readme-fs-gkeep.md

Local Files ⬄ Google Keep Notes

Description

Synchronize all the Google Keep Notes (optionally filtered with a label) with a List of files under a local directory. The taskwarrior filter may be a task, a project or a combination of a project and arbitrary tags.

Upon execution, fs_gkeep_sync will synchronize, and on subsequent runs of the program keep synchronized, the following attributes:

• Text of Google Keep note <-> File contents
• Title of Google Keep note <-> File name

Usage example

To synchronize all the notes of your Google Keep labelled as test with all the files under fs_tests_dir you can use something like:

fs_gkeep_sync --gkeep-labels test  --fs $PWD/fs_tests_dir

You can also save this combination under a specific name and then use that name instead of specifying all the parameters explicitly

fs_gkeep_sync --gkeep-labels test  --fs $PWD/fs_tests_dir -s named_sync
# OR
fs_gkeep_sync --gkeep-labels test  --fs $PWD/fs_tests_dir --save-as named_sync

# and then run it using -b/--combination
fs_gkeep_sync -b named_sync

See the Credentials section on how to authenticate with Google.

Demo

Limitations

• This synchronization has only been tested on Ubuntu 20.04. It should work on other Linux distros and should likely work on MacOS too.

• The root directory specified for the synchronization must be on a filesystem that supports extended attributes for example ext4. xattrs are used to associate the files at hand with their counterparts in Google Keep

• Currently renaming/moving the root directory for synchronization is not supported. You also have to be consistent specifying the name of the said directory, i.e., always specify it as an absolute path or always add it as the same relative path. As the verbatim name provided is used for naming this combination this will create two different combinatinons and will lead to duplication of entries.

  # ❗❗❗ The following set of commands will add duplicate entries in either
  # side
  fs_gkeep_sync --gkeep-labels test  --fs fs_tests_dir/
  fs_gkeep_sync --gkeep-labels test  --fs $PWD/fs_tests_dir/

  One way to bypass this would be to always name the combination.

  # This will do the right thing and not duplicate entries.
  fs_gkeep_sync --gkeep-labels test  --fs fs_tests_dir/  --save-as my_named_combination
  fs_gkeep_sync --gkeep-labels test  --fs $PWD/fs_tests_dir/ --save-as my_named_combination

• This only works for Note types in Google Keep. If a note is of type List (i.e., if the checkboxes are enabled) it won't be used for synchronization).

Installation

Package Installation

Install the syncall package from PyPI, enabling the gkeep and fs extras:

pip3 install syncall[gkeep,fs]

Credentials

We're using the unofficial gkeepapi tool to authenticate and interact with Google Keep. It requires your Google account username and password to do so. If you're using 2FA, you should create a direct password and use that instead.

Read more about this here.

To provide the password, you can either use the GKEEP_USERNAME and GKEEP_PASSWD before running fs_gkeep_sync or (recommended), use the UNIX Password Manager to store your username and password to your Google account and provide the paths to them (use --user-pass-path ... --passwd-pass-path ... in this case).

If using the UNIX Password Manager, make sure that you also have the gpg-agent otherwise the tool will always prompt you for your GPG passphrase and will fail if that's not provided.