For many years, Google Keep was strictly a plain-text application. If you typed a note, every single word looked exactly the same, making it difficult to emphasize important deadlines or structure long paragraphs. However, Google recently rolled out native rich text formatting, allowing you to instantly apply bold, italics, and underlining directly to your notes without relying on complicated markdown syntax or third-party workarounds.
How to Format Text in Google Keep
Rich text formatting is currently available on the Google Keep mobile app (Android and iOS) and is slowly rolling out to the desktop web interface.
- Open the Google Keep app and create a new note (or open an existing one).
- Type a sentence into the body of the note.
- Double-tap on a specific word to highlight it. You can drag the blue selection handles to highlight an entire phrase or paragraph.
- Look at the toolbar located directly above your keyboard. You will see an icon featuring an underlined capital A. Tap it.
- A small pop-up menu will appear containing the three standard formatting options: Bold (B), Italics (I), and Underline (U).
- Tap your desired format. The text will instantly change, and the pop-up menu will disappear.
You can apply multiple formats to the exact same word. For example, if you highlight a word and tap both Bold and Underline, the text will render as heavily emphasized.
Removing Formatting
If you have heavily formatted a long note and you decide it looks too messy, you do not have to manually highlight and un-bold every single word.
Highlight the messy text, tap the formatting A icon again to open the menu, and look for the icon on the far right (it looks like a ‘T’ with a slash through it). This is the “Clear Formatting” button. Tapping it will instantly strip all bold, italics, and underlining from the highlighted selection, returning the text to its raw, unformatted default state.
Keyboard Shortcuts
If you are using Google Keep on an Android tablet with a physical keyboard attachment (or if the feature has rolled out to your desktop web browser), you can entirely bypass the touch menus by using standard universal keyboard shortcuts.
Simply highlight the text with your mouse or trackpad and press:
- Ctrl + B (Windows) or Command + B (Mac) to apply Bold.
- Ctrl + I (Windows) or Command + I (Mac) to apply Italics.
- Ctrl + U (Windows) or Command + U (Mac) to apply Underline.