{% include image.html img=”https://static.thenewsprint.co/media/2020/04/Back-to-Keep-It-1.jpeg” title=”Back to Keep It” caption=”I’ve moved back to Keep It for all my Bible study notes. The features the app offers for long-term research are far too great to be ignored. “ %}

Plain and simple: I’ve moved back to Keep It for taking long-form notes on iPad and Mac. The COVID-19 pandemic has sparked numerous online formats for church activities, one of which is our men’s Bible study group. Within the very first sitting, I found myself needing to reference a few notes I had taken in the past. And like any physical note-taking adventure, CMD + F didn’t bring up any results.

After a month of keeping long-term notes in Keep It, I had moved to Bear. For a couple reasons:

• To eliminate an extra couple subscriptions.
• Keep It had become quite buggy, especially around the time where it adopted support for macOS and iOS’s dark modes.
• I went through a phase of wanting to consolidate everything and Keep It was a casualty at the time.

Fortunately, my annual subscription was still active.

It’ll be a bit of a job moving all of my previous highlights, underlines, and thoughts to Keep It. But, as I’ve said before, I have lots of time to figure this step out.

Keep It hasn’t changed too much while I’ve been gone. The app still looks great, still takes advantage of the default or generic iOS look (I personally love this app design), and still organizes notes with all types of media unlike any other app on iOS.  I love that the app is iOS-first, as well.

This doesn’t mention how much more stable the app has become in the last few months — there seems to be a Keep It update in the Mac App Store and iOS App Store nearly every day. I’m more impressed with how the app runs and performs now than I was when we were testing these apps for The Sweet Setup a while back.

A quibble I have though: I’m not a fan of how dual-column apps treat the smaller 11-inch iPad. These slide-over columns with a single, large note view don’t properly use the iPad’s screen real-estate. I would like the ability to lock or pin the slide-in navigation column.

All in all, it’s always fun to rediscover great apps after going on a hiatus. I’ve fallen away from my Bible studying over the last few months due to a variety of reasons, and there’s no better time than a global pandemic to get into the Good Book and to take some good notes in good software at the same time.