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Sketch and Apple Pencil issues: (Missing Strokes/Pencil Input)


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@MissArdbeg I agree that it is annoying when something disappears and you don't know if it is gone for good or just not ready yet and will be released later.  Evernote could do a much better job in communicating changes.  That said, the Apple Watch support was one of the few features mentioned in their blog and it will be coming.

"There are a handful of features (such as editing tables, widgets, and Apple Watch support) that weren’t quite ready for today’s release, but we’re actively working to get those done and you should see them in one of our regular updates."

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@Stuart Madden @s2sailor

Thank you for reaching out, and for letting us know!

I moved this thread from requests to the issue report forum.

We had the dev team take a look and we were able to intermittently reproduce the issue.

We'll follow-up here once we have more information.

@stocky2605 Very glad to hear that this is working for you. Let us know if you encounter any issues!

 

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59 minutes ago, stocky2605 said:

I don‘t have any issues using my Apple Pencil to draw Sketches.

Double Tap to change pen / eraser is missing at this point.

The good thing is EN doesn‘t loose sketches in edit mode anymore after switching Apps.

@Shane D. Just wanted to note that I am having horrible issues with the Sketch feature. I can not print and have it recognize every stroke. Cursive for the most part is doable, but it still misses strokes. The different between the user not having issues and myself are the pencil versions. I am still using the original Apple Pencil and from the double tap reference it looks like if they aren't having issues it may be related to the pencil itself possibly.

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3 hours ago, Shane D. said:

@Stuart Madden @s2sailor

Thank you for reaching out, and for letting us know!

I moved this thread from requests to the issue report forum.

We had the dev team take a look and we were able to intermittently reproduce the issue.

We'll follow-up here once we have more information.

@stocky2605 Very glad to hear that this is working for you. Let us know if you encounter any issues!

 

Thanks @Shane D.

Just to clarify, I am using a Apple Pencil V1 if that is useful. I notice that using my finger in sketch mode is OK, so I know it’s not the screen hardware.

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在 2020/9/18 在 AM1點42分, Sayre Ambrosio說:

@Shane D. Just wanted to note that I am having horrible issues with the Sketch feature. I can not print and have it recognize every stroke. Cursive for the most part is doable, but it still misses strokes. The different between the user not having issues and myself are the pencil versions. I am still using the original Apple Pencil and from the double tap reference it looks like if they aren't having issues it may be related to the pencil itself possibly.

I have same problem,

ipad 2018 12.9 + Apple Pencil

F0C8B783-B660-4A8B-91BD-6C70F4AD13C1.png

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16 hours ago, Jelly1856 said:

I have same problem,

ipad 2018 12.9 + Apple Pencil

F0C8B783-B660-4A8B-91BD-6C70F4AD13C1.png

How did you manage to avoid missing pencil strokes?    As far as the quality goes, it seems like you need to zoom in (pinch) to show the dot grid....  the initial zoomed out view has perceived quality issues due to the zoom level.  

ScreenClip.thumb.png.94a7848506daece9a47e80c1ad3cfb89.png

 

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An Epic Total Fail

I am a long-time premium member.   I have been holding on for a long time hoping that the new management would finally start adding features that users have been requesting for years. 

 I had been hoping that with all of the feedback, complaints and requests, annotation would be improving.  Annotation in the Mac Beta has gotten very slightly better--but is still very clunky.   

This is supposed to be the new "improved" Evernote for iPad OS.  Apparently, they have been working on it for so long that that they missed the fact that the Apple Pencil was invented.   I agree, this is a "Total Fail."   Wow.  Even Bear, developed by a massive team of 3 people has Pencil support.  This is actually MUCH WORSE than the previous version of Evernote for iPad, and sketch in that version was already comically bad.   Free apps like OneNote and Apple Notes are way ahead of a supposedly "premium" Evernote experience. 

Extremely disappointing. 

 ☹️

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I wanted to say something similar. I've been using Evernote for years and was considering going to premium as my use of it warranted paying for the features but it kills me that it doesn't work with Apple Pencil.

I have bought and use Notability so that I can just write and sketch and bring in PDF's that I can annotate. Not even the 40% offer I keep getting could sway me right now until Evernote added better Apple Pencil functionality. I could be wrong but even Microsoft OneNote is better than Evernote for stylus notes.

Please Evernote, work with Apple Pencil so I can keep using you?! 

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一小時前, mprogram說:

I just tried sketching in the latest version on my iPad Pro. For some reason I was assuming that the sketching would be the same as before, but it’s so bad now. It’s really really bad.

Apart from the resolution and quality of the sketch, the version 10 can turn your existing high-resolution sketches into lower those if you edit them.

Evernote doesn't only let me make notes harder, but also ruin your work. They just treat you as a product.

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BTW.  This is not an “intermittent” issue.  Apple Pencil does not work.  I am using an iPad Pro 12.9”, Apple Pencil 2, iPad OS 14: i.e., it isn’t older hardware that is the problem. 

While the previous version of the app did have one huge glaring issue: sketches would be lost immediately if you left the app without tapping “Save” and many small ones:  messy ink, horrible highlighting.   However,  it did have some usefulness:  the ability to draw, a shapes tool, and decent handwriting.  The new version fixed the glaring issue but removed all usefulness.   Writing is intermittent, as is recognition of shapes.  It is also very low resolution.  In short, it went from really bad to completely unusable. 

 

 

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2 minutes ago, bigtelco said:

BTW.  This is not an “intermittent” issue.  Apple Pencil does not work.  I am using an iPad Pro 12.9”, Apple Pencil 2, iPad OS 14: i.e., it isn’t older hardware that is the problem. 

While the previous version of the app did have one huge glaring issue: sketches would be lost immediately if you left the app without tapping “Save” and many small ones:  messy ink, horrible highlighting.   However,  it did have some usefulness:  the ability to draw, a shapes tool, and decent handwriting.  The new version fixed the glaring issue but removed all usefulness.   Writing is intermittent, as is recognition of shapes.  It is also very low resolution.  In short, it went from really bad to completely unusable. 

 

 

image.png

Pinch to zoom in will fix the quality issues - once you zoom in you can see the dot grid of the "paper"  - this zoomed out view you're attempting to draw in seems to be the source of a "perceived" issue with quality.

However... pinch to zoom doesn't fix any apple pencil issues.... it still remains unusable. 

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Lol.  Actually, I did pinch to zoom here. I just exited to take a screenshot.  No matter, As you can see from the top line where I actually wrote:  “This is an intermittent issue?”  , this is completely unusable. Ugh.... 

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It doesn't remember pen color and line width, and my ability to take notes in the sketch mode is super flakey. Missing strokes, the pinch zoom makes taking notes with an Apple Pencil incomprehensible. Make the sketch have a 'set' paper size that's clear as it used to be or add a 'Stylus/Handwriting' note taking mode.  

Pairing it with Pen Ultimate is a non-starter. I'm not going to use two different apps to take and store notes. Any notes i take in Penultimate mean I can only edit them there, the thought of keeping notebook names consistent between two apps is a needless complication, because it used to work fine in Evernote. For years. Years! There have to be loads more people who relied completely on Evernote for their note taking with Apple Pencil. I'm on iPad Pro, Apple Pencil 2.

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Macsarule: I have been using Notability while waiting and hoping.  If all they changed was to eliminate the glitch where sketches would be lost if you switched to another app that would have been an improvement.  However, if looks like they started revising the rest of the code and sent out something half-baked.  Here's hoping that they at least give us an explanation and a plan.     I've started using Apple Notes and OneNote for some of my work with good results.  It is painful because of my embedded base of notes in Evernote, but other apps are making leaps forward in both UX and features while Evernote is still struggling. 

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11 hours ago, fkhorton said:

@Stuart Madden I'm having the same issue...what are you using in the meantime before a fix is released? 

@fkhorton, I've got Notability, which has always been rock solid for handwriting and audio recording (I particularly love the synced audio feature), neither of which, I'm afraid Evernote is currently not doing well. I sincerely hope the EN team are on this and working out the bugs.

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Came to this forum to make a post and see that it’s already been mentioned. IMHO, pencil support has always been terrible on Evernote and I was hoping that “10.0!!!!” was going to wow me. I actually re-upped not too long ago hoping to find a much improved product. Color me disappointed thus far.  
 

Evernote should have been a leader and innovator in the inking space, but they screwed around with a bunch of useless “features” for years and it really shows. 

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Glad to see it’s not just me. I don’t typically use Evernote - my wife does - and she didn’t have a pencil, so she never ran into this problem before. I just got her the 1st gen AP, and it just doesn’t work, skipping more strokes than it registers. Works great in every other app. Reading through this forum, it looks like this issue impacts both generations of Apple Pencil ? Does it also happen with 3rd party ones, like Wacom Bamboo ? I can still return the AP and get a different brand for her.

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Since the release of Pencil and the corresponding update of Notes, almost all of my Evernote workflow consists of handwritten Notes copied to Evernote for archiving with tags/OCR and corresponding previously excellent search.  The other tiny fraction my my general EN use, was scanning biz cards so they’d archive and sync across my ecosystem in iOS Contacts.

Every single one of those functions was rendered useless in 10.X

Handwritten Notes, copied to EN, disappear totally blank notes where the copy should be.  Biz card scanner has almost none of the MANDATORY add/edit feature that make quick work of scanning cards.  The abandonment of handled and indexed scroll makes searching notebooks with large numbers of notes, impractical if not impossible.

Evernote, has been the cornerstone of my paperless workflow for years and following the release of Pencil, I’ve been paperless exclusively.

The cluelessness of this anything but update, is staggering and completely irresponsible.

Evernote has until I organize and migrate all my content over to Notes to keep me as a sub.

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2 hours ago, Wanderling Reborn said:

Glad to see it’s not just me. I don’t typically use Evernote - my wife does - and she didn’t have a pencil, so she never ran into this problem before. I just got her the 1st gen AP, and it just doesn’t work, skipping more strokes than it registers. Works great in every other app. Reading through this forum, it looks like this issue impacts both generations of Apple Pencil ? Does it also happen with 3rd party ones, like Wacom Bamboo ? I can still return the AP and get a different brand for her.

I can write with my finger, so I am assuming that a capacitive stylus will work.  But, this is a big step back from Apple Pencil.  I am still hoping Evernote will tell us something....

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2 hours ago, bigtelco said:

I can write with my finger, so I am assuming that a capacitive stylus will work.  But, this is a big step back from Apple Pencil.  I am still hoping Evernote will tell us something....

I don't believe there's any smart capacitive stylii (with palm rejection at least) for iPad. Bamboo, as far as I know, uses the same technology as Apple pencil.

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2 hours ago, Wanderling Reborn said:

I don't believe there's any smart capacitive stylii (with palm rejection at least) for iPad. Bamboo, as far as I know, uses the same technology as Apple pencil.

According to the Wacom website: „To use your stylus, you need to download a Wacom stylus compatible app that must be paired with your stylus.“.  I doubt that Evernote 10 is a Wacom-compatible app on the iPad. 

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12 hours ago, bigtelco said:

According to the Wacom website: „To use your stylus, you need to download a Wacom stylus compatible app that must be paired with your stylus.“.  I doubt that Evernote 10 is a Wacom-compatible app on the iPad. 

Well, then Wacom’s out i of question, too. Besides, Apple Pencil is great everywhere else.

For now, she’s been taking notes in Notability and exporting to EN. This means that she has to edit them in Notability as well, do not the best setup.

 

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19 hours ago, Stuart Madden said:

Not sure if this has been reported yet but turning off Scribble feature fixes the Sketch functionality in EN 10.0.3

 

PNG image.png

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I tried turning off Scribble.  The good news:  I was able to write two words!  The bad news:  After two words, Sketch stopped taking ANY input from the Pencil.   I exited and tried in a different note, same result:  the app recognized the Pencil and allowed me to write two words, then it disengaged and stopped taking input.    Conclusion: Still broken.  No joy.

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19 hours ago, bigtelco said:

I tried turning off Scribble.  The good news:  I was able to write two words!  The bad news:  After two words, Sketch stopped taking ANY input from the Pencil.   I exited and tried in a different note, same result:  the app recognized the Pencil and allowed me to write two words, then it disengaged and stopped taking input.    Conclusion: Still broken.  No joy.

@bigtelco Just some thoughts that I'm sure you've tried - but just in case...

EN v10.0.3? - closed and restarted EN? - rebooted iPad?

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1 hour ago, Stuart Madden said:

@bigtelco Just some thoughts that I'm sure you've tried - but just in case...

EN v10.0.3? - closed and restarted EN? - rebooted iPad?

@StuartMadden, thanks for the heads up.  I updated to   EN v10.0.3 (which I needed to do manually) , turned off Scribble and the pencil does now work.  Still low resolution,  the shapes tool is inconsistent, the grid is gone, and overall still inferior to its already-bad predecessor, but it does now work.  Caution, if Scribble is turned on, it reverts to its old bad self.   Still bad, but improving!

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On 10/2/2020 at 9:37 PM, Stuart Madden said:

Not sure if this has been reported yet but turning off Scribble feature fixes the Sketch functionality in EN 10.0.3

 

PNG image.png

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Had the same experience. Scribble off and sketch is working much better. At least experiencing less lag and most of the sketches I make are captured. Not yet 100% though. Working on Ipad Pro 12,9" 2015 (1st generation), Apple pencil 1,  IOS 14.0.1 , Evernote V10.0.3

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5 hours ago, Rob de Vries said:

Had the same experience. Scribble off and sketch is working much better. At least experiencing less lag and most of the sketches I make are captured. Not yet 100% though. Working on Ipad Pro 12,9" 2015 (1st generation), Apple pencil 1,  IOS 14.0.1 , Evernote V10.0.3

I wish I could get excited about the fact that if you change your settings you can access a sketch app that is pretty much inferior to its already bad predecessor. Then when you are done with a single sketch you need to turn Scribble back on.   This is not really a solution. It would be great if Evernote would actually tell us what their plans are for this feature.   

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  • Level 5

Probably it is not a good workaround (but may help when you need to use it), but it points to the root cause of the issue, which is an interference of the Scribble Feature introduced with iOS 14 and the new EN client.

Let us hope they get this interference located and sorted out.

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4 minutes ago, PinkElephant said:

Probably it is not a good workaround (but may help when you need to use it), but it points to the root cause of the issue, which is an interference of the Scribble Feature introduced with iOS 14 and the new EN client.

Let us hope they get this interference located and sorted out.

Interesting thought. Except that there is no "interference" in:  Notability, Bear, OneNote, Procreate....   In fact, this is the only app I have tried that contains a handwriting function where this is an issue.  More likely, the developers didn't spend time with iOS14 prior to this release.   The Beta users were all on iOS13 so they wouldn't have caught it.  This is on Evernote. Hopefully, they start telling us more about what to expect....  I really thought that Ian Small was starting a welcome pattern of communication with users, now we are back to crickets....

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On 10/6/2020 at 12:56 PM, Rob de Vries said:

Had the same experience. Scribble off and sketch is working much better. At least experiencing less lag and most of the sketches I make are captured. Not yet 100% though. Working on Ipad Pro 12,9" 2015 (1st generation), Apple pencil 1,  IOS 14.0.1 , Evernote V10.0.3

Updated to EN 10.0.4. The problem of missing strokes still exists when scribble is on. When scribble is off everything is ok. However the lines when sketching with the pencil are now smooth again and used too what we had in previous versions (<10) and not 'jagged' (which was another problem with EN 10 and apple pencil). Step by step we are getting there. Hopefully EN will be fixing the missing strokes when scribble is on in IOS14

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29 minutes ago, Jaya Shekarraju said:

We are working on this issue and should fix this soon. Thank you all for your patience. 

I maybe forgot to post a video update I did recently - but I found it working just fine with Apple Scribble mode on or off.
However, the main bug I found was it taking too long to save files - it seems like we have infinite 'paper' and although that idea is nice, I'm guessing it is generating far too large of file sizes - I waited SEVEN minutes for a simple sketch note to save and then gave up and aborted it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iwwm8LVXLwE  

 

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Looks like Apples new feature Scribble breaks Sketching in the iPad app. I'm sharing a note with the actual sketch and related video from when I wrote it. Figured I would post here so people can see a possible workaround if they are in the same boat as I am.
 

https://www.evernote.com/shard/s527/sh/a5906655-b71a-764d-2736-7cc23d344430/92192abdff08c281179d238e7a0da7b6

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3 hours ago, Sayre Ambrosio said:

I'm sharing a note with the actual sketch and related video from when I wrote it. Figured I would post here so people can see a possible workaround if they are in the same boat as I am.
https://www.evernote.com/shard/s527/sh/a5906655-b71a-764d-2736-7cc23d344430/92192abdff08c281179d238e7a0da7b6

Is this a public link?

edit:
Sorry, using my iPad the link opened in my Evernote app
I traced it to this "Open in Evernote" that somehow got locked inIMG_3799.thumb.jpeg.aca158bf7981376129160ec9300f3166.jpeg

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On 10/15/2020 at 9:35 PM, Sayre Ambrosio said:

Looks like Apples new feature Scribble breaks Sketching in the iPad app. I'm sharing a note with the actual sketch and related video from when I wrote it. Figured I would post here so people can see a possible workaround if they are in the same boat as I am.
 

https://www.evernote.com/shard/s527/sh/a5906655-b71a-764d-2736-7cc23d344430/92192abdff08c281179d238e7a0da7b6

OMG thanks i'm not  such fan of scribble but i needed use sketch, hope fix this quickly 

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I have the same terrible performance for handwritten notes (skipping many strokes) in new Endnote 10.0.4 on iOS 14 (iPad Pro 12” 2020 with Apple Pencil 2). As advised above I turn off Apple Scribble mode to temporary cure this problem. (Is there a quick way to turn Scribble on/off? Or did I have to root around in System Settings every time to do it?)

***** please fix this soon.

Separate issues:
- Please ensure that the previous pencil settings (color/width) are remembered.

- Could you also provide another better pen tool specifically tailored for handwriting? (In addition  to the current sketching pencil tool that is a little too much like using a sharpened charcoal pencil.)

thank you for fixing the bug that caused us to lose handwriting docs when switching away from EN.

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Please bring back the previous pen tip/nib. The current pen nib setting looks terrible. I prefer hand writing note and I have been using the sketch function all these while for this purpose. And the pen latency is terrible, to say the least

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I’m using Evernote v10.0.4 on a new Gen 4 IPad Pro 12.9”.  I’m also having the lag using the Apple Pencil in Sketch mode. Nearly every other stroke is missed when writing at a normal pace.  I slowed the writing to a snail pace and it stopped missing the strokes.  

I hope pencil support improves drastically to be on par with the Notability app. I would prefer to manage all notes in Evernote, but since the Pencil is my preferred method, I’m continuing to use Notability.  

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  • 2 weeks later...

I did the unwise thing and also updated Evernote to latest a week ago. What an "amazing" experience folks!

(Both 13.6.x and 14.0.2 iOS affected.)

For starters, spent half the time even finding where you have burried the handwriting option.

OK, so now we call it Sketch and eats more screen area for no apparent reason (At least on a 12.7" iPad Pro that is). Interestingly enough no new features. Awesome!

Everything is moved  around so that whatever muscle memory I taught is now useless.

Started drawing and it turns out shapes look like ***** - OK I realized I need to explicitly enable shape detection every time I open a drawing!

Then realized that default line width is changed at initial zoom. I can live with that.

Then I finally tried writing. Unspeakably bad, letter contours are jagged, there is less handwritten feel in terms of varying line thickness, everything looks as if I was doing pumping caffeine straight in the vein.

Persevering through it all, the nail in the coffin: the copying feature. It's ridiculous. The marquee shows in the beginning and immediately disappears. I can move the selected drawing but cannot see what I am selecting.

Finally, an added bonus - where the hell is the context menu???

 

Two things are obvious from this:

1) Nobody is testing this product. The same people that never thought about how annoying loosing work is if the iPad falls asleep on an open editor, now have not even tried these changes because there is not a single thing that works!

2) Nobody cares about paying customers in the last two months since the thread started I've not seen a single response from the Evernote staff even if just to attempt a half-assed apology and lie that the team is working to fix the issues.

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  • 4 weeks later...
  • 2 months later...

@longtimeuser_jm   @Daniel Tass  

Had no problems anymore since 10.0.4  (see below) but needed to turn scribble off. However on all updates followed 10.1 / 10.2 / 10.3 / 10.4 / 10.5 and the latest 10.5.1 it's even working fine with scribble on.  I'm working on a the oldest 12,9" Ipad (generation 1) so expect that newer Ipads should be working fine too. 

 

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For me it works fine: iPad Pro 10.5, Apple pencil 1st gen, iOS 14.4, EN iOS 10.5.1. Scribble is enabled.

The EN sketch option is mainly a quick plot-it-down feature. It does not have the smoothing function pure handwriting apps often have (I use Goodnotes 5, which in turn uses the Nebo engine), so it will always look a bit more edgy. But it works, I like the endless canvas it offers, and OCR makes handwriting searchable. So EN IMHO delivers what they promisse.

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19 minutes ago, Jamison.IO said:

I use goodnotes, too. Any workflow tips between the two? Do you get the GN notes into Evernote somehow?

You could use the new collaboration feature to insert a link in Evernote. That’s what I do. 

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Usually I keep the both tools apart. As long as I am taking notes on an issue, they stay in GoodNotes. Search there is pretty good, I can make edits, I have presentation mode. Presentation mode is pretty useful as a virtual replacement for a conventional flip chart in these times.

Once a project is done, or on regular notes from time to time, I close the GN notebook and export as pdf to EN. I include the search index GN has build because I think on handwriting it is better than the server based OCR of EN. In EN it is filed together with other documents on the same project or work area.

@Sayre Ambrosio Thx, will give it a try.

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  • 3 weeks later...

This is the ultimate solution: the add-on app Penultimate

https://apps.apple.com/no/app/penultimate/id354098826

Ideally, I would love for Evernote to integrate all the function of Penultimate in the Evernote app so we don’t need an add-on. 

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  • Level 5

IMHO is one of the weaker apps for drawing and handwriting - it lacks the smoothing function that makes handwriting better, and has no own OCR capability for handwritten text. I regard it as so basic that either I use the build in EN Sketch for a quick drawing, or GoodNotes 5 for extended use.

Yes, Penultimate was bought by EN a few years back, and never was really integrated or developed to be a valuable element in the EN universe. It was a management at that time that bought other companies and sold socks - IMHO both a sign of a lack of creativity and focus. 

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  • 4 months later...

Does anyone know how to switch off the “variable ink” that currently appears on iOS (iPad Pro, 2018) Evernote. It’s just not smooth, and the artificial variation in ink is completely distorting my handwriting. Id really like it to be uniform. 

AF2BB40F-3F72-4E48-8F20-5781D33F9308.jpeg

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