Google Keep for Android Wear now lets you take notes and set reminders from your wrist

Google today updated Google Keep for Android Wear with functionality that makes it essentially independent from your Android smartphone. The latest version of the app is available on Google Play.

Until today, Google Keep for Android Wear offered basic functionality and heavily depended on the Android app. Now, you can leave your phone alone and handle most functions from your smartwatch.

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You can not only view notes on your Android Wear device by launching Google Keep from the app list or saying “OK Google, open Keep,” but now you can take a new note by simply saying “OK Google, take a note.” Other functionality works as you might expect: Swipe up and down to browse through notes, tap to open a specific note, and tap the plus sign to create a new note by speaking.

You can also add reminders, including recurring reminders, to notes directly from your Android Wear watch. If this sounds familiar, that’s because recurring reminders were added to the Android app just last month.

Google Keep for Android Wear is likely getting an update now because it is following in the footsteps of its Android counterpart. Yet there’s also the major Android Wear update announced earlier this week to consider.

Android Wear users are getting always-on apps: You can keep an app visible, as opposed to having it disappear when you drop your arm. To conserve battery life, Android Wear turns the screen black and white when the smartwatch isn’t in use, and then turns on full color when you look at it. Having Google Keep running on your wrist the whole time as you browse the grocery store or run errands around town sounds very useful.

Furthermore, the latest version of Android Wear lets you access your apps, contacts, and messages by just swiping left on the watch face. In other words, a few things are coming together to make Google Keep suddenly a lot more useful on your wrist.