App Performance Issues: Slowness/Poor Responsiveness/Lag

[CalS 5,307]

8 minutes ago, PinkElephant said:

Personally I would install the legacy client, not a regular older client version.

All older clients will try to update, so you must always remember not to click on that button. Legacy is the same software as 6.25 Win / 7.14 Mac, but does not ask for an update.

A good thought, but I have been using 6.25.1 since forever with no attempts to update. Even though I left Automatically check for updates checked.  Oops.  6.25.2 has some slight differences, color of the icon for one if I remember from when it appeared.  Not a biggie either way.

[PinkElephant 8,751]

Maybe you are ignored by the updater, because v10 is not yet ready for the pile of notes you would throw at it 😉

Don't know, seems to be a bit erratic. But you can be sure of this: It will force-update you whenever you expect it the last, and have something else to do - urgently 😈

[Charlypen 2]

Evernote for Windows running on windows 10  on Dell laptop I7  32 Gb memory 500GB ssd.

Evernote is incredibly slow, all my other apps are like greased lightning well a lot of them.

Often hangs and restarting Evernote doesn't help.

In the attached screen shots I clicked on a TAG and evernote went into it's  forever loop.

This has been happening for about 6 weeks now through all the new releases.

Evernote web works perfectly.

Current Evernote version 10.16.7

Please fix soon.

 

Evernote screenshots.pdf

[jdmarch 49]

Others have reported this, but just to confirm... a few days ago I wanted to make a very quick note on my Android phone. Since, as a paying user of more than 15 years, I still sometimes imagine that Evernote is actually a working app, I opened it up, tried to create a new note, nothing, just frozen.... so I sent myself a gmail instead. Later when I had time for research I discovered that after force quitting and restarting  Evernote on the phone, I could create a note. 

As I've stated previously in this thread, I'm still using 6.25.1 on Windows. And it still works.

[Aris Giannakos 0]

The lag since last few updates is too much. It shall be fixed, otherwise, it's not a worthy app to buy! It's a great app and it's a pity to destroy it with some stupid simple failures like slow running or duplicate notes....

[BrunoB 7]

I am in SW architecture. I can understand what happened. The Evernote Team wanted to line everything up from a clean and uniform new base, same for all platform etc... But no one considered the performance aspect, for legacy users being with more than 1,000 notes (not mentionning those > 10,000...).

No one at Evernote considered that acceptable latency thresholds would be 2x or 3x crossed.

No one at Evernote considered that the SW would become ultimately unusable.

The issue is that there is generally no way back beyond this point, since the performance issue is intimately tight to architecture choices that were made. Unfortunately I don't expect miracles here.

[RavBoy 189]

On 7/2/2021 at 2:32 AM, CalS said:

On 7/2/2021 at 1:47 AM, Faisal Malallah said:

i7 Desktop with 16 GB of Ram

SSD

100mb fast internet

I'm pretty sure it's not my setup. 

V10 desktop is without a doubt slower than V6.25.1 no matter your setup.  It has improved in my toe dipping for simple note navigation, though still slower.  I have not tried but more complicated multi note activities are reported to be more impacted.  Probably not the worst for a casual user but if you use EN to manage a paperless life style it could get annoying.  Hence I an still on 6.25.1.  Hoping this speed issue is fixed before that version sunsets.

Was just reading through this thread when I came upon Cals remarks 'quoted above'.  This really 'hits the nail on the proverbial head', re my fear of what may/will happen when EN sunsets/pulls-the-plug on V6.25.1, where I continue to sit, all smug like, that I wasn't an early adopter of v10. 

So if/when the curtains come down on v6.25, and if speed/performance has not been fixed by then, and given its now 10 months since Oct 2020 v10 release and seemingly not much improvement yet, regardless of how many updates purport to have improved speed/performance then I will be heading straight to OneNote or Nimbus. 

Pretty disappointed I'm still reading about speed/performance issues nearly a year later!

[w8rn8r 8]

On 7/15/2021 at 1:04 PM, BrunoB said:

I am in SW architecture. I can understand what happened. The Evernote Team wanted to line everything up from a clean and uniform new base, same for all platform etc... But no one considered the performance aspect, for legacy users being with more than 1,000 notes (not mentionning those > 10,000...).

No one at Evernote considered that acceptable latency thresholds would be 2x or 3x crossed.

No one at Evernote considered that the SW would become ultimately unusable.

The issue is that there is generally no way back beyond this point, since the performance issue is intimately tight to architecture choices that were made. Unfortunately I don't expect miracles here.

I'm afraid you're quite likely correct with this.

It seems that the vision of a single code base and consistent user experience across platforms might have been too strong, and the high cost in terms of lost performance wasn't clear enough for quite a long time.

And I agree that there's most likely no return path, from a software architecture perspective.

I'm still hoping that not all is lost. I've noticed that my initial impression changed after a few days; it appears like there might have been something like an initial "conversion period" during which performance was more impacted than it is now, a few days later. Bug fixes have made the Android version usable again, though still not performant enough. On Windows, while I'm not impressed with the performance I'm seeing, the application is still good enough for me to continue using it for another while.

So I'm sitting on a fence ... trying to make up my mind.

[stuartthompson 15]

I was recently updated to version 10. I have been having large performance issues ever since.

I have been an Evernote user for over a decade, since the early days of the service. Over that time I have accrued a large number of notes over several notebooks. I use Evernote on a daily basis for everything from GTD, archiving, technical notes, planning, journaling, and a whole host of other content-heavy applications.

The offline client has served me very well during that time. When I quickly (!) needed an answer to a question I could pop open Evernote and find what I was looking for almost immediately. The new v10 client spins for up to a minute or more on many of my notes, regardless of whether I opened the same note just a few minutes earlier. I have a few rather large notes that have yet to respond at all, just spinning for multiple minutes until I get frustrated and close the application.

This is making Evernote unusable for me. If the client cannot provide me access to my notes quickly then it ceases to provide a useful function. Waiting for minutes to access reference material that should (and was!) stored locally is a non-starter. When I open my notebooks or search, I need the material to be returned quickly. Otherwise, I have to mentally put down what I was working on when I needed the reference note in order to wait or debug the problem with the EN client.

I have found myself copying and pasting my most referenced notes into other applications just so that I can access the information quickly. Having to maintain "quick reference note" copies in another application invalidates the whole purpose of having Evernote in the first place.

Please restore offline caching functionality. The notes need to load near instantly and without UI-blocking spinners. Otherwise, the whole point of a handy nearby notebook is lost.

 

Client version: 10.17.6-win-ddl-public (2775)
Editor: v126.2.16348
Service: v1.37.8

 

[celia80302 9]

Well put and apt description of the problems many others are experiencing, including myself. Since this what I consider “debacle” with Evernote occurred, I have experienced Quickbooks  Online move to a web app only, eliminating their desktop version. Dashlane, my password manager has done the same. Even while I run its Legacy version (yes they even call it Legacy just like Evernote), it too is slow and rife with a multitude of problems I did not experience before this web app migration. Dropbox also has some issues for me since they developed their web app but at least I can open and move docs quickly without using it if I choose to do so.

The signals that providers are moving to what we deem extremely slow and clunky web apps are everywhere. The question in my mind now is can they quickly become as efficient as their former desktop apps?  The answer remains to be seen. All we have is now and now is presenting lots of problems to end users in the way of impediments to efficient workflow. Evernote 10 isn’t even close to being as efficient as Legacy.

I use both Mac and Windows computers syncing across them. When I took a MacBook Pro to my local Mac repair last week fir a small issue, I was informed they were going to stop getting trained on the new computers. The owner described the new iMac as a “giant iPad”. The Surface is an iteration of a tablet getting larger and larger for office use. This evolution in hardware seems to be relative to the evolution in software. The demand for super lightweight and thin portable devices is fueling it as well.

It is a shrinking minority of people who see and experience the inefficiency of web apps including Google Docs and so many others. This is because the current majority of users have never experienced the efficiency that working with dedicated apps can create.

I don’t see Evernote reverting to anything that resembles the Legacy version.. It has been too long and web apps are the trend.

Like you, I have been a longtime user and manage many notebooks across two Premium accounts. I find others negatively critiquing other apps proposed as replacements for Evernote Legacy. What is the best replacement for Evernote? It is only a matter of time before we will be forced to migrate to something else. What will it be?

[Stuhrer 261]

19 hours ago, stuartthompson said:

The new v10 client spins for up to a minute or more on many of my notes

I normally leave Evernote running all time on my MacBook. However, on the rare occasions that I newly started the app I had the same experience. In that case it helps to stop and re-start the application. Apart from that I am quite happy with the performance on my MacBook Pro. Only the iOS app on my older iPad Air 2 is slow but performance has improved as well on this platform. I also use the Web app and after a long time I am now very happy with this because now all platforms look alike and features have been added much faster recently.

[William C 36]

Anyone out there have any experience with TheBrain, possibly as an alternative, or supplement to EN?

https://www.thebrain.com/

 

[stuartthompson 15]

8 hours ago, Stuhrer said:

I normally leave Evernote running all time on my MacBook. However, on the rare occasions that I newly started the app I had the same experience. In that case it helps to stop and re-start the application. 

Unfortunately, despite multiple restarts, the spinner appears and reappears multiple times both while viewing and editing my larger notes. There are some smaller notes that seem fine, but even after the application has been sitting open for a long time, I can browse to a note and be greeted by a long-lived spinner. I'm unable to scroll or edit during this time. Restarting the application doesn't seem to fix.

[simonle 0]

I don't have many notes, under 2k, so I haven't experienced the slowness or the spinning wheel before, but lately I've seen the green spinning wheel almost constantly. It usually appears when I first start up the app on my PC and try to browse through notes or even create new notes. Extremely annoying. I am also experiencing slowness when it comes to highlighting text within notes and right clicking to bring up the context menu, that sometimes freezes the whole app and I cannot do anything but close the app down and restart. 

[10gallonhat 20]

I'm back to trying v10 again after months of ignoring it and happily using legacy. They've sort of fixed a couple of the issues I had, but this slowness is new for me. V10 hangs for me on some notes. It almost seems like it's note specific. Maybe due to size?

I'm not getting he spinning cursor, but I am getting things like the cursor you'd see when altering the size of table columns - when there is no table. Once today it completely locked up and gave me the "windows is not responding - do you want to wait or restart?" message. I see that there are 4 to 8 processes running in task manager. The hanging and multiple processes show up again and again, even after I reboot.

[PinkElephant 8,751]

There are still thing happening in v10 that are weird - like a loading circle on a very small note that won’t go away. After closing the note, opening another and then coming back, usually it will open in an instant.

If you could feed cases like this into support, including an activity log could help to track and crack down on these bugs.

[Symbology101 0]

I get a wait circle when I open up EverNote that lasts for 30 seconds or more.  I have things to do instead of waiting on an update to download that I know I am not going to want.  At least have the technical skills to put it in the background instead of wasting thousands of hours of user's time.

I want automatic updates turned off.  I need new features just about NEVER. 
If I could go back to the 2018 version I would do it in a heartbeat. 
It performed well, it searched quickly, and it stayed out of my so that I can record thoughts, quotes, and important information.

[jdmarch 49]

Android issue again. Opened EN... took 30 sec to start, not like the old days, but it did start and I was able to search for a note ok and open it to read. But when I tried to edit it, just spin, spin, spin. Not a long note -- a page or two.

Fortunately I still have legacy on a Windows laptop and was able to do the edit there. The edits then appeared on the Android within a few minutes (not sure exactly, I did not check immediately.)

I don't remember if I said this before -- I have about 11K notes

[kkrathi 25]

On 7/15/2021 at 4:04 AM, BrunoB said:

I am in SW architecture. I can understand what happened. The Evernote Team wanted to line everything up from a clean and uniform new base, same for all platform etc... But no one considered the performance aspect, for legacy users being with more than 1,000 notes (not mentionning those > 10,000...).

No one at Evernote considered that acceptable latency thresholds would be 2x or 3x crossed.

No one at Evernote considered that the SW would become ultimately unusable.

The issue is that there is generally no way back beyond this point, since the performance issue is intimately tight to architecture choices that were made. Unfortunately I don't expect miracles here.

This!  Evernote staff, are you reading this?  Frustrated with so many performance issues.  Even trying to press search within a note, I have to wait a couple of seconds before Evernote allows the cursor to be active and the search criteria to be typed.  This is when the last straw hit on my camel's cart! Now have to figure out how to get back to 6.25.  In parallel, Evernote marketing team very casually sends me emails to upgrade from premium to professional.  Nicely done - left hand and right hand of Evernote!

[PinkElephant 8,751]

About your initial question: No.

The forum is user to user. Staff may show by, but it is rather sporadic.

About your second question:

https://help.evernote.com/hc/en-us/articles/360052560314-Install-an-older-version-of-Evernote

 

If you intend to stick with legacy, upgrading makes little sense - AFAIK the specific Professional features will not work with that client. So another issue settled.

[kkrathi 25]

4 hours ago, PinkElephant said:

About your initial question: No.

The forum is user to user. Staff may show by, but it is rather sporadic.

About your second question:

https://help.evernote.com/hc/en-us/articles/360052560314-Install-an-older-version-of-Evernote

 

If you intend to stick with legacy, upgrading makes little sense - AFAIK the specific Professional features will not work with that client. So another issue settled.

Thank you for sharing the legacy download link.  It says this legacy version can co-exist with new version.  So that's what i am gonna do.  Would you know if each of them have their own separate local databases?

[PinkElephant 8,751]

Each client installs an own database. The one for v10 is always on the system drive, for legacy you can decide where to install.

[Amb 0]

Seems we are all experiencing performance issues that are affecting our experience significantly.

Has anyone discovered more responsive apps?  I can adjust I guess, but the point of Evernote was always having what I needed precisely when I needed it - searching and discovery shouldn't be slow.

Thanks

[SacKen 4]

I installed "Legacy" after initially upgrading and the new version was a hawt mess (I couldn't even resize a picture pasted in a note!). I just had to do a fresh install of Windows and figured I'd try the new Evernote version again since it had been almost a year or so. Big mistake! It takes forever to start, search seems to not show things I know are there, clicking on a link takes several seconds to show in the browser, and I counted that simply right-clicking in a note takes 13 seconds for the menu to popup. On top of that, I really don't see anything that I would consider and upgrade or improvement over the old version. Just more bloat and ***** that get in the way of the simple action I need to perform.

I came here to see if the hanging was something with my install, but looks like I'll just have to go back to Legacy. After many years of using Evernote, it may be time to start looking for an alternative since it looks like they've gone down the bad path of so many of the old applications I've had to abandon recently. (Quicken was the most heart-wrenching. Been using it since the early 90s.)

[fredhammersmith 59]

22 hours ago, Amb said:

Seems we are all experiencing performance issues that are affecting our experience significantly.

Has anyone discovered more responsive apps?  I can adjust I guess, but the point of Evernote was always having what I needed precisely when I needed it - searching and discovery shouldn't be slow.

Thanks

Frankly,. I think. Nimbus is getting there. I still prefer Evernote for its general look and nimbus" Export function is a (big) problem but there are many beautiful features and they are quite open about their devlopment. 

[jdmarch 49]

1 hour ago, fredhammersmith said:

Frankly,. I think. Nimbus is getting there. I still prefer Evernote for its general look and nimbus" Export function is a (big) problem but there are many beautiful features and they are quite open about their development. 

Any idea how Nimbus performs with tens of thousands of notes? It seems that the Evernote twittersphere is agog with newcomers who love the shiny new features, but I would guess that as newcomers, they have more like hundreds of notes than the tens of thousands that are making the new Evernote unusable for oldtimers.

[idoc 412]

I don't really know if this helps but I've taken many of my non-essential notes and moved them into Gdrive.  For example, I had notes in which 5-10 years of pdf files on various statements were all concatenated together.  I used Acrobat to combine them all and moved them into Gdrive.  I do the same for all my bills, scanned books, spreadsheets and other non-essential files.  Since many of my notes were just depositories for files this helped to slim things down somewhat.  I also had thousands of notes that were faxes from Hellofax that were being uploaded automatically to Evernote.  Anything like that I sweep into Gdrive on an ongoing basis.  Obviously this doesn't help much with normal notes.  I don't know if any of this has actually helped with anything because I too experience a lot of lag but I'm still quite happy with Legacy.

[fredhammersmith 59]

1 hour ago, jdmarch said:

Any idea how Nimbus performs with tens of thousands of notes? It seems that the Evernote twittersphere is agog with newcomers who love the shiny new features, but I would guess that as newcomers, they have more like hundreds of notes than the tens of thousands that are making the new Evernote unusable for oldtimers.

Good question. I decided to try it for just one professional project, the reason being the complaints of my co-workers who were staring at the spinning wheel in Evernote way too long. So I did not make the complete switch yet (I have +38 400 notes) and I would advise to go slowly. But it is very close to Evernote in features (with some added bonus). For the time being, I think Evernote Legacy is still unbeatable. And I think Evernote in Android is not that bad. But Nimbus... you know... it just works well. You try a feature and... ta-dam... it works.

[SacKen 4]

After using 10 for a month then going back to legacy... wow... what a difference. Back to it being my favorite note app. Instantly starts and the UI is responsive. It's back to being convenient and not slowing me down. 

BTW, I am NOT a power user. Other than text and a few pictures, I don't use most features.  I only have about 20 notebooks and only two of them have double-digit notes in them (still only about 20-25 notes in those). All on a Samsung M.2 SSD and an internet connection suitable for my kids to not complain when gaming. So this is not a size or hardware issue in any way.

After 25 years years developing software and managing SW teams, I've seen it before. Someone had a great idea that will make maintaining all the platforms easier and "give the user this new amazing experience that the biz dev/marketing team says we need! We just gotta start from scratch and can't just refactor the old great stuff. Trust me! It will be worth it in 5 years!"  Sometimes you just gotta eat the sunk cost, throw it away and fire a few people before you're out of business.

[jdmarch 49]

9 hours ago, SacKen said:

I only have about 20 notebooks and only two of them have double-digit notes in them (still only about 20-25 notes in those). All on a Samsung M.2 SSD and an internet connection suitable for my kids to not complain when gaming. So this is not a size or hardware issue in any way.

So much for my benefit-of-the-doubt theory that the new app might be running ok at small scale...

[Amy Lin 1]

Anyone tried Evernote 10.18.3 yet? I am still using Legacy. And just tried 10.18 today. My top concern is the speed of creating a new note in a standalone window (one of the best features). 10.18 *seems* to have improved compared to the October 2020 version. It seems to be taking 3 to 4 seconds to load up a new note window instead of 9 to 10 seconds *when it is not lagging*.

[CalS 5,307]

12 minutes ago, Amy Lin said:

Anyone tried Evernote 10.18.3 yet? I am still using Legacy. And just tried 10.18 today. My top concern is the speed of creating a new note in a standalone window (one of the best features). 10.18 *seems* to have improved compared to the October 2020 version. It seems to be taking 3 to 4 seconds to load up a new note window instead of 9 to 10 seconds *when it is not lagging*.

Yeah, 3 to 4 seconds is like watching paint dry compared to legacy.  Every 15-20 interactions with EN equals a minute lost in your day.  Adds up if you use EN frequently during the day.  Geez.

[Francesco Rebuffo 0]

Evernote was my favourite app for note and I loved it, but since the new update I started to hate it. It's so lagging, I seen words many seconds before typing and I have a Ryzen 3900k, 32GB ram. I'm very very disappointed.. so sad.

[PinkElephant 8,751]

No issue at all on my mac.

Maybe check your internet connection, and everything interfering with it. This means antivirus, firewall, ad blockers, WOT and the like. PCs tend to be loaded with this sort of stuff (for good reason …), and it can all interfere with EN communicating with the server.

Turn it off one by one, and see if it helps.

[jdmarch 49]

On 8/3/2021 at 8:10 PM, jdmarch said:

So much for my benefit-of-the-doubt theory that the new app might be running ok at small scale...

On a new Win machine where EN has not run for a week, started it up and tried to create a new note. After a few minutes of spinning, I gave up and used a different method. This morning I was finally able to create a note. And this is an account with only 2300 notes. 

Once again -- this is a slow-moving train wreck.

[PinkElephant 8,751]

New Windows machine ...

EN had not run for a week ...

Did you wait until it had synced all changes, or opened it and started typing away immediately ?

Beside this, there was 10.19 released tonight, that fixed (on my mac) a green loading circle that often came up when I started the app for the first time in the morning. It was anyhow not a big problem if the app was already open, but they fixed this loading sequence with 10.19.

Maybe give it a try - will cost you less time than to prove me wrong here, and is more productive for you ...

[CalS 5,307]

5 hours ago, PinkElephant said:

No issue at all on my mac.

Maybe check your internet connection, and everything interfering with it. This means antivirus, firewall, ad blockers, WOT and the like. PCs tend to be loaded with this sort of stuff (for good reason …), and it can all interfere with EN communicating with the server.

Turn it off one by one, and see if it helps.

No disrespect @PinkElephant but you saying no issue on your Mac does not mean it isn't slow as begeez on every platform for some of us.  So slow on Windows I am still using 6.25.

Reminds me of the HDD vs SSD saga from way back.  EN had some painful lags as it appeared to do some sort of housekeeping and thrashed the disk.  For most installing an SSD fixed the issue.  Did for me anyway. 

I'm not sure what the overhead is today but my SWAG is it is mostly software based, either the chosen platform or whatever is being done to support sync and search.  IAC, it's a $hit show for some of us if you actually want to accomplish anything in a comparable time frame.  My use case.  Hurts to say it after all my years with EN.

[PinkElephant 8,751]

My sympathy to the experience, even if I don’t share it. 

In fact I am close to install v10 on the Windows 10 - VM installed on my Mac. If it performs there, I let you know.

[jdmarch 49]

4 hours ago, PinkElephant said:

Did you wait until it had synced all changes, or opened it and started typing away immediately ?

No, for 15 years I have grown accustomed to being able to start EN and type a note. If it now expects to be running permanently in order to be useful for quick notetaking or lookup, that's a strike against it. Although in fairness I *can* quit and restart and start typing, so there *is* some middle-ground capability.

Quote

Beside this, there was 10.19 released tonight, that fixed (on my mac) a green loading circle that often came up when I started the app for the first time in the morning. It was anyhow not a big problem if the app was already open, but they fixed this loading sequence with 10.19.

Thanks, no updates available yet from 10.18.3 on Windows.

Quote

will cost you less time than to prove me wrong here, and is more productive for you

Please! I have no desire to prove you or EN wrong. All I want is to regain the functionality that I've become dependent on over the years.

[PinkElephant 8,751]

The update information in the client is showing the update with some delay. Maybe they want to prevent the servers to stall under too many download requests, and send the information out in waves.

It was announced here in the forum last night. I was then able to download and install 10.19 for Mac without any problem from the EN website. It is mainly a bugfix release. Among the bugfixes is the download circle on startup, that prevents using the client for maybe 30secs.

[jdmarch 49]

Quote

. I was then able to download and install 10.19 for Mac without any problem from the EN website. 

👍 likewise for Windows, thanks!

[PinkElephant 8,751]

Hope it improves the startup performance. Works like a charm on my Mac, the client is ready for action within seconds after opening.

[Evernote User 12345 12]

Evernote 10 is garbage. 

On my Samsung Galaxy 21+, I have serious lag and performance issues with the app. Garbage.

On this machine, which has 32GB of RAM, I've had to shut down Evernote because it ate every single byte of available memory when left open. Garbage.

On my new laptop, which has a Ryzen 7 5800U processor, performance is awful. There's always a lag when I first open the client, or when I create a new note. Garbage.

I've largely replaced Evernote with other tools, and can't wait to eventually eliminate it altogether. This is coming from a premium user since 2014.

Garbage. Their entire product team should be fired.

[celia80302 9]

I would like to know with what you are replacing Evernote.

Legacy is great on my Macs bit the iPhone app is awful.

[DTLow 5,744]

47 minutes ago, celia80302 said:

Legacy is great on my Macs bit the iPhone app is awful.

Agreed - Evernote Legacy is great on my Mac   
Evernote v10 is a work-in-progress
Also using v10 on my iPad.  Not as great as the Mac, but not a serious issue

>>I would like to know with what you are replacing Evernote.

No immediate plans   
Devonthink (Apple Only) is the top of my alternatives list

[velhart 0]

I am currently on 

Evernote
10.19.2-win-ddl-public (2852)
Editor: v129.0.16448
Service: v1.38.1

with only about 7 notes that I use regularly, but they are fairly large, and the latest few updates to Evernote have made the Windows desktop client version of Evernote completely unusable. After opening the app, and clicking on any of the notes that I regularly use, it takes anywhere from 14 sec to 47 sec just to open the note (used to be instantaneous), and I usually get the pop-up window while I am waiting:

___________

Evernote
⚠️Window is not responding
The window is not responding. Would you like to relaunch the app or just keep waiting?
--> Relaunch
--> Keep waiting

___________
 

At this point, Evernote is using 24.1% CPU, 762.9 MB (on an Intel Core i7-8665U CPU @ 1.90GHz  2.11 GHz, 16GB RAM, on Win 10 64-bit, ver 20H2 OS build 19042, 1052).

And if I then try doing a search via CTRL+F to find anything in the note, then forget it.
I get the Find in note pop-up search field, but when I type anything and hit enter, I see nothing displayed in the blank, and then the system freezes up. I get the same ⚠️Window is not responding pop-up message above about every 30 sec, and I click through --> Keep waiting multiple times. After about 2 min and 40 sec have elapsed, I get a search result, and the search term I typed finally appears in the blank, after the fact.

Effectively, the latest 10.x.x updates to the Windows client have rendered Evernote unusable on my system. 

There were many maintenance updates in rapid succession recently, which gave me hope that this issue had been identified and addressed, but it must still be going on.

Any advice or information on when this may likely get fixed would be greatly appreciated. 

I have appreciated Evernote's cross-platform ease of use, but if this issue is not fixed, that's an unfortunate deal breaker for me. I would love to keep using it.

Any help would be appreciated.

[CalS 5,307]

18 hours ago, velhart said:

Any help would be appreciated.

Go back to legacy until EN gets this sorted.

[skellam 114]

Long time evernote user since the app was first released.  Have loved it since then and been a paying user and apologist for EN with friends and family.  Haven't been on the forums for a while but v10 finally has worn me down.  It's unusable.  I never contemplated leaving EN in the past but have now exported all my notes and moved to Joplin.   Sure, it's open source and has some flaws but it has a simple, clean interface.  No feature bloat.  Finally, I'm able to use markdown natively in the app and any editor that I want to.   The web clipper to me does a great job and provides simple way to capture and tag content from the web.  A couple issues I had with being able to scan into the app and email into the app were resolved with open-source solutions.  I can store my data wherever I want to including Dropbox or even Nextcloud on my home NAS.  I can finally implement end-to-end encryption.   It's been a great run with EN but time to move on.    Hard to believe a company would release such a disastrous upgrade and force long-time loyal users off their platform.  

 

Steve

 

[Mike P 2,962]

Nice of @skellam to like a post from almost a year ago. However the app has changed hugely in that time. The activitity that took "4 or 5 seconds" then now takes 2 or 3 seconds. Obviously not acceptable to everybody but just about OK for me and definitely going in the right direction.

[PinkElephant 8,751]

@velhart EN v10 does not really like large notes, it seems.

As a workaround you could split your large notes into several smaller ones. To make it easier to navigate, insert a link to the next note at the end of the prior one, and a link to the former at the beginning of the later one.

Say it is a yearly note. Split it into months or even weeks. At the beginning of March put a link to February, at the end of February a link to March.

If you want an overview, create a TOC table of content note for the year with links to every month. 

[Marre 86 1]

F@@@k you in the head, Evernote developers. It pisses me off totally, how slow it works. Madness.

And I've got only short text notes. Nothing but text.

Everything is slow except this pop-ups offering discount ONLY NOW (but keep showing up all the time)

Just f""k you in the head

[jdmarch 49]

15 hours ago, Marre 86 said:

 

I agree with the evaluation, but the personalization to the developers (who are never the ones deciding the tradeoffs) is inappropriate, and the language is inappropriate and not useful. If you want to blame anyone, blame Evernote "management." 

[PinkElephant 8,751]

@Marre 86 At least management usually draws the larger paychecks ….

But it is inappropriate to behave like that here in this forum. There are forum rules, and I ask you from one user to another to edit your post.

We all understand frustration (we share enough of it among us), so no need for strong wording just to make sure you are understood.

[William C 36]

20 hours ago, Marre 86 said:

F@@@k you in the head, Evernote developers. It pisses me off totally, how slow it works. Madness.

And I've got only short text notes. Nothing but text.

Everything is slow except this pop-ups offering discount ONLY NOW (but keep showing up all the time)

Just f""k you in the head

Have you ever considered using the Legacy version? I'm using it and it works fine. Save yourself some grief....and don't be so rude and disrespectful.

[WeCanLearnAnything 100]

It has been about 4 months since I last asked: Does Evernote V10 just work yet?

I am hesitant to try because I worry about V10 making my computer lag like crazy, then not being able to go back to Legacy due to limits in accounts and devices, sync screwups, etc.

[ej8899 175]

34 minutes ago, WeCanLearnAnything said:

Does Evernote V10 just work yet?

Depends.
I'm using it 'full time' instead of legacy now - and I'd be what people call a power user with 50,000+ notes and "all day use".

HOWEVER - my use of it has diminished drastically because it although it does work, it works much more slowly than legacy.  I've offloaded various flows into Notion and Todoist which where always previously all done in Evernote.   It "works", but slowly and not without frustration.

[WeCanLearnAnything 100]

6 hours ago, ej8899 said:

... it works much more slowly than legacy.  ... and not without frustration.

Thank you for your response.

Your description is quite disappointing. Is there any way to know if Evernote will ever be fast again? How much have speed and resource/performance issues changed since V10's release?

[agsteele 3,059]

I have pretty much moved to version 10. For me, the biggest flaw continues to be Printing. However, these days I rarely print from Evernote having moved to be as paperless as possible. I have no memory issues and no significant lag. Some things take longer to process because v10 syncs in real time whereas Legacy syncs every 5 minutes in the background.

The biggest challenge for me is that I've had to change some of my work flows. Once I recognised that this is a new program and I needed to work with the new ways of doing things I was able to relax into working somewhat differently.

[CalS 5,307]

@WeCanLearnAnything

It’s a use case thing in some respects.  For me V10 is simply too slow performance wise and is click heavy on top of that.  While missing features.  In my use case everything just takes longer, much longer.  With EN being a hub for me that is untenable  

I have dipped my toe in the Windows V10 pool every couple of months and have seen minor at best improvements.  But still painfully slow each time, again for my use case.  Throw your mouse at the wall slow.  IOS has made noticeable progress other than the “has my stuff synced yet?” issue. 

I continue to use 6.25.1.  At this point I will use it until it sunsets. Works like a charm.  But I have begun to build a parallel data base of all the PDFs of the paperless bit of my use case.  I would not want to do that export with V10, it might take forever   So safety warrants I do it now. 

Net of it all you can fire it up and see how it works for you. 

[fredhammersmith 59]

Apart from the obvious performance issues, is there somewhere a listing of the lost (and gained) features with current version of v10? 38 700 notes here. I am still using Legacy (and testing Nimbus on a couple of project) but I would be curious about that 

[PinkElephant 8,751]

There are the initial release notes, here for the Mac:

https://help.evernote.com/hc/en-us/articles/360047889214

New features are Home/Widgets, Tasks and then a bunch more that depend on the client. Examples are import folders, new to the Mac or tables and nested tags for the mobile clients.

Examples for lost  and not yet returned are better printing and the app for the Apple Watch.

[WeCanLearnAnything 100]

8 hours ago, agsteele said:

... I have no memory issues and no significant lag. Some things take longer to process ...

 

Thanks for your response.

My computer is about 5 years old, laptop about 3 years old. Both were far from top-of-the-line when purchased as I only use computers for simple things. Do you think they would have memory and lag issues?

[WeCanLearnAnything 100]

3 hours ago, CalS said:

@WeCanLearnAnything

... V10 is simply too slow performance wise and is click heavy on top of that... everything just takes longer, much longer...

I have dipped my toe in the Windows V10 pool every couple of months and have seen minor at best improvements...

... I would not want to do that export with V10, it might take forever...

Net of it all you can fire it up and see how it works for you. 

To hear that it's really slow for you and hasn't really sped up much over the past year... that is not encouraging.

As for trying out V10, is it actually that easy to do and undo? What about the risks of sync issues, or account/device limit issues, etc?

[CalS 5,307]

17 hours ago, WeCanLearnAnything said:

To hear that it's really slow for you and hasn't really sped up much over the past year... that is not encouraging.

As for trying out V10, is it actually that easy to do and undo? What about the risks of sync issues, or account/device limit issues, etc?

Pretty straightforward.  You can backup your DB if you like.  Make sure you have the 6.25.1 version of EN saved, or you can get it from filehippo.  Install V10 and give it a test. 

I've done it on a backup machine, which is actually higher performance than my main machine (a 3 year old Surface pro versus an 8 year old docked Lenovo X230 laptop).  The Lenovo is very fast with 56k notes on old EN  

Use RevoUninstaller or the like to remove V10 if you don't care for it.  Don't edit notes with links in them, that can cause issues as links aren't that well implemented at this point.

Your call, may not be worth the effort.  Frankly I don't think I will do another test until early November.  The forums aren't singing the praises of productivity at this point.  Too many functional and speed reports to my liking.  Particularly from long time users.  🤷‍♂️

[agsteele 3,059]

15 hours ago, WeCanLearnAnything said:

My computer is about 5 years old, laptop about 3 years old. Both were far from top-of-the-line when purchased as I only use computers for simple things. Do you think they would have memory and lag issues?

I really couldn't say.  For sure it isn't as simple as saying get a better spec computer although that might help. A lot of what happens in v10 is via a live connection to the servers. So your Internet connection will have some impact. So that means the full gamut of speed, VPN, firewall, cacheing at your provider etc etc. might also have an impact.

I wish I knew why some users are doing just fine (like me) and others have a really poor experience in relation to speed. I guess expectation is also part of it along with my method of working and what I am trying to achieve.

As @CalS says, you've nothing to lose by trying v10. The installation process will disable the so-called legacy version but you can easily reinstall and switch back if that is your ultimate preference. All you lose are the new bells and whistles.

[AlbertR 690]

19 minutes ago, agsteele said:

... A lot of what happens in v10 is via a live connection to the servers. ...

V10 needs much more of all: Processor speed, main Memory, Display area and User's time at the end. 

[WeCanLearnAnything 100]

On 9/19/2021 at 11:42 AM, CalS said:

... Don't edit notes with links in them, that can cause issues as links aren't that well implemented at this point.

...

V10 still lacks functioning links?!?!

🤦‍♂️

That is mind blowing.

I'll pass on trying out V10 for now. In a few months, I'll check this thread again.

[WeCanLearnAnything 100]

19 hours ago, agsteele said:

I really couldn't say.  For sure it isn't as simple as saying get a better spec computer although that might help. A lot of what happens in v10 is via a live connection to the servers. So your Internet connection will have some impact. So that means the full gamut of speed, VPN, firewall, cacheing at your provider etc etc. might also have an impact.

...

As @CalS says, you've nothing to lose by trying v10. The installation process will disable the so-called legacy version but you can easily reinstall and switch back if that is your ultimate preference. All you lose are the new bells and whistles.

 

19 hours ago, AlbertR said:

V10 needs much more of all: Processor speed, main Memory, Display area and User's time at the end. 

Given that @CalS said that V10 can't handle links and you guys are saying V10 has many more bottlenecks for speed, I think I'll wait a little longer to try V10.

[CalS 5,307]

Probably a wise move. 

[Blork 18]

(Using 10.21.5 on macOS Big Sur.)

I'm shopping around for another notes app because the lag makes EN virtually unusable. I don't even have a lot of notes, but each is pretty long, and I bounce back and forth between them frequently. Four or five times a minute sometimes, depending on what I'm doing (I have about 20 simultaneous projects I'm working on and each project has a note that I update with all my project notes.) Seeing that green spinner for four or five seconds EVERY TIME I SWITCH NOTES is just killing me. Plus I can type a full sentence sometimes and then put my hands behind my head, count to five, and THEN the sentence shows up in EN.

This problem seems to be baked-in because of the design decision to have everything in the cloud and not stored locally (or at least I think that's the design). That won't change, so I can't see how EN can ever be useful to me again.

Any last-chance offers of encouragement?

[PinkElephant 8,751]

Long notes don't work well with the v10 client: Slow, hard to sync, easy to corrupt.

You could think about breaking them up into smaller ones. Create a TOC note with links to all the others, put links into the smaller notes to make navigating easier. Think of your EN content as a website - use links to bind elements together, not everything on a long single sheet.

Especially if things are repetitive like projects, you could implement it once, optimize it and then roll out the concept to all the others.

Or you insist that the software has to follow your way of doing things - then you probably need to look elsewhere. Installing the legacy client could buy you the time for an informed decision.

https://help.evernote.com/hc/en-us/articles/360052560314-Install-an-older-version-of-Evernote

[WeCanLearnAnything 100]

7 hours ago, Blork said:

...

I'm shopping around for another notes app because the lag makes EN virtually unusable. ... Seeing that green spinner for four or five seconds EVERY TIME I SWITCH NOTES is just killing me. Plus I can type a full sentence sometimes and then put my hands behind my head, count to five, and THEN the sentence shows up in EN.

This problem seems to be baked-in because of the design decision to have everything in the cloud ...

This does not sound good either! And I think the bolded section merits a response from an Evernote staff member.

Will Evernote ever be fast again?

[jdmarch 49]

36 minutes ago, WeCanLearnAnything said:

And I think the bolded section merits a response from an Evernote staff member.

Evernote staff do not participate in this forum. It's not at all clear to me that they even read it. A support ticket or Twitter might work better. (They certainly read Twitter, since they "Like" every favorable tweet with @evernote)

[Daven74 1]

It's kind of funny that I started with Evernote to, among other functions, replace sticky notes. Now I need to keep a note pad at my computer to jot down things I want to put into Evernote when I have time since the app takes forever to start and get into the mood to allow text be sluggishly typed into a note.

[PinkElephant 8,751]

1) Start it right away, not when you think about starting it.

2) Once running, you have the EN helper always available, which is a great replacement for sticky whatever.

[WeCanLearnAnything 100]

5 hours ago, Daven74 said:

It's kind of funny that I started with Evernote to, among other functions, replace sticky notes. Now I need to keep a note pad at my computer to jot down things I want to put into Evernote when I have time since the app takes forever to start and get into the mood to allow text be sluggishly typed into a note.

Oof. Not good. Other posters here have said V10 has improved in those respects, but perhaps not enough (or at all?) for you?

Have you tried switching back to legacy?

[DarrenP 2]

I've come here after becoming so frustrated with the latest Windows version  v10.22.3

I'm relieved it's not just me having performance issues, but equally sorry for all other users.

Opening/creating a new note has become so painfully slow.

Today saw my third instance of having to use Microsoft Word as a stopgap due to the risk of the application failing to keep up with a fast paced meeting i was called to. 

As a long time subscriber of Evernote (since 2010), this is the worst performance of the Evenote windows client i've ever seen. 
It's just plain unacceptable for what is supposed to be a mature product.  I don't care about new features - i just need the core functionality to work well! 

I've signed in and out and trying to avoid a full removal  and installation. 

I've got the app open, with a single note in view, and the app has consumed ~780mb of RAM. 

Evernote has even managed to overtake Chrome as the biggest RAM hog on my system!

 

[jdmarch 49]

8 minutes ago, DarrenP said:

frustrated with the latest Windows version  v10.22.3

Darren, I recommend that you revert to using the legacy version 6.25.1.9091 -- you can find a download link somewhere in this long thread. For now, it still works fine.

[CalS 5,307]

You can find version at FileHippo.

[WeCanLearnAnything 100]

5 hours ago, DarrenP said:

...

 

As a long time subscriber of Evernote (since 2010), this is the worst performance of the Evenote windows client i've ever seen. 
It's just plain unacceptable for what is supposed to be a mature product.  I don't care about new features - i just need the core functionality to work well!

...

 

I'm with you completely but I sometimes wonder whether we are among the 1% that value performance of core functions (reading and writing) over what we perceive as frills (logo redesign, to do list functions), but the other 99% is happy to deal with universal sluggishness if they can type a task with a checkbox.

If we are in the minority, as I suspect we are, then I doubt Evernote will ever cater to us.

Despite @Ian Small saying that performance (and sync) improvements would come first, it is easy to find long lists of things they've implemented  while brutal reviews mentioning basic performance and reliability just keep coming.

I think that shows us what the company is actually prioritizing.

[PinkElephant 8,751]

Maybe I am 99%, but I have no problems with my day to day use of the v10 client.

Where there still is a noticeable difference is on housekeeping tasks like moving or changing multiple notes at once, review of tags, reorganizing notebooks and similar. There v10 executes the same single note operation n times when n notes are selected.

About resources used: The framework in which EN is executing IS based on Chrome(Iim) - so no surprise it grabs itself a lot of resources. It is the browser, plus the app running inside of it (think of EN v10 as a browser extension), plus the apps data.

As I see it, there is only limited room for improvement on this setup. IMHO it is take it or leave it.

[DarrenP 2]

20 hours ago, jdmarch said:

Darren, I recommend that you revert to using the legacy version 6.25.1.9091 -- you can find a download link somewhere in this long thread. For now, it still works fine.

Hi jdmarch,
Thanks for recommendation. I''ve just done that on a Win10 VM i run and synced my 3000 notes. 

Despite this VM running on the minimum spec for Windows 10 (2 cores of the cpu, 4gb ram), the older 6.25.2 client flies along with zero delays in opening and searching.
I can also instantly paste in screen grabs, which now fails 80-90% of the time on the v10 client app.  (I need to open a ticket for this)
 

This back to back exercise has opened my eye to how poor and slow the Windows v10 app has become! 

The Win10 PC i run the v10 app is on is a med/high end 10th gen i5 with 16gb ram and an SSD.  I don't think i am asking too much for an note taking app to run decently on this spec of pc! 

Maybe you are right and we are in the minority who cares?
The main reason i need to use the desktop app is because your can't paste screenshots into the browser version, and in the age of virtual meetings i rely on Evernote to help capture important info from online meetings and presentations.

If the browser client could support this, then maybe i wouldn't need the desktop client...
I don't know why Evernote web doesn't have this important functionality is beyond me, when i can easily paste screenshots into gmail or outlook webmail clients. 
 

Am i been punished for being on a grandfathered account and refusing to upgrade to the newer packages (which have additional functionality i just don't need). 
I really hope not!

In the end, if Evernote doesn't want me as a customer, and can;t fix these basic performance issues then i will be begrudgingly forced to look elsewhere, or just use Onenote that my organisation keeps pushing me to use...

 

[PinkElephant 8,751]

For instant screenshots there is the helper, both in legacy and v10.

Since it needs to install, not available for the web client.

[randbrown 11]

Unusable.  Evernote has once again completely botched what should be a simple app. Yall really need to get better at this.  Premium user for years here.  Starting to get disgruntled at this point.

[agsteele 3,059]

24 minutes ago, randbrown said:

Unusable.  Evernote has once again completely botched what should be a simple app. Yall really need to get better at this.  Premium user for years here.  Starting to get disgruntled at this point.

Not sure what is unuseable but whatever, I fear you are preaching to the choir.  These forums are user-to-user so whilst we can empathise and may be able to give help if you describe the issue, if you want to give feedback to the devs then the feedback option in the app or a support ticket is the way to go

[Blork 18]

I recently did a NVRAM/PRAM reset on my Macbook Pro to deal with a number of resource problems, including extremely poor performance of EN. I am pleased to report that my MBP is running much better now, and Evernote has gone from "unusable" to merely "almost unusable yet still infuriatingly slow and laggy." So I guess that's a win. :-/

[10gallonhat 20]

On 7/31/2021 at 12:11 PM, idoc said:

I don't really know if this helps but I've taken many of my non-essential notes and moved them into Gdrive...Since many of my notes were just depositories for files this helped to slim things down somewhat.

That's basically what I did in conjunction with Obsidian. The notes are in .md format (meaning easily transferable to any program that opens Markdown files) and the attachments are in a few different "resources" folders. Some live on my HD, some in GDrive. All are accessible as normal folders in Windows explorer. I can put links in my Obsidian notes to my GDrive for direct access (or if you prefer, iCloud, Dropbox, etc.).

I took all of this year's most important attachments and moved them to GDrive (to keep my Obsidian Vault slim for mobile use), then converted this year's notes and my "evergreen" notes to Obsidian. This did duplicate the 2021 attachments, so I'm weeding those out when I come across them. All my 2010 - 2020 regular EN notes and their attachments got reorganized and converted to Obsidian in a few batches for archiving (my EN was about 15GB). Some of the evergreen notes didn't make it in the initial reorganization, but I can still find them. Due to my habit of giving EN links alias text a lot of my links didn't come across, but the info is all there if I do some extra searching.

I do miss some things about EN, but I'm pretty happy with my switch so far.

[snew4 40]

Ditto on the lousy performance. Will just sit at times for many seconds before showing me a note or letting me start to edit a note. Once I installed v10.24.3 things got bad. Plus, its a resource hog. Just sits, doing nothing, and uses 32% to 75% of my CPU with over 3 GB of memory and frequently going up to 5 GB. It's doing this when I'm not even touching it. When I type into a note the CPU goes up to 50% to 60%.

Worst case is when opening an existing large note that has attachments. I can wait and wait and wait and wait for the top bar of edit icons to appear. The note won't edit and won't scroll. I don't remember this happening before.

[PinkElephant 8,751]

I am really wondering where these performance issues originate.

I am running Win 10 Pro inside of a Parallels VM on my MacBook Pro, dedicating 3 cores out of 6 of my i7 and 6GB of RAM to the VM. I sometimes open the EN v10 client inside of the VM. It is not running other apps into the ground, and it is notably slower than the same client for MacOS, running with the full system resources.

But I can’t complain, even inside of the VM v10 is absolutely usable for every day-to-day operation I ask it to perform.

[CalS 5,307]

3 minutes ago, PinkElephant said:

I am really wondering where these performance issues originate.

I am running Win 10 Pro inside of a Parallels VM on my MacBook Pro, dedicating 3 cores out of 6 of my i7 and 6GB of RAM to the VM. I sometimes open the EN v10 client inside of the VM. It is not running other apps into the ground, and it is notably slower than the same client for MacOS, running with the full system resources.

But I can’t complain, even inside of the VM v10 is absolutely usable for every day-to-day operation I ask it to perform.

Could it be the operations you ask it to perform? 

Even in the old days EN seemed to perform better with some use cases than others.  My experience is that a larger data base with rat a tat tat interaction does NOT fair well with V10.  It just gets bogged down and starts spinning its wheels.  Maybe that use case doesn't get enough or timely share of the mother ship computer, who knows.   🤷‍♂️

[QueenOfLaughter 0]

I also have the same problem. It didn't get to me the first couple times, but when it happens every 5 minutes and I'm using the program for over an hour now, it ended with me being pissed off. 

Is there a program out there better than Evernote and worth paying for?!

[PinkElephant 8,751]

Get EN legacy - no new features, but better raw performance.

[marblecake 3]

Do you nkow how I can get Legacy to work on Android?
My Legacy stopped working, could not get it to log in when reinstalled.

Trying to use the new version, but its garbage.

[PinkElephant 8,751]

It seems a recent update of Android stopped EN Android legacy. There are several reports in the Forum that it is not working any more. No workaround known, it is v10 now.

[fredhammersmith 59]

Oh oh... hopefully the Windows Legacy will keep working.

[PinkElephant 8,751]

It was an OS Update that stopped Android legacy. Not sure about Windows 11, maybe somebody can give it a try.

[jdmarch 49]

Windows is much much more attentive to backward compatibility than is Android (decades vs years!) I would not expect issues with Win 11 but it's a good point.

While we are discussing Android -- recently it took 2 minutes to start up, presumably from an update. Not great for notes on the fly. I've pretty much given up on relying on Evernote for these; instead I'll send myself a reminder and enter it in Evernote later when it's not time critical.

[ghon 95]

I would like to share an observation. I work alot with EN Web (Microsoft Edge) and: After deleting the Browser history loading time for EN drastically has been reduced, I was almost positively shocked how fast pages load as opposed to previous work with a ton of browser histoy (including Cookies, saved pages, pictures, data,...)

Can you confirm?

[marblecake 3]

Legacy hast stopped completely, cannot log in.

Sadly, i have had to use the update, and is sucks.

Now trying Notion. Many people have mentioned this and it is good.

I like it, and will see if I can move over, though I prefer the layout of EN.

 

 

[juanpabloma21 0]

EVERY TIME I RIGHT CLICK ANYWHERE in a note Evernote crashes. I'm tired of this. It just doesn't work and I can't upload any logs or request support.