A review just after its launch in 2013 praised its speed, the quality of voice notes, synchronization, and the widget that could be placed on the Android home screen.

Reviews in 2016 have criticized the lack of formatting options, inability to undo changes, and an interface that only offers two view modes where neither was liked for their handling of long notes.

[8] Notes can be color-coded, with options for: white, red, orange, yellow, green, teal, blue or gray.

Henry praised: the speed, quality of voice notes, synchronization, and Android home screen widget.

[27] In a January 2016 review, JR Raphael of Computerworld wrote that "Keep is incredibly close to being an ideal tool for me to collect and manage all of my personal and work-related notes.

And, as evidenced by the fact that I continue to use it, its positives outweigh its negatives for me and make it the best all-around option for my needs", praising what he calls Keep's "killer features", namely simplicity, "easy universal access" and native integration with other Google services.

However, he characterized Keep's lack of formatting options, the inability to undo or revert changes and a missing search functionality within notes as "lingering weaknesses".

[28] In a July 2016 review, Jill Duffy of PC Magazine wrote that the interface was best described as "simplicity" and criticized it for offering list and grid views that did not make finding information quick or easy.

The mobile app's offering to take a photo and run optical character recognition to have the scan turned into text was described as a "shining star", with the comment "It's an amazing feature, and it works very well".