and saved searches whose view settings have not been customized will now inherit their parent folder’s settings, if customized, rather than always inherit their settings from All Items.
Items List
The items list has been redesigned to make more use of the available space in both list and icon view.
In List view, the name and summary wrap for up to four lines with the thumbnail alongside both, which allows for a larger thumbnail. Below the name and summary you can see file information such as the date, size, iCloud status, and the container bundle or folder of the item if appropriate, all on a single line.
Icon view now shows thumbnails for documents using as much of the available width as possible, rather than the full height of the thumbnail; images and file icons for items without thumbnails are still shown in full.
In either view, favorite items can now be shown at the top of the list, items can now be duplicated, and the iCloud status icon is now more specific, indicating whether an item is pending an upload or download.
Search
It is now possible to find items with checklists, and notes, rich text documents or PDFs with highlighted text, including specific terms in that text.
When focus moves to the search field, a number of suggestions are shown immediately, allowing you to quickly find items with checklists, highlighted text, attachments, shared items, etc. On Mac, Ctrl-clicking or right-clicking suggestions will show alternatives; on iPhone or iPad, show alternatives with a long press.
To match Keep It for iPad and iPhone, search suggestions on Mac are now shown with icons, and search tokens are now similarly shown as icon and text.
The saved search editor on iPad and iPhone has been redesigned to work similarly to Mac, with pop-up buttons and similar rules grouped together.
Streamlined UI on iPad and iPhone
Editors and previews on iPad and iPhone now include an action button that shows a menu. This makes it quicker to access features that work directly on the file, and removes clutter from the Share sheet.
Similarly, there is now an action button above the Lists view where you can control how lists are sorted, show or hide the Unfiled and No Label groups, and change when folders should show all items in nested folders and bundles.
Notes and Text Editing
On iPad and iPhone, the format view has been redesigned to show note styles, lists, colors, and other formatting controls in one place. It’s now also possible to change line and paragraph spacing in the format view.
On Mac, whether you’re editing notes, rich text files, Markdown files or plain text files, the word count will hover over the text (as on iOS), rather than in the format bar. The width of the text editing area is now automatically constrained when editor windows are made full screen.
It’s now possible to insert a link to another item in Keep It by searching for it, without needing to copy and paste the link, or drag and drop the item into the text.
Notes and editable text items that link to the current item are now shown in the Show In menu on Mac and iPad, and the Where line in the Info view on Mac, iPad and iPhone — choose one of the related items to navigate to it.
Choose whether to show small, medium, or large margins when editing notes, rich text and Markdown documents. Edit the alignment, line and paragraph spacing of built-in and custom note styles.
Empty rich text, plain text or Markdown files created from stationery will now be automatically deleted if they haven’t been renamed when you close the editing window or navigate away from them, the same as empty Keep It notes.
Web Links
Web pages can now be viewed in Reader mode, and web pages can now be automatically saved for offline in a minimal format like Reader mode, when possible. Web links that have either been saved in a minimal format, or can be viewed in Reader mode, can now also be converted to editable notes. When hovering over a link on a web page on Mac, the URL will be shown.
PDFs
When viewing a standalone PDF you can now show a list of thumbnails to quickly navigate the document, and use those thumbnails to rearrange, remove or rotate pages. And, if the PDF includes one, an outline of the document’s contents can also be shown.
And More…
Markdown previews can now include task lists. Keep It’s tags now integrate with the Files app on iPad and iPhone. Both apps also include numerous small tweaks and improvements to make Keep It more polished and consistent across Mac, iOS and iPadOS while honouring each platform’s unique conventions. For a full list of changes see the release notes:
Keep It for Mac is available for $59.99 directly from Reinvented Software or the Mac App Store, and both offer a free trial. Existing Keep It 1.x customers can upgrade for $29.99, unless they purchased Keep It 1.x in the 12 months before Keep It 2.0 went on sale, in which case the upgrade is free. Alternatively, Keep It for Mac is also available with yearly or monthly subscriptions at $19.99/year or $2.49/month only from the Mac App Store. Keep It for Mac users who do not wish to upgrade can continue to use Keep It 1.11.16 by downloading it from this site. Keep It for Mac requires macOS 11.3 or later.
Keep It for iPad and iPhone is available separately from the App Store with a choice of yearly or monthly subscriptions at $11.99/year or $1.49/month. Keep It for iPad and iPhone requires iOS 15 or later.
Keep It for Mac 1.11.5 adds support for the Shortcuts app introduced in macOS Monterey. The actions Keep It provides to the Shortcuts app are identical to those that have been included with Keep It for iPad and iPhone since version 1.7 on iOS 13, and therefore the same shortcuts can be used on both Mac and iOS.
Keep It provides the following actions to the Shortcuts app. In most cases, expanding the action will show additional options, and return either a Keep It item or list — you can use the properties of those in further actions.
Add Files to Keep It: Adds the specified files. Optionally specify a destination, tags, and whether to convert text files to notes. Returns the created items.
Add List to Keep It: Add a folder or bundle. Returns the folder or bundle.
Add Text to Keep It: Creates a new item from the text. Optionally specify a destination, format, style for the next (notes only), and tags. Returns the new item.
Add Web Link to Keep It: Adds a web link. Optionally set a name for the saved web link, choose whether to save it for offline and in what format, the destination and tags. Returns the new item.
Append Text to Keep It Item: Append text to a note or editable text item in Keep It. For notes, choose the style of the text to add. Returns the item.
Attach Files to Keep It Item: Attach one or more files to a note or editable text item. Returns the item.
Find Keep It Bundles: Find bundles by name and / or parent. Returns the bundles.
Find Keep It Folders: Find folders by name and / or parent. Returns the folders.
Find Keep It Items: Find items by name, filename, comments, source, tags, the presence of attachments, kind, list, label, date added / created / modified, or a range of dates.
Find Keep It Labels: Find Keep It labels by name.
Get Keep It Item: Get a specific Keep It item, optionally by its item link or identifier. Useful for integrating shortcuts with other automation methods such as AppleScript or x-callback-urls.
Get Keep It Label: Get a specific Keep It label, optionally by its identifier or URL. Useful for integrating shortcuts with other automation methods such as AppleScript or x-callback-urls.
Get Keep It List: Get a specific Keep It list, optionally by its identifier or URL. Useful for integrating shortcuts with other automation methods such as AppleScript or x-callback-urls.
Get Text Content from Keep It Item: Gets the plain text content of any note or editable text item in Keep It.
Open Item in Keep It: Opens the specified item in Keep It.
Open Keep It List: Opens the specified list in Keep It.
Remove Keep It Item: Removes the specified Keep It item either from the library (and to Deleted Items), or from the specified bundle.
Set Properties on Keep It Item: Set properties such as name comments, source URL, favorite, tags, bundles, folder, or label on an item.
Set Properties on Keep It List: Set properties such as name, parent, or favorite on a list.
Keep It for Mac also provides support for Automator, AppleScript and x-callback-urls for cases where Shortcuts cannot be used.
Keep It 1.11 is now available for Mac, iPad and iPhone. On iOS 15, Keep It includes Text From Camera support, and improved windows and keyboard navigation on iPadOS 15. There are also improvements for notes, tags, file imports, the Share extension, and Markdown previews.
iOS 15
On supported iPhone and iPad models, you can use the camera to add text to notes, rich and plain text files, and Markdown documents. Drag and drop is now possible between apps on iPhone on iOS 15, which allows you to drag things to and from Keep It.
iPadOS 15
On iPad, items opened in new windows now open prominently, in the centre of the screen, and it’s possible to open items in new windows by pinching to zoom on the items list.Key commands have been grouped into categories such as File, Edit and View, and it’s now possible to navigate the UI with the tab and arrow keys.
When using Dark Mode, Keep It can now adapt custom text colors in the note to make them more readable. Previously notes with white backgrounds and black text were displayed so that both background and text were appropriate for Dark Mode, but other colors would remain unchanged. This could mean that text pasted from a web page (which rarely use pure black text) would appear unreadable unless changed. As before, notes with custom background colors will be shown exactly the same in both light and dark modes.
The first page of an attached PDF can now be shown inline on iPad and iPhone, but it’s still possible to show attached PDFs as an icon by tapping and holding on the preview.
Convert to Note
Standalone PDFs and images can be converted to an attachment on a new note by choosing Convert To Note from the PDF or Image menu on Mac, or by choosing Convert To Note in the Activity sheet on iPad and iPhone. The converted note will retain all the original tags, comments, creation date, etc of the original file, and on Mac the original image or PDF file will be moved to the system Trash.
Tags
Keep It can now be set to use hashtags in notes, rich text, plain text, and Markdown documents. When enabled, tags in the text will be used as the item’s tags in Keep It with the leading # removed and underscores replaced with spaces. Hashtags can be clicked / tapped to filter for all items that contain that tag.
On Mac, when using the tag filter, the window subtitle (or status bar on Catalina) shows how many items have been found, as the app already did when searching.
Imports
Keep It for Mac can now import web links from bookmarks HTML files, such as those exported by a web browser. Tags and the folder structure of the bookmarks will be preserved.
The Share extension now shows recent items in the Where pop-up when adding links or files to Keep It, without you needing to choose “New Note” first. There is now a setting in Import preferences on Mac or Settings on iOS to include HTML and plain text files when converting imported files to notes.
And More…
On Mac, when moving items to a folder, and an item exists with the same name, it’s now possible to choose to skip all, rather than have to deal with each conflict individually. You can now set custom HTML for the <head> section of Markdown previews. The maximum depth of folders on iCloud has been removed, thanks to improvements in iCloud. See the release notes for a full list of changes:
Keep It for Mac is also available from the Mac App Store, offers a free trial and a choice of one-time purchase for all Keep It 1.x releases for $49.99, or an upgrade from Together 3 for $24.99 (or free if Together 3 was purchased in its final 6 months on sale). Alternatively, choose from yearly or monthly subscriptions at $19.99/year or $2.49/month.
Keep It for iPad and iPhone is available separately from the App Store with a choice of yearly or monthly subscriptions at $9.99/year or $1.49/month.
Keep It 1.10 is now available. This version improves searches, adding the ability to search for items by their attachments and file size, improves the Share extension and Import view, links in notes, and more.
Search
It’s now possible to search for items by their attachments, including their presence, by name, or by kind. Saved searches can now match shared items, and items based on their file size, and when searching for items, it’s now also possible to find items that are not of a particular kind. When searching on macOS Big Sur, the number of results will always be shown below the window title.
Imports
On Mac, the Where pop-up in the Share extension and Import view now shows folders and bundles hierarchically, and on both Mac and iOS it’s now possible to set the Default Import Destination to the last-used list when the Share extension or Import view is shown.
And More
It’s now possible to choose a different format to the default when saving an existing web link for offline. List colors are now shown in more places on iOS, such as the Favorites view and Where view. There is now an option to show links in notes as underlined, and PDFs attached to rich text files in place by default on Mac. iCloud reliability has been improved for shared items and folders. See the release notes for a full list of changes:
Keep It for Mac is also available from the Mac App Store, offers a free trial and a choice of one-time purchase for all Keep It 1.x releases for $49.99, or an upgrade from Together 3 for $24.99 (or free if Together 3 was purchased in its final 6 months on sale). Alternatively, choose from yearly or monthly subscriptions at $19.99/year or $2.49/month.
Keep It for iPad and iPhone is available separately from the App Store with a choice of yearly or monthly subscriptions at $9.99/year or $1.49/month.
