Google Keep Sync for Home Assistant

Google Keep Sync is an unofficial custom integration for Home Assistant that allows users to synchronize their Google Keep lists with Home Assistant. This project is in no way affiliated with, created, or endorsed by Google.

Features

Bidirectional synchronization of lists between Google Keep and Home Assistant. You select the lists you wish to sync, and they are created as todo entities in your Home Assistant instance.

Requirements

As a result of the fact that we are using the new todo entities that were introduced in Home Assistant 2023.11, you must be running that version or later.

Installation

Google Keep Sync can be installed either manually or via HACS, although using HACS is strongly recommended.

Installation via HACS

1. Add Integration via HACS:

   If you already have HACS installed, you can simply click this button:

   

   • Click Download.
   • Restart Home Assistant.

   Alternatively, you can follow these instructions to add it via HACS:

   1. Add Custom Repository:

      • Open HACS in Home Assistant.
      • Go to Integrations.
      • Click on the ... in the top right corner and select Custom repositories.
      • Add the URL https://github.com/watkins-matt/home-assistant-google-keep-sync
      • Set the category to Integration and click Add.

   2. Install the Integration:

      • Search for Google Keep Sync in the HACS Integrations.
      • Click Download.
      • Restart Home Assistant.

2. Configure Integration:

   • Go to Settings -> Devices & Services.
   • Click Add Integration.
   • Search for and select Google Keep Sync.
   • Enter your Google account username.
   • Generate and use an App Password for your Google account (see https://myaccount.google.com/apppasswords).
   • Follow the prompts to select the Google Keep lists you want to synchronize with Home Assistant.

Manual Installation

1. Copy Integration Files: Download the google_keep_sync folder and place it into the custom_components directory of your Home Assistant installation. If custom_components doesn't exist, create it in the same directory as your configuration.yaml.

2. Restart Home Assistant: Restart your Home Assistant to load the new integration.

3. Configuration:

   • Go to Settings -> Devices & Services.
   • Click Add Integration.
   • Search for and select Google Keep Sync.
   • Enter your Google account username.
   • Generate and use an App Password for your Google account (see https://myaccount.google.com/apppasswords) OR a Token
   • Add an optional list prefix that will be prepended to all lists added to Home Assistant.
   • Follow the prompts to select the Google Keep lists you want to synchronize with Home Assistant.

Usage

After setup, your selected Google Keep lists will be available in Home Assistant. You can view and interact with these lists, and any changes you make in Home Assistant will be instantly synced to Google Keep.

Services

As a result of the fact that we are working directly with native todo entities, you can use the built-in services to add, remove and update items from your synchronized lists.

Available Services

• todo.add_item
• todo.remove_item
• todo.update_item
• google_keep_sync.request_sync

google_keep_sync.request_sync

This service can be used to trigger a manual sync of all of your lists. This is helpful because you can use it from an automation or script. While you can use also use homeassistant.update_entity to trigger a sync, that service requires you to specify a certain entity id, while this service targets all of your lists.

There is a built in cooldown to ensure that this service is not called too frequently. Instead, it will log a warning if you call it too quickly.

Note that in some cases, the Google Keep Android app does not immediately send changes you have made to Google's servers. This means that if you call the service right after making the change on the Android app, it may not pick it up. It is recommended to add a delay before calling the service if you are trying to capture changes made on the Android app.

If you are using the Google Keep website or webapp, you can see the sync progress icon in the top right corner of the screen. Once it has finished spinning and you see the cloud icon with a checkmark, you can safely call the service.

Events

Google recently removed third party integrations from Google Assistant. Now you can re-create these integrations.

When a new item is added to a synced list via Google Assistant or from Google Keep, an add_item service call event will be triggered. This allows Home Assistant to pick up new items from Google Keep and sync them with third party systems such as Trello, Bring, Anylist etc.

This plugin extends Home Assistant's events so that the add_item service call is fired regardless of where the new item was added. The origin field in the event will be REMOTE if the item was added remotely to Google Keep, or LOCAL if it was added within Home Assistant.

Note: Only new items that are not completed at the time of syncing will trigger the event.

Below are some examples of how to do this, click to expand.

Sync Google Todo List with Trello via email

1. Install and configure this plugin

2. Install and configure the Anylist plugin

3. Create an email notify service in Home assistant

   1. Create a new app password in your Gmail.

   2. Setup creating cards by email in Trello

   3. Add the following to your config.yaml file.

   notify:
     - name: "Email to Trello Todo"
       platform: smtp
       server: "smtp.gmail.com"
       port: 587
       timeout: 15
       encryption: starttls
       sender: "your_email@gmail.com"
       username: "your_email@gmail.com"
       password: "app password"
       sender_name: "your name"
       recipient: "your_cards_by_email_address@boards.trello.com"

4. Create an Automation in Home Assistant:

   alias: Google Todo List
   description: Send new items added to Google's Todo List to Trello
   trigger:
     - platform: event
       event_type: call_service
       event_data:
         domain: todo
         service: add_item
       variables:
         item_name: "{{ trigger.event.data.service_data.item }}"
         list_name: "{{state_attr((trigger.event.data.service_data.entity_id)[0], 'friendly_name')}}"
         list_entity_id: "{{ (trigger.event.data.service_data.entity_id)[0] }}"
         origin: "{{ trigger.event.origin }}"
   condition:
     # Update this to the name of your To-do list in Home Assistant.
     - condition: template
       value_template: "{{ list_entity_id == 'todo.google_keep_to_do' }}"
   action:
     # Optional: Send a notification of new item in HA.
     - service: notify.persistent_notification
       data:
         message: "'{{item_name}}' was just added to the '{{list_name}}' list."
     # Call Home Assistant Notify service to send item to Trello Board.
     - service: notify.email_to_trello_todo
       data:
         title: "{{item_name}}"
         message:
     # Complete item from google shopping list. Can also call todo.remove_item to delete it from the list.
     # Update entity_id to the id of your google list in Home Assistant.
     - service: todo.update_item
       target:
         entity_id: todo.google_keep_to_do
       data:
         status: completed
         item: "{{item_name}}"
   # The maximum number of updates you want to process each update. If you make frequent changes, increase this number.
   mode: parallel
   max: 50

Sync Google Shopping List with Anylist

The same process works for Bring Shopping list or any other integrated list to Home Assistant.

1. Install and configure this plugin

2. Install and configure the Anylist plugin

3. Create an Automation in Home Assistant:

   alias: Google Shopping List
   description: Sync Google Shopping List with Anylist
   trigger:
     - platform: event
       event_type: call_service
       event_data:
         domain: todo
         service: add_item
       variables:
         item_name: "{{ trigger.event.data.service_data.item }}"
         list_name: "{{state_attr((trigger.event.data.service_data.entity_id)[0],'friendly_name')}}"
         list_entity_id: "{{ (trigger.event.data.service_data.entity_id)[0] }}"
         origin: "{{ trigger.event.origin }}"
   condition:
     # Update this to the name of your To-do list in Home Assistant.
     - condition: template
       value_template: "{{ list_entity_id == 'todo.google_keep_shopping_list' }}"
   action:
     # Optional: Send a notification of new item in Home Assistant.
     - service: notify.persistent_notification
       data:
         message: "'{{item_name}}' was just added to the '{{list_name}}' list."
     # Add new item to your Anylist list
     # Update the entity_id list name to your list in Home Assistant.
     - service: todo.add_item
       data:
         item: "{{item_name}}"
       target:
         entity_id: todo.anylist_alexa_shopping_list
     # Complete item from google shopping list. Can also call todo.remove_item to delete it from the list
     # Update entity_id to the id of your google list in Home Assistant.
     - service: todo.update_item
       target:
         entity_id: todo.google_keep_shopping_list
       data:
         status: completed
         item: "{{item_name}}"
   # The maximum number of updates you want to process each update. If you make frequent changes, increase this number.
   mode: parallel
   max: 50

Limitations

• Polling Interval: While changes made in Home Assistant are instantly reflected in Google Keep, changes made in Google Keep are not instantly reflected in Home Assistant. The integration polls Google Keep for updates every 15 minutes. Therefore, any changes made directly in Google Keep will be visible in Home Assistant after the next polling interval.

• Authentication: Use of an app password is strongly recommended, as there is no way for accounts with 2-Factor-Authentication to be connected otherwise. This will also allow you to easily revoke access to the integration without affecting your Google account and requiring you to change your password.

• Checkboxes in Keep: Only Google Keep notes with Show checkboxes selected will appear as options to sync with Home Assistant using this integration.

Security

As an additional security precaution, you can sign up for a new Google account to use exclusively with this integration. Afterward, on your primary account, add this new Google account as a collaborator on any lists you wish to synchronize.

Then provide the credentials for this new account (preferably still using an app password) to the integration. This will allow the integration limited access your Google Keep lists without having access to your entire primary Google account.

Troubleshooting

Encountering issues? Here are some common problems and their potential solutions:

Invalid Authentication Errors

If you're experiencing Invalid authentication errors, it could be due to incompatible versions of certain underlying libraries used by the integration, such as OpenSSL. To resolve this, consider using a manually-retrieved token for authentication instead of a password.

Generating a Token Using the Docker Container

You can use the Docker container created by @Brephlas.

Requirements

You need a computer that you can install Docker on. This can be any Linux computer, or you can even use a Windows machine by installing WSL. Note that you do not run these commands on your Home Assistant server itself, it must be a separate machine. Raspberry Pi machines will likely not work due to the ARM architecture.

Windows with WSL

If you want to use a Windows machine, you can install WSL2 and Docker. Follow the instructions here to install WSL2. Then, open Ubuntu and run the command sudo apt-get install docker.io.

Linux

If you are using a Linux machine, you can install Docker using the package manager of your choice. For Ubuntu, you can use the following commands:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install docker.io

Steps

1. After you have Docker installed, enter the following commands.

   docker pull breph/ha-google-home_get-token:latest
   docker run -it -d breph/ha-google-home_get-token

2. Copy the returned container ID to use in the following command.

   docker exec -it <ID> bash

3. Inside the container, enter the following command and answer the prompts to generate a master token. For the password, you can use either your regular password or an app password,

   python3 get_tokens.py

4. The script will generate two tokens, a "master token" and an "access token". Copy the entire master token, including the "aas_et/" at the beginning.

5. Use this token in the integration's configuration process by entering it into the token field (make sure you leave the password field blank).

Sync Delays

• Remember that changes made in Google Keep might not immediately reflect in Home Assistant due to the polling interval of the integration, which is set to every 15 minutes.

Connection Issues

• If you're unable to connect, check your network settings and ensure your Home Assistant instance can access the internet.

Integration Does Not Appear in Home Assistant

• After installing via HACS or manually, ensure you have restarted Home Assistant.
• Check the custom_components directory to verify that the google_keep_sync folder is present and correctly named.

Lists Not Syncing

• Ensure the lists you want to sync are selected during the integration setup.
• Verify that the Google account used has access to the desired Google Keep lists.

Disclaimer

This is an unofficial integration and is not created, endorsed, or supported by Google.