The Keep guide

On the Upload screen, the Scan or photos tab takes your scans and photos. Give the notebook a title, then drag files onto the drop zone or choose them from your photos and files. You can add many at once, or a single multi-page PDF — Keep brings in each PDF page.

Formats

Phone photos (including iPhone HEIC, converted automatically), JPG, PNG, WebP, and PDFs all work. Pages come in the order you add them.

Two-page spreads

If your shots are wide, Keep notices and asks. Tick “these are two-page spreads” and it splits each one down the middle into two pages as it uploads. (More on spreads in splitting.)

On the Upload screen, the Type or paste tab brings in typed writing with no scanning at all. Paste text from any app, or load a .txt, .md, or .docx file (Word, or a Google Doc exported to Word).

How entries split

Choose whether your entries are separated by date headings (best for journals), by a blank line, or are all one entry. Keep reads a date at the top of each entry where there is one, so notes land in order. Typed notes are searchable instantly — no reading step.

After you upload images, Keep reads each page in the background — transcribing your handwriting verbatim, reading any date written on the page, and ordering everything by date. If pages are waiting, you’ll see a “Read N pages” button in the notebook; tap it to start.

You don’t have to wait

Reading happens in the background — it shows “reading… we’ll email you when it’s done,” and you’ll also get an in-app notification. Carry on, or close the app; it finishes either way. Anything unreadable is marked [?], never guessed — and you can fix any transcription by hand.

Your Shelf is home: every notebook in the order you lived it, earliest to latest, each showing its cover and the span of dates it covers. Tap one to open it. On a computer, a rail of spines runs above the shelf — hover a spine to preview its cover and dates.

Brought one notebook in across several uploads? On the Shelf, tap combine notebooks (shown when you have two or more), select the ones to merge, and confirm. They fold into the first one you pick (which keeps its title), and all the pages re-sort by date. This can’t be undone, so combine deliberately.

The page image is the focus. Move with prev / next, a swipe on a phone, or the arrow keys (up/left back, down/right forward).

Jump around by date

On a computer, drag the date rail on the left to scrub through by date, and click a thumbnail to jump to a page. On a phone, drag the bar beneath the page. The current page’s date and position (e.g. “12 / 60”) show above it.

Keep stores a verbatim transcript of each read page — your exact words — to make it searchable and to power Ask and Spark. It’s the index beneath the page, never a replacement. Under a page, tap show transcript to read it, and copy to copy the text. Unreadable bits are marked [?].

Every transcription is yours to correct. Open the page → show transcript → edit, fix the text, and save. It’s instant, and your search results and daily Insights update with it. A page that was never read can have a transcript added the same way.

Most notebook tools live in one place: open the notebook and tap Manage (top-right of the Reader — a ⋯ menu on a phone). It opens a panel with the tools below.

In Manage, Title & dates changes the title or sets an explicit date range — mainly for notebooks whose pages have no dates. Leave the range blank to use the page dates.

In Manage, open the Cover tool. Two ways:

A design from the library

Pick from the grid of notebook designs and tap use this cover. Its colour becomes the notebook’s spine on the shelf.

Your own cover photo

Tap upload a photo to use a picture of the real notebook’s cover. Keep removes the background automatically, trims it, and samples its main colour for the spine.

Taking the photo

Shoot the cover straight on and flat (a front view), filling the frame, in even light with no glare — that gives the cleanest cut-out. Use default clears it back to a plain cover any time.

In Manage, Add pages brings more images into the same notebook — same formats as upload, and the same spreads checkbox if those new pages are two-page spreads. The new pages are read fresh and slotted into order.

If you scanned facing pages together, Split spreads in Manage cuts every page down the middle into two — left half before right.

Before you use it

It cuts every page left-to-right and clears the existing transcriptions and dates (the new half-pages are read fresh); it can’t be undone. So scan all spreads in order — even when a side is blank — keep the spine centred, and don’t mix single pages and spreads in one notebook. Top-bound notebooks (vertical spreads) aren’t a fit; see the scanning guide. You can also split at upload time with the spreads checkbox instead.

On any page, tap edit next to the date to set or clear it. Setting a date makes it authoritative and re-orders the notebook around it; nearby undated pages re-settle between their dated neighbours.

A page: under it in the Reader, tap delete page and confirm. A notebook: in Manage, delete notebook removes it and all its pages and images. Both are permanent.

In Manage, Download PDF builds a PDF of the whole notebook — each page as it looks — good for printing or keeping a copy. Optionally include the transcription text after each page. It’s built right in your browser, so keep the tab open while it works; a long notebook takes a moment.

Open Find and type a word, a name, or a phrase you wrote. Results are your own pages, in date order — each row shows the date, the notebook, a verbatim excerpt with your match highlighted, and a thumbnail. Tap one to open the page. Search reaches every read page, so clean transcripts (and your edits) make it sharper.

Ask answers questions using only your own notebooks, and cites the page each answer draws from — tap a citation to open it. It never invents or uses outside knowledge. Tap a suggested question to start, copy any answer, or begin a new conversation to clear the thread. Depending on your plan there may be a monthly limit on Ask questions; reading and search are never limited.

Each day, Spark surfaces something from your own journals — to cherish, to think on, or to move forward — with a writing prompt. It appears as a gentle card the first time you open Keep that day, and lives in the Spark list, where you can ★ save the ones that land and open the page each came from. You can turn the daily card and a daily email on or off in Settings.

Keep signs you in with a link emailed to you — no password. Under your avatar → Manage sign-in, you can change your email (confirmed from both addresses) or sign out of every device at once.

Under Settings: choose how dates are shown (and how Keep reads ambiguous dates on your pages), and switch the daily Spark card and email on or off.

Under your avatar → Notifications (a dot on the avatar shows unread ones). This is where Keep tells you a notebook has finished reading, or that a payment needs attention — tap one to go straight to it. Opening the list marks them read.

Under your avatar → Plan & billing: see your plan and renewal date, and manage billing to change plan, update your card, download invoices, or cancel. Plan changes take effect at your next annual renewal; a cancellation keeps access to the end of the paid year.

Under Manage sign-in, export my archive downloads a ZIP: every notebook as a folder with its actual page images and a readable text file of the transcriptions and dates, plus a machine-readable JSON copy. It’s built right in your browser, so keep the tab open while it works — a large archive takes a few minutes.

Also under Manage sign-in: permanently delete your account and everything in it. It asks you to type your email to confirm, cancels any subscription, and can’t be undone — consider exporting first.

Your notebooks are private to you, never sold, and never used to train AI. The plain-language details are on the how your data is handled page.