Keep It 1.4

June 22nd, 2018 by Steve Harris

Keep It 1.4 is available today for Mac, iPad and iPhone. Starting with this version Keep It can now encrypt items, has dedicated Markdown editors with syntax highlighting and preview, can show word counts for notes and other editable text documents, and copy clickable links to lists. On Mac, Keep It can now open anything in a window, show margins for any editable text document opened in its own window, and navigate the history of viewed items.

This is the biggest Keep It update so far, particularly for the Mac, and the focus is on making Keep It a great place to edit and view notes, documents, images, video clips and more.

Markdown Editor

Keep It now has a dedicated Markdown editor on both Mac and iOS. This includes syntax highlighting, editing assistance for things such as headings, emphasis, links, images and lists and a choice of styles for both editor and preview.

Markdown Editor in Keep It for Mac

Keep It uses the same syntax highlighting engine as MacDown, so any editor style that can be used with MacDown can be used with Keep It on both platforms, and creating custom styles is pretty straightforward. Any CSS stylesheet will work for the preview.

Markdown editor in Keep It for iPhone

Keep It’s aim is to present Markdown files as something more than just plain text, and provide the fundamentals. It’s completely fine to open Markdown files in a dedicated editor should you need more than Keep it offers, and similarly if you want a live-updating preview, I would recommend Marked 2 by Brett Terpstra.

Encrypt Items

Individual items can now be encrypted with a password, and temporarily viewed with the password, Face ID or Touch ID (including on MacBook Pro with Touch Bar). Encrypt items with the Item > Encrypt menu item or optional toolbar button on Mac. On iOS, tap the activity button and tap Encrypt.

Keep It for Mac will re-encrypt previously encrypted files in the new format when importing Together libraries, and both Keep It for Mac and Keep It for iOS will offer to decrypt files whenever you export them.

Keep It strives to use standard file formats whenever possible. Encrypted files in Keep It are Zip files that use AES-256 encryption and can also be opened in apps that support that format, such as The Unarchiver.

Navigation History on Mac

Keep It for Mac can now navigate back and forth between items you’ve viewed. Navigate with the Go > Back and Go > Forward menu items or their key equivalents, using the optional navigation toolbar item, or the Touch Bar.

Open Anything in a Window on Mac

Anything can now be opened in a window (or tab) in Keep It for Mac. By default, items will still open in their original applications, but this can be reversed by holding on the Command key while double-clicking an item, and the default changed in General preferences.

In addition, new items created from stationery will either be opened in a new window or selected in the list, depending on the setting in General preferences.

Margins visible when editing a note in a tab

Show Margins (Mac)

When opening any item with editable text in a separate window or tab on Mac, Keep It can now show margins to constrain the width of the text to aid readability. Drag the margins to set a maximum width, which will be remembered even when the window is temporarily made narrower. This is particularly useful when editing in a tab or full screen.

Word Count

On macOS High Sierra, Keep It for Mac can now show a word count and other statistics such as the number of characters, sentences and paragraphs in notes and rich text files in the format bar. Click the text info button in the format bar to see a popover of statistics and choose what to show in the format bar. Drag the popover to turn it into a floating window.

Keep It for iPad and iPhone can show a word count below the text. Show this by tapping the activity button and choosing Show Word Count. Tapping on the word count will let you choose whether to show the number of characters, words, sentences or paragraphs.

Other Changes

On Mac, there is now a table button in the format bar for notes and rich text documents, and both Mac and iOS have improved previews for video and audio files. Notes can now be exported in a range of formats on iOS, as on Mac.

When importing Mail messages, Keep It can now use the date sent and date received as the creation and modification dates of items on both Mac and iOS.

Copy clickable links to lists using the right-click menu on Mac, or swiping left on the list and tapping the … button on iOS. It’s also possible to copy clickable links to items in the item list in the same way.

See the release notes for Mac and the release notes for iPad and iPhone for a full list of changes.

Pricing & Availability

Keep It 1.4 is a free update for all existing customers.

Keep It for Mac is available for $49.99 directly from Reinvented Software, and Together 3 users can upgrade for $24.99, unless they purchased Together 3 in its final 6 months on sale, in which case the upgrade is free. A 15-day free trial can be downloaded from this site.

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.

Highlights app now exports to Keep It

May 25th, 2018 by Steve Harris

highlightsapp_iconThe latest version of Highlights can export to Keep It.

Highlights is a PDF reader that summarizes for you, extracting highlighted text, notes and images from PDFs into neat summaries that you can share.

See more info and download a free demo at highlightsapp.net. The full version can be downloaded from the Mac App Store.

Keep It Tutorial on ScreenCastsOnline

May 18th, 2018 by Steve Harris

ScreenCastsOnline Logo

ScreenCastsOnline has created a video tutorial for Keep It, in which Allison Sheridan goes through its many features, and shows you how it can help you make sense of all the pieces of information you want to keep track of in your digital life.

Anyone can see a preview of the tutorial. ScreenCastsOnline members can view the full tutorial now, and you can also view the whole video by starting a 10-day free trial, or by downloading the SCO Showcase app and paying a one-time fee.

The full tutorial covers:

  • Purchasing Keep It
  • Basic Layout
  • Importing Files
  • Show in Finder
  • Folders
  • Bundles
  • Saved Searches
  • Deleting Folders
  • Focus on Folders
  • Moving Multiple Items
  • Labels
  • Tags
  • Creating Notes
  • Web Links
  • View Options
  • Sharing
  • Exporting
  • iCloud
  • Keep It Mobile
  • Controlling Downloads
  • Settings
  • Adding Items – iOS
  • Share Sheet
  • View Options – iOS

ScreenCastsOnline is widely acknowledged as one of the most successful and well respected online Mac & iOS video tutorial services, providing top quality video tutorials to Apple Mac and iOS users.

ScreenCastsOnline has a large and comprehensive video library of hundreds of Mac & iOS video tutorials, covering a wide range of topics including macOS, iOS, Pages, Numbers, Keynote, iMovie, Garageband, iTunes and many more of the popular Apple applications, as well as the very best third party software and utilities.

Membership costs as little at $6/month, and provides access to two new video tutorials each week, along with full access to the entire archive, members apps for iPhone, iPad and Apple TV, and a free monthly SCO Magazine.

Keep It Tip: Importing from Mail

May 2nd, 2018 by Steve Harris

Keep It can import and show mail messages that have been saved as individual files. Messages can be dragged to Keep It from Mail on Mac and on iPad, Keep It will show previews for these and index their content so that it can be searched.

Unfortunately, Mail on Mac only allows one message at a time to be dragged to another app, and on macOS High Sierra, a bug prevents Mail from completing the export correctly, which makes it impossible for Keep It to add an imported message to a bundle or label (although dragging to folders or All Items will work).

To get around these things, there is now an “Add Message to Keep It” Automator workflow that can be installed and will appear in the Services menu in Mail:

  • Download AddMessagesToKeepIt.zip
  • Unzip the file
  • Open the “Add Messages to Keep It” workflow file
  • Click Install

Screenshot of Import Workflow

Once installed, to use the workflow:

  • In Mail, select the messages to import
  • Choose Mail > Services > Add Messages to Keep It from the menu

If you wish to set a shortcut key for the service:

  • Choose Mail > Services > Services Preferences from the menu
  • Scroll to “Add Messages to Keep It” (in the General section)
  • Select “Add Messages to Keep It” and click Add Shortcut

If you want to add tags or choose a location when importing:

  • In Keep It choose Keep It > Preferences from the menu
  • Click Import
  • Enable the “Show import view: When importing from other applications” option

These instructions and the download are also available on the Keep It Support page.

Keep It 1.3

March 20th, 2018 by Steve Harris

Keep It 1.3 is now available for both Mac and iOS. This version adds iCloud folder sharing, focus on folders, the ability to edit saved searches and create them for the first time on iOS, add highlights and notes to PDFs, and various other improvements.

Keep It Screenshot

iCloud Shared Folders

Keep It can now share folders with iCloud. Previously Keep It could share individual items, but now any top-level folder can be shared with other Keep It users.

As with individually shared items, the owner’s iCloud storage is used, and there are some caveats: only the items and folders are shared, not tags and labels, and while anyone can add, change and move items and folders, only the owner can remove items and folders, or move existing folders to the shared folder. Shared folders cannot contain saved searches or bundles.

Saved Searches

It’s now possible to create and edit saved searches without using the search field in Keep It for Mac, and Keep It for iPad and iPhone can create and edit saved searches for the very first time. In addition, saved searches can now be nested in the folders they target.

Edit Saved Search

The saved search editors on Mac and iOS provide additional choices that cannot be specified in the search field, such as untagged and unlabelled items, and matching dates in periods of days, months or years.

Focus on Folders

Focused folder in Keep It for iPadFocus on Folders lets you focus on a particular folder and its subfolders in the sidebar on Mac or Lists view on iOS. Any folder with nested folders, bundles or saved searches can be focused, which makes it ideal for focusing on particular projects (including imported Together libraries).

To focus on a folder, double-click the folder on Mac, or swipe right and tap the focus icon on iOS. Focused folders are indicated with a crosshair icon, and a close button next to the name that will restore the full list of folders and bundles.

Annotate PDFs

Keep It can now add highlights in a variety of colors to PDFs, and add notes to those highlights, on both Mac and iOS. On Mac there is also a toolbar shown above PDF files for zooming, navigating and highlighting.

Other Changes

In Keep It for Mac can now include a Where line in the Info view that will show the path of the folder that contains the item (choose View > Info > Where from the menu to see that), along with a button to see the item in any other lists. Keep It for Mac can also show information about an item’s file and edit its dates by choosing Item > Show File Info from the menu.

Where line in Info view

When highlighting text in notes and rich text documents you can now choose from a variety of colors by clicking the arrow next to the highlight button on Mac, or by tapping and holding on the highlight button on iOS.

Keep It for iPad and iPhone now has a setting to download all items in favorite bundles and folders.

For a full list of changes see the release notes for Mac, and the release notes for iPad and iPhone.

Pricing and Availability

Keep It 1.3 is a free update for all existing customers.

Keep It for Mac is available for $49.99 directly from Reinvented Software, and Together 3 users can upgrade for $24.99, unless they purchased Together 3 in its final 6 months on sale, in which case the upgrade is free. A 15-day free trial can be downloaded from this site.

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.