I love Evernote, but after several years as a user (primarily for academic research), I am acutely aware of several areas in dire need of development (which would probably be quite easy to do).
Evernote is lagging several years behind the competition in terms of features, having made only minor incremental changes since I started using it. With apps like Notion currently stealing the spotlight, Evernote needs to develop quickly indeed if it wants to maintain its user base.
Despite the power of Notion, I haven't quite been willing to make the jump, primarily because of Evernote's magnificent search, web clipper, and offline functionality. However, in order for Evernote to survive going forward, I believe these five features are absolutely vital (and wouldn't take long to implement). If any of the developers are reading, I hope you find these suggestions helpful:
Custom note order (i.e. drag-and-drop), as in OneNote, Scrivener, and virtually every other notetaking app. The only way to manually arrange the order of notes is to put an alphabetical/numerical code at the start of the note title, but the moment you want to rearrange those notes, you have to go through and re-title everything by hand. When creating databases, there is usually a logical order for information to be presented in, so this feature is vital for researchers.
Hierarchy. Whether the Evernote Team like it or not, hierarchical organisation is vital to keeping notes organised and easily accessible (insert Jordan Peterson joke here). Tags do offer a limited hierarchy, but it isn't very convenient in terms of how most people actually use the app. I can think of two solutions under this subheading:
Stackable folders. People have been asking for this feature for years, and it blows my mind that we can still only create two-tiered folders (stacks with notebooks inside). The inevitable result is either (a) notebooks with far too many notes, (b) stacks holding an insane list of notebooks, or (c) both. If you've been using Evernote for a while, you probably know what I'm talking about here.
Sub-notes. In some cases, there is information that I'll probably only ever want to view as a sub-document of another note. Rather than burying it inside the main note itself (which can make it hard to find the information), sub-notes allow information to be stored as a separate document, but within another note. This works incredibly well in OneNote and Scrivener, helping to reduce clutter and make it easy to navigate between subsections of a given topic.
Custom metadata. This is one area where Notion absolutely hits it out of the park, bringing it the closest any app has come to matching the power of Scrivener. As great as Evernote's search function is, there is no way to categorise your tags and then search by those categories. Custom metadata allows users to create additional columns, and place tags, text, checkboxes, etc in those columns, for extra sorting power.
e.g. In Notion/Scrivener, I can create fields for "Screenwriter" and "Director", and enter the relevant name into each field for my note on a film. Then, if need be, I can search only for films directed by a given artist, while excluding films where they were screenwriter instead. In spreadsheet/table view, there is a separate column for each category, which lets me see a lot of information about my research materials. In Evernote, I can search for notes tagged with the artist's name, but there is no differentiation by role. This is a crucial feature for any serious research app, and vital if Evernote is to compete with Notion and other newcomers.
Note descriptions. Scrivener users will be familiar with this one. When viewing the note list, there is a text field below the title that lets you add a more detailed description of what the note is about. Incredibly useful if you want to know the key ideas of your notes without clicking on each one individually and waiting for it to load.
Idea
Rufus M 23
I love Evernote, but after several years as a user (primarily for academic research), I am acutely aware of several areas in dire need of development (which would probably be quite easy to do).
Evernote is lagging several years behind the competition in terms of features, having made only minor incremental changes since I started using it. With apps like Notion currently stealing the spotlight, Evernote needs to develop quickly indeed if it wants to maintain its user base.
Despite the power of Notion, I haven't quite been willing to make the jump, primarily because of Evernote's magnificent search, web clipper, and offline functionality. However, in order for Evernote to survive going forward, I believe these five features are absolutely vital (and wouldn't take long to implement). If any of the developers are reading, I hope you find these suggestions helpful:
Custom note order (i.e. drag-and-drop), as in OneNote, Scrivener, and virtually every other notetaking app. The only way to manually arrange the order of notes is to put an alphabetical/numerical code at the start of the note title, but the moment you want to rearrange those notes, you have to go through and re-title everything by hand. When creating databases, there is usually a logical order for information to be presented in, so this feature is vital for researchers.
Hierarchy. Whether the Evernote Team like it or not, hierarchical organisation is vital to keeping notes organised and easily accessible (insert Jordan Peterson joke here). Tags do offer a limited hierarchy, but it isn't very convenient in terms of how most people actually use the app. I can think of two solutions under this subheading:
Stackable folders. People have been asking for this feature for years, and it blows my mind that we can still only create two-tiered folders (stacks with notebooks inside). The inevitable result is either (a) notebooks with far too many notes, (b) stacks holding an insane list of notebooks, or (c) both. If you've been using Evernote for a while, you probably know what I'm talking about here.
Sub-notes. In some cases, there is information that I'll probably only ever want to view as a sub-document of another note. Rather than burying it inside the main note itself (which can make it hard to find the information), sub-notes allow information to be stored as a separate document, but within another note. This works incredibly well in OneNote and Scrivener, helping to reduce clutter and make it easy to navigate between subsections of a given topic.
Custom metadata. This is one area where Notion absolutely hits it out of the park, bringing it the closest any app has come to matching the power of Scrivener. As great as Evernote's search function is, there is no way to categorise your tags and then search by those categories. Custom metadata allows users to create additional columns, and place tags, text, checkboxes, etc in those columns, for extra sorting power.
e.g. In Notion/Scrivener, I can create fields for "Screenwriter" and "Director", and enter the relevant name into each field for my note on a film. Then, if need be, I can search only for films directed by a given artist, while excluding films where they were screenwriter instead. In spreadsheet/table view, there is a separate column for each category, which lets me see a lot of information about my research materials. In Evernote, I can search for notes tagged with the artist's name, but there is no differentiation by role. This is a crucial feature for any serious research app, and vital if Evernote is to compete with Notion and other newcomers.
Note descriptions. Scrivener users will be familiar with this one. When viewing the note list, there is a text field below the title that lets you add a more detailed description of what the note is about. Incredibly useful if you want to know the key ideas of your notes without clicking on each one individually and waiting for it to load.
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