The Action Center in Windows 10 has a handy little Note button. It lets you create a new note in the OneNote UWP app. Microsoft has basically no customization options for this button. You have to tweak the registry to change the behavior of the Note button in the Action Center. We covered a little tip on how to bind the Note button to the OneNote desktop app by changing a registry key. You can change this very same key and have it open Google Keep or Evernote’s web interface. Here’s how you can open Google Keep or Evernote from the Note button in the Action Center.
Open the Windows Registry with administrative rights. Search for it in Cortana or Windows Search, right-click the result and select ‘Run as Administrator’. You will have to enter the administrator password to continue.
Navigate to the following location in the registry.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionActionCenterQuick ActionsAllSystemSettings_Launcher_QuickNote
Double-click the Uri key and enter one of the following URLs.
- For Google Keep, enter https://keep.google.com/.
- For Evernote, enter https://www.evernote.com/Home.action.
Reboot your system. If you have another web app that you want to redirect the Note button to, enter the URL for it. This will work for just about any web app.
The button is a little slow but it will open Google Keep or Evernote in your default browser. It works faster if you browser is already running. If you want to reset the button back to its default function, edit the value of the Uri key to the following;
onenote-cmd://quicknote?onOpen=typing
Make sure you restart your system after updating this particular key. The restart might not always be needed but it’s a good idea to reboot the system to make sure the button doesn’t randomly stop working. We tried to redirect the button to open an app but so far, no luck on that front.