When comparing LibreOffice vs Google Keep, the Slant community recommends LibreOffice for most people. In the question“What are the best tools for video game design?” LibreOffice is ranked 1st while Google Keep is ranked 4th. The most important reason people chose LibreOffice is:
LibreOffice includes applications for word-processing, spreadsheets, presentations, and database management.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Comprehensive suite of applications
LibreOffice includes applications for word-processing, spreadsheets, presentations, and database management.
Pro Free and open source
LibreOffice is available for free with code available here. It's licensed under LGPL v3 with new contributions dual-licensed under MPL.
Pro Cross-platform
All major operating systems are supported, including Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X and GNU/Linux (Arch, Fedora, Mandriva, Debian, Ubuntu, Suse).
Pro Multilingual
It is available in more than 110 languages.
Pro High compatibility with MS Office
Possible to use in corporations.
Pro Font embedding support
Font embedding ensures that the document will display correctly whether or not the target machine has that specific font installed.
Pro Portable version
LibreOffice offers a version of the suite that does not require installation. It can be kept on a thumb stick to ensure that you have an office suite on whichever machine you choose to use.
Pro The de-facto standard
Being able to tell new people that the FOSS community has an actual default office suite matters. It shows that, despite the bewildering number of options, there can be a clear winner.
Pro LibreOffice can take from OpenOffice, but not the other way around
Due to licensing each office suite uses, only a one-way transfer of code is possible, offering more long-term potential for LibreOffice over OpenOffice.
Pro The most user-friendly option
To attract new people to FOSS, having an office suite that is as user-friendly as LibreOffice is a must.
Pro Encryption support
LibreOffice allows encrypting and password-locking files.
Pro Presentations can have 3D models embeded within them
Impress supports 3D models in gITF format.
Pro Lots of extensions and dictionaries
Has many extensions that can add additional features to LibreOffice.
Pro Ribbon design
Since 5.3, LibreOffice offers a Ribbon design view (similar to Microsoft Office) (check here).
Pro Multiple themes
Many icon themes available to customise the look and get consistent look with the OS.
Pro Continued development and maintenance
Pro Good Zotero integration
LibreOffice works very well with Zotero. The integration of the Zotero plugin in LibreOffice is a breeze, citing while writing and generating the bibliography is just a click. Also good since you need to coop in an (MS) world: Libreoffice and Zotero cooperate very well to make sure your refs survive a "Save as" from one file format to another (e.g. docx to odt or the other way around). Basic (open and free!) tools is your in the market for this...
Pro Easy to use
1-step to take a note on Android: tap 'take a note'.
Web version: cursor is on the note itself.
Pro Super fast to use
The focus on a minimal interface makes everything fast to use on both web and mobile. This comes in handy for when a note needs to be jotted down quickly, as there is little to no load times or faffing about trying to get to a space where the note can finally be recorded.
Pro Unlimited and seamless sync across all Google connected devices, from mobile to desktop
When a mobile device isn't in use, Google Keep can be accessed as a Chrome app or as a website. Basically, no matter the device being used or the OS on it, there is always a way to access the app. There is also no limitation to how many devices this can be done with, freeing up the user to always have access.
Pro Automatic saving
Automatically saves new changes so that nothing is lost.
Pro Useful Android home screen widget
The Keep widget lets users quickly see existing notes and add new ones.
Pro Notes can be grouped via labels
In addition to the ability to color-code notes, they can be labeled and navigated and grouped that way. This allows for easy organization, to then be found easily at a later date.
Pro Notes can be color-coded
Pro Cross platform
This app can be used seamlessly across all platforms including Android, iOS, and desktop computer platforms.
Pro Works as a great bookmarking tool as links added can optionally include a preview image
Keep has a great feature that allows you to save sites you visit as a special note type with a link and a preview image.
Pro Can share and collaboratively edit any item including lists
Keep allows sharing any item with other contacts and editing them together at the same time. This way a team can work together in real time, no matter their location.
Pro Really well implemented speech-to-text
Google has a lot of experience with speech-to-text functionality and they did a fantastic job with Keep. This means you can easily record spoken notes that can then be changed to a text based note.
Pro Notes can include photo and audio attachments
Notes can include multimedia attachments in addition to text.
Pro Supports drawing or writing notes by hand
Newer version of Google Keep now supports drawing on either a blank page, existing notes or in an image attached to the note.
Pro Both location- and time-based reminders
You can set reminders that bring certain notes to your attention when you arrive at a specified location or when it’s a specified time or date. Unfortunately you can only do one or the other for each note.
Pro Includes character recognition for text in images
Google Keep lets users take pictures of physical notes and makes the contents searchable within the app. This can be a convenient time saver for those that do not want to type out the necessary info, but rather take a quick snapshot of it.
Pro Drag and drop sorting
You can move cards manually, which is great for prioritizing to-dos. Within a card, you can also drag and drop items.
Pro Archives finished tasks
Any finished task is archived and can be searched at a later date.
Cons
Con Not fully compatible to MSOffice
It's not fully compatible with MSOffice and often breaks documents.
Con LibreOffice Base requires Java
If you need to use Base, it requires Java.
Con Needs a lot of system resources
It's a large office package that needs a lot of drive space and system memory.
Con Documentation is out of date
Good luck turning off autocorrect, because the place where the documentation says that option is doesn't exist.
Con No good video editing for presentations
Con Track Changes needs to be improved
Collaborating on a single document is difficult. Track Changes makes the document hard to read as both edited and deleted text is displayed, it's not possible to print comments, tracked differences between document versions are sub-optimal and there's no system for accepting/rejecting changes.
Con Poor stability
Consistently crashes while editing. Absolutely unreliable.
Con Poor desktop integration
Since it is written in Java it does not integrate nicely with the operation systems theme, icons or dialogs.
Con Ugly interface
Ungly interface compared to others office solutions, like WPS office.
Con Won't work with themes
It does not work with custom themes due to all the different wrappers involved.
Con Ribbon is experimental
Con No Quickstart
Quickstart was removed from the Linux application. Now every time you open a file it will take at least 2,5 seconds to open.
Con Does not run as stable as OnlyOffice
It runs fine until it crashes. Users have experienced multiple crashes when using the cursor to select text in the writer, running in Kubuntu 18.04.
Con Restricted license
LibreOffice uses a more restrictive license than OpenOffice, which makes it almost impossible to backport features to OpenOffice.
Con Not a very well non-English languages spell check support
Con Many user annoyances and malfunctions which lead to loss of work and time, often not intuitive
Con No ability to access online brokerage accounts for trading
No ability to access trading and brokerage accounts via Calc to conduct automatic buying/selling like you can in MS Excel.
Con Master slide management in Impress not up to mark
As of version 6, the master slide management is not as good as PowerPoint in Windows.
Con Steady update
Con Google can access and mine your data
You have to be okay with Google analyzing and using your data in order to use Keep.
Con Messy if you have lots of notes
It can be difficult to organize notes because you can only create labels and not, for example, separate projects.
Con Organization is limited to just multiple tags for notes
There are no folders in Keep that you can move notes into. It makes the user interface more cluttered, and navigation gets more difficult.
Con Can be taken down some day
As Google is notorious for taking down services, you may end up with just a backup of your notes in XML format and a need to look for a substitute.
Con No ability to undo changes
There is no way to revert changes or restore text you may have accidentally deleted (however, you can restore entire notes for up to 7 days after deletion).
Con Synchronization bugs
There are some issues with synchronizing data including laggyness and returning old/deleted items.
Con No text formatting
No basic formatting like bold, italics. Makes it harder to do things like meeting notes. Keep is intended as a minimal and quick note taking app, but sadly for those that are looking for something more robust, the features are just not there.
Con Scrolling through notes is horrible
There are no options to decrease the surface area of the notes to make it easier to get an overview. Compare this to something like the Apple Notes or Evernote UI, for example. You can't organize nor have a glance of what you have.
Con Not free/libre
This application is proprietary, and thus cannot be modified or freely distributed.
Con Can be difficult to discover the features
Google Keep has slowly been introducing new features, but doesn't do a good job of helping you discover them.
Con Google account required
You're required to have a Google account in order to use the app.
Con Does not offer themes
There is no option for changing the color theme (such as a dark theme) unless you use a 3rd party extension.
Con Does not integrate with Google Calendar or Tasks
It does not integrate with Google Calendar or other Google Apps with the exception of "Google Now." Keep reminders can appear on Google Calendar, but you can not get reminders and use Tasks at the same time.
Con Too simplistic of an approach
Con No integrated social media sharing
There is no integrated social media sharing if you directly want to post your note to Twitter, Facebook, etc.
Con Not good at all for longer notes
With almost no formatting options whatsoever it's hard to actually use Keep for long-form notes.
Con Sharing within team doesn't work that well
You can share separate notes but not Projects, Wordspace, or Teams.
Con Not distributed
Cannot run on own servers as Keep will only run on Google's own servers. This increases the risks which are normally associated with handing over critical applications to a large (US) corporation.
Con No notifications when tasks are added to shared lists
Although the ability to collaborate on lists is advanced, Keep will not let you know when another person adds an item to a list you share.
Con No API
Con There is a label limit up to 50
Con No dedicated app for windows, linux, mac (except unofficial)
Con Cannot share groups of notes (e.g., labels)
Google's equivalent of groups are labels, which can't be shared. By comparison, Trello allows you to share boards with others. Trello also supports grouping through teams. Google Keep has no such concept.
Con Slow to save the updates
Saving is delayed by a moment and the saving status UI is unclear. You can lose updates if you close the tab too quickly.
Con Delay between to-do entries
The keyboard closes and reloads between to-do list entries, so the first letters or words may be missed if you’re trying to quickly create a list.
Con Notes get lost/deleted and can NOT be recovered
Since nothing is stored locally on the phone, everything can go missing. Google can't recover any of it.
Con No BlackBerry 10 app
No BlackBerry support apart from web.
Con No Windows Mobile app
No Windows Mobile app, and it is unlikely to ever be produced.