How it works
Keeping notes on phone and computer usually means a company server in the middle, holding a copy of every note. Memlow never holds your notes. Instead, both versions back up to the same place: a hidden Memlow folder in your own Google Drive, encrypted with your backup password. Because the web app and the Android app use the same backup format, each can open what the other wrote.
It isn't live syncing, where every keystroke appears on the other screen. Think of two notebooks that swap pages through a locked box in your Drive. When a note is in both, the newer copy is kept.
Set it up once
- On your phone: in the Memlow app, open Settings → Google Drive backup, choose your Google account and create a backup password. Tap Back up now.
- On your computer: open app.memlow.com, sign in to your free Memlow account, go to Settings → Storage and Google Drive and link the same Google account.
- Memlow finds the phone's backups and asks for the backup password you chose in the app. Enter it and choose Open my backups. Your phone's notes appear in the browser.
Starting on the computer instead? Link Drive on the web first and create the password there, then use the same account and password on the phone.
From your phone to your computer
While app.memlow.com is connected to your Drive, it checks for newer notes when you come back to it and every 10 minutes, and brings in what the phone has backed up. The phone backs up daily, weekly or when you tap Back up now, so tap it before you sit down at the computer if you want today's notes there straight away.
On the web, Google's sign-in isn't kept. It lasts about an hour and ends when you reload or reopen the page. Memlow then shows Reconnect in the sidebar and in Settings: one tap links it again, brings in the phone's newer notes and backs up.
From your computer to your phone
While it's connected, the web app backs up whenever something has changed (at most every 15 minutes, and soon after you switch away). The phone doesn't fetch those notes on its own, so bring them in when you need them:
- In the app, open Settings → Restore from a backup → Google Drive.
- Pick the newest backup. Backups from the web say “Memlow web” and the browser that made them.
- Enter your backup password and choose Merge. Notes from the backup are added, and where a note is in both, the newer copy is kept.
No Google Drive? Use a backup file
You can do the same by hand, with no internet at all. On the web, Settings → Backup and data saves a .memlow backup file; on the phone, Settings → Create backup file does the same. Copy the file across with a USB cable or a memory stick and restore it on the other side. Files are password-protected by default. Our guide to using the same notes on your phone and computer covers both ways in more detail, including what happens when one note changes in both places.
