Use the same notes on your phone and computer

How it works

Most apps keep notes in step by holding a copy of every note on their own servers. Memlow never holds your notes. Instead, the web app and the Android app write the same kind of backup, encrypted on the device with your backup password, into a hidden Memlow folder in your own Google Drive. Each one can open the other's backups.

So two things have to match on both devices:

• The same Google account, so both look in the same Drive.
• The same backup password, so both can open what the other wrote.

It isn't live, keystroke-by-keystroke syncing. While Memlow is open in your browser, it backs up when something changes (at most every 15 minutes, and soon after you switch away) and brings in newer notes from your phone's backups by itself. The phone backs up daily, weekly or when you tap Back up now, and takes in the web's notes when you restore them.

Before you start

• The Memlow app on your Android phone, and app.memlow.com open in a modern browser on your computer. Installing the web app (the install button in the address bar in Chrome or Edge) gives it its own window.
• One Google account to use on both.
• A backup password of at least 8 characters, written down somewhere safe. We can't recover it for you.

From your phone to your computer

1. On the phone, open Settings → Google Drive backup, choose your Google account and create a backup password. If you already back up to Drive, skip this step.
2. Tap Back up now, so Drive has your latest notes.
3. On the computer, open app.memlow.com, sign in to your free Memlow account and go to Settings → Storage and Google Drive. Choose Link Google Drive, pick the same Google account and allow Memlow's folder.
4. Memlow finds the phone's backups and asks for their backup password. Enter it and choose Open my backups.

The phone's notes appear in your browser. From then on, while Memlow is connected to your Drive, newer notes from the phone's backups come in on their own, and the web backs up its own. After you close and reopen Memlow, one tap on Reconnect links it again.

From your computer to your phone

1. On the web, link Google Drive as above. If there are no backups yet, Memlow asks you to create a backup password and then makes the first backup.
2. Before you pick up the phone, tap Back up now in Settings → Storage and Google Drive, so your newest notes are in Drive.
3. On the phone, open Settings → Restore from a backup and choose Google Drive. On a new install, tap Restore from a backup on the welcome screen instead.
4. Pick the newest backup (each one says which device made it) and enter your backup password.
5. Choose Merge to add the web's notes to the ones already on the phone; if a note is in both, the newer copy is kept. Replace makes the phone match the backup exactly. Memlow keeps a safety copy first.
6. If the phone wasn't backing up yet, turn on Keep backing up to Google Drive. It carries on with the same account and password.

Whenever you want the phone to catch up with what you wrote on the computer, restore again and choose Merge.

No Google Drive? Use a backup file

A backup file does the same job by hand, with no internet needed. It holds every note, photo and voice note in one .memlow file, and Memlow on either side can open it.

• Computer to phone: on the web, open Settings → Backup and data, choose Backup file, protect it with a password and save it. Copy it to the phone (a USB cable works), then on the phone go to Settings → Restore from a backup → Backup file.
• Phone to computer: on the phone, use Settings → Create backup file. Copy the file to the computer, then on the web choose Restore from a backup file in Settings → Backup and data.

Merge and Replace work just as they do with Drive. The catch is that a file is a snapshot: nothing new comes across until you make another one.

When the same note changes in both places

Memlow doesn't stitch two sets of edits together line by line. For each note, the newer copy wins: the one that was changed last.

On the web, nothing is thrown away when that happens. If a newer copy from the phone replaces the one in your browser, the browser's copy is kept in that note's Version history. Open the note's menu and choose Version history to read the earlier version, restore it or make a copy. Version history also keeps a version when you come back to a note and change it, and every 10 minutes while you write.

On the phone, Merge follows the same rule: if a note is in both, the newer copy is kept.

The easiest way to avoid surprises is to finish with a note on one device, let it back up, then pick it up on the other.

Tips that save trouble

• Check the account first. A different Google account means a different Drive and separate backups. If notes don't appear, this is the usual reason.
• Keep one backup password. If you change it on one device, the web app asks you for the new one once.
• Back up before you switch. Tapping Back up now on the device you've just used takes a moment and means the other one gets your latest notes.
• Reconnect when asked. On the web, Google's sign-in lasts about an hour, and it doesn't carry over when you reload or reopen the page. When Memlow shows Reconnect, tap it and backing up carries on.
• Use the phone for reminders that must ring. A browser can only ring a reminder while Memlow is open. The Android app rings them on time even when it's closed.
• Protect the browser's storage. Protect storage in Settings → Storage and Google Drive asks the browser to keep Memlow's data when space runs low.

Still stuck? Support has more help, including moving to a new phone.