Fabric vs Omnivore

Last updated April 2026

Google Keep is a free, simple note-taking app for quick thoughts, lists, and reminders. Fabric is an AI workspace for storing, searching, and working with all your content. They're not really the same category of tool, but people compare them because both are places you save things you want to remember. If you've been using Keep and feel like you're outgrowing it, this page will help you figure out whether Fabric is the right next step.

Comparison table

What is Google Keep?

Google Keep is Google's free note-taking app. It's designed for quick capture: jot down a thought, make a checklist, set a reminder, snap a photo. Notes sync across devices via your Google account. It does this well, and it's been doing it since 2013. Keep is intentionally simple. It doesn't try to be a document editor, a file manager, or a knowledge base. It's digital sticky notes, and for a lot of people, that's exactly enough.

What is Fabric?

Fabric is an AI workspace that combines file storage, note-taking, search, tasks, collaboration, and publishing. The Fabric Memory Engine automatically extracts, enriches, and maps relationships between everything you save. Where Keep captures quick thoughts, Fabric is designed to hold and connect everything: documents, links, images, videos, meeting recordings, emails, design files. The AI assistant lives inside your content and gets more useful the more you save.

Key differences

Scope

This is less a competition and more a weight class difference. Keep handles notes and lists. Fabric handles notes, documents, files, media, tasks, collaboration, and publishing. If all you need is a place to jot things down and set reminders, Keep is perfectly good at that. If you need a place where your notes, files, research, and reference material all live together and talk to each other, that's what Fabric is for.

AI

Google added a Gemini integration to Keep in 2025. It can generate checklists from prompts ("create a grocery list for Mediterranean meals for two on a $100 budget"). It's a nice addition, but it works on individual notes. It doesn't understand your library as a whole.

Fabric's AI assistant knows your content. It can answer questions across your entire library, summarise documents, transcribe recordings, generate meeting recaps, and take actions inside the app. You can point it at specific files or folders as context. The difference is between AI that helps you write a single note and AI that understands everything you've ever saved.

Search

Keep has keyword search across your notes. You can filter by label, colour, type. For a small collection of notes, it works fine. For a large one, you need to remember the right words.

Fabric searches by meaning. Semantic search finds content even when you describe it differently from how it was written. You can search inside PDFs, slide decks, and video transcripts. Visual search lets you find content by dropping in a reference image. Colour search finds assets by palette. Cross-platform search pulls results from connected services like Google Drive, Notion, and Dropbox alongside your Fabric library.

If you have 50 notes in Keep, the search difference doesn't matter. If you have 500 documents, PDFs, videos, and saved articles, it matters a lot.

Notes and documents

Keep notes are plain text with basic formatting (bold and italic arrived on the web in 2025). Each note has a 20,000 character limit. There are no folders, no version history, and no rich embedding. If you need to write something longer or more structured, Keep's own answer is to export the note to a Google Doc.

Fabric has a full markdown editor with version history, real-time collaborative editing, and the ability to embed or link to any other file in your library. Smart meeting notes combine your own notes with the conversation transcript. It's a writing tool, not just a capture tool.

Organisation

Keep organises with labels, colours, and pinning. That's it. There are no folders, no nested structure, no multiple views. For quick notes this is a feature, not a limitation. The simplicity is the point.

Fabric organises with Spaces (project containers), folders, tags, and multiple views including kanban, grid, list, and detail. There's also a spatial canvas for freeform visual thinking and moodboarding. If you manage research projects, client work, or creative reference libraries, the structure is there. If you just want to write "buy milk," it's more than you need.

Collaboration

Keep lets you share individual notes with other Google users. They can edit the note. That's the extent of it.

Fabric supports real-time co-editing on documents and canvases, threaded comments, pinned annotations on images and rich media, in-context chat, and shared drives. It's built for teams working together inside content, not just sharing a grocery list (though you can do that too).

Publishing

Keep has no publishing features. Notes are private or shared with specific Google users.

Fabric lets you publish or share anything with one click. Built-in analytics show who opened your link, when, and how long they spent. Password protection. Dedicated links for specific stakeholders. If you need to share content externally with any level of polish or tracking, Keep can't do it.

Pricing

Keep is free. Completely free, no premium tier, no upsell. Storage counts against your 15GB Google One quota, but Keep notes use almost nothing. This is a genuine advantage. If all you need is quick notes and reminders, there's no reason to pay for anything else.

Fabric is a paid product. You get more for your money, but you are paying money. The question is whether you need what Fabric offers. If Keep does everything you need, stay with Keep.

Where Google Keep is stronger

Keep is faster for quick capture. Open the app, type a thought, close the app. No friction. The simplicity is real, and for people who just need a digital junk drawer that syncs, nothing beats it. The Google ecosystem integration is seamless if you're already in Gmail, Docs, and Calendar. The Wear OS app means you can capture notes from your wrist. And it's free. For quick thoughts, shopping lists, and simple reminders, Keep is genuinely hard to improve on.

When to use each

Use Google Keep if you need a fast, free place to jot down thoughts, make checklists, and set reminders. You don't have complex organisational needs. Your notes are short. You're in the Google ecosystem and want something that syncs without thinking about it. Keep is great at what it does, and what it does is enough for many people.

Use Fabric if you've started using Keep for things it wasn't designed for. You're saving research, collecting references, storing documents, and wishing you could search across all of it intelligently. You want AI that understands your content. You need collaboration beyond sharing a single note. You want to publish or share content with people outside your Google account. Fabric is for when "quick notes" isn't the job anymore.

The transition tends to happen when people realise they have dozens of Keep notes that are really just links and excerpts they wish they could search properly, or when they're copying notes into Google Docs for formatting and then losing track of which version is current. That's the point where a dedicated workspace starts earning its keep.

Why people move from Google Keep to Fabric

They outgrew sticky notes. Keep is brilliant for quick capture but limited for anything longer-lived. People who start collecting research, design references, or meeting notes in Keep eventually hit the walls: no folders, no rich formatting, 20,000 character limits, no way to connect notes to files.

They wanted search that actually works. Keyword search is fine when you have 30 notes. When you have hundreds of saved items across multiple formats, finding things by exact keyword stops scaling. Semantic search, visual search, and the ability to search inside documents changes the experience.

They wanted AI on their content. Keep's Gemini integration helps you generate a list. Fabric's AI understands your entire library and can answer questions, summarise, and connect material across everything you've saved.

They needed collaboration beyond sharing. Sharing a Keep note with someone is useful. Co-editing documents in real time, annotating images, leaving threaded comments, and working inside a shared workspace is a different thing entirely.

FAQs

Can I import my Google Keep notes into Fabric?

You can export Keep notes via Google Takeout and upload them to Fabric. Keep doesn't have a direct export-to-other-apps feature, but the Takeout data is usable.

Does Fabric integrate with Google Drive?

Yes. Fabric connects to Google Drive, so you can search and access your Drive files alongside everything else in your Fabric library.

Is Fabric free?

Fabric has a free tier with limited storage and AI.

Should I switch from Keep to Fabric?

Only if you need to. Keep is a good app for what it does. If you're happy with quick notes, checklists, and reminders, there's no reason to switch. Fabric makes sense when your needs grow beyond simple note-taking into file management, search, collaboration, AI, or publishing.

Can Fabric do quick capture like Keep?

Yes. The Chrome extension saves anything from the web with one click. The mobile apps support quick capture. You can forward emails to your personal Fabric address. Desktop folder sync picks up local files automatically. The capture surface is broader than Keep's, though Keep's widget-based quick capture on Android is still hard to beat for raw speed.

Does Fabric work with the rest of the Google ecosystem?

Fabric integrates with Google Drive and Gmail. It doesn't replace Google Docs, Sheets, or Slides, but it can store, search, and organise those file types alongside everything else.