Export All Your Google Keep Notes

How to export all your notes from Google Keep? I found two ways to do this.

One option is to use a feature that converts one or more notes to a Google Docs document.

1. Select all your notes: go to Google Keep and press Ctrl+A (or Cmd-A for Mac).

Important: This only selects the notes from the current view, so archived notes aren't included. You can repeat these steps for archived notes or select all your archived notes and unarchive them.

2. Click the 3-dot icon from the top of the page and pick "Copy to Google Doc".

3. Wait a few seconds and you should see a link at the bottom of the page that says: "Open doc". Click that link to open the document that includes all your notes.

Another option is to use Google Takeout and export all your notes as HTML files. Google Takeout exports all your notes, including archived notes and notes from the Trash.

You'll get a ZIP archive with HTML files for each note. The archive may also includes image and audio files. If a note doesn't have a title, the exported HTML file will use the date in the filename.

YouTube Only Updated The HTML5 Player

There's something interesting about the latest YouTube player update: it's the first time when YouTube only updates the HTML5 player.

Since it's no longer that easy to force YouTube to switch to the Flash player, I've used an old version of Firefox (22.0). YouTube defaulted to the Flash player, the same old player before the recent update.

I've switched to the HTML5 player using youtube.com/html5 and YouTube displayed the new player, just like it does in the latest versions of most desktop browsers.

It's obvious that the Flash player has been deprecated and it's still used for older browsers and a small percentage of premium videos. If you're using the latest version of Chrome, Firefox, Safari, the HTML5 player is used by default and you can't even switch to the Flash player.

For some reason, the system requirements page from YouTube's help center still mentions that you need Adobe Flash Player to watch YouTube videos.

YouTube's New Desktop Player, Available for Everyone

After a few months of testing, the new desktop player for YouTube replaces the old one. The new HTML5 video player uses a transparent control bar that hides when you're not using it and has new buttons and dropdown menus.

"Our new player design has a bit more polish, gets out of the way of your video playback, and scales to any screen or embed size," informs YouTube. The TestTube page no longer lets you switch back to the old player and it only shows this message: "This browser is using the new YouTube player".

{ via YouTube }

Delete Recommendation History in Google Play Music

Google Play Music's desktop site has a new feature that lets you delete history. At the bottom of the settings page, there's a new section called "delete recommendation history". According to Google, this "removes the history used to give you recommendations and customize radio. This will not remove ratings and play counts on individual tracks."

Google shows a long list of recommended radios and albums and you can manually remove them by clicking "not interested" for each radio and album. After using the new "delete recommendation history" feature, I expected to see that all recommendations are removed and Google will start to show new suggested albums and radios based on the songs you play from now on. Unfortunately, that's not the case: Google still shows similar recommendations.

Speaking of historical data, it's surprising that Google Play Music still doesn't have a feature that shows all your recently played songs. It should be an auto playlist, just like "last added" and "thumbs up" and users should be able to export it.

{ Thanks, Camilo Moreira. }

Google Updates Ad Settings

Google has recently updated ad settings pages, which have a new design and more information about your options. You can still disable ads based on your interests from both Google sites and third-party sites. When you do that, you'll still see ads, but they "will not be based on data Google has associated with your Google Account, and so may be less relevant".

Until now, Google's ad settings page had 2 sections for interest-based ads on Google sites and non-Google sites. Google changed this: there are now separate pages for signed-in ads and signed-out ads. When you are signed in to a Google account, Google can use data associated with your account: Google search history, YouTube history, Google+ profile, manually added interests and more.

The section for signed-out ads has 2 separate settings for "ads based on your interests on websites beyond google.com" and "Google Search Ads based on your interests". Google uses your previous searches and browsing history to improve search ads, but you can disable this feature. AdSense ads also use your browsing history and anonymous demographic details to improve ads. Signed-out ads rely on cookies tied to anonymous data.

"You can control the ads that are delivered to you based on anonymous information by editing these settings. These ads will more likely be useful and relevant to you and your Google services, such as search," informs Google.

Google's help center has more information. "To opt out of all of Google’s interest-based ads on your browser, you'll need to opt out in 3 places: once when you're signed in to Google products, once when you're signed out, and once for ads on the Display Network ('websites beyond google.com'). The reason for the different opt-outs is that Google uses different information to target ads, depending on how you're interacting with Google and whether you're signed in with your Google account."

{ Thanks, Herin Maru. }

A Renewal Reminder

Google has recently sent notifications about some domains that are about to expire. "Your registration of domain.com is about to expire. This means that users will no longer be able to access your website at that time."

The domains were registered using Google Domains, but they were set to automatically renew, so Google's message was confusing. Google realized that it was a mistake and sent another message:

"An automated email was sent out to you earlier in error with the subject 'Your domain registration is expiring'. Please discard the erroneous message. Since your domain is set to auto-renew, your domain will be renewed on the expiration date as expected. We apologize for any confusion this may have caused."

Unfortunately for Google, the message was sent to 1664 people and all the email addresses were added to the "to" field, so everyone can see them. Whoops!

Update: Google sent a new message. "Yesterday, we sent an email to select Google Domains customers in which all recipients' email addresses were visible in the 'To' field. We sincerely apologize, and we'll be evaluating our customer email processes to prevent an accident like this from happening again. Thank you for your understanding."

More Related Images in Google Image Search for Mobile

Google Image Search has a new mobile interface. When you tap a thumbnail, Google shows the image result, a link to the page and a long list of related images.

Below the search result, you can find a list of similar images. You can still swipe left or right to go to the previous or the next image result. Tap the image to hide everything else.