App Performance Issues: Slowness/Poor Responsiveness/Lag

Eric Schmitz · May 13, 2022

Brand new here, so please excuse my ignorance.

I just upgraded to 10.37.3 EN for Windows. I'm running Win 10 on a Core i7, maximum RAM. I tried this upgrade because EN has suddenly become slow to toe point where it's pretty much not usable. I have found old threads that talked about re-indexing, but I have not been able to find how to do that in this version.

Any ideas? What more info can I provide? Thanks!

RL7836 · May 13, 2022

4 hours ago, PinkElephant said:

You don’t tell anything enlightening …

Running EN 10.32 on several iOS devices I can only report the best (with ideas on how to make it still better).

Yes _ I realized as I was writing that it was just a general sharing of frustration. However to make it useful would have required: 1) a lot of writing in 2) a Windows thread (ie: not ios) so I opted to leave it as a general post of unhappiness. Suffice to say that most of the issue(s) revolve around sync (or lack of or not knowing for sure when it happens). Just after my original post I had **another** conflicting post - aaargh!!

akrasna · May 15, 2022

On 5/13/2022 at 2:57 PM, fredhammersmith said:

I had lost hope but...

The new Windows app seems to be really, really good.

I have not touched Legacy for a week.

And I started to look unfavorably at my switch to Nimbus.

If they can cure their Android app...

Maybe I will switch everything back to Evernote.

After this post - the replies moved towards the mobile questions.

I want to follow-up to the main point of the post, that the Windows version - seems to be stable.

Do others feel this way?

Are we really getting there?

Are we there ?

Trying to see if there is a semi-critical mass in that direction.

This is a question about Windows client only, or even windows on Browser

Thanks

agsteele · May 15, 2022

I've been very happy with Windows v10 performance for a good while.

jdmarch · May 15, 2022

Question to those of you (@agsteele, @fredhammersmith, etc) for whom EN on Windows is working well now -- how many notes do you have? Some of the early issues were not just about stability, but about response times with large databases. I have about 12K notes and am still skittish. Thanks!

fredhammersmith · May 15, 2022

I have 39 800 notes.

If you want me to do some specific tests, i am open to suggestions.

Yesterday, for a general HTML export, I used Legacy. For the time being, I would not used the new Windows for very large operations, like a general export.

idoc · May 15, 2022

I use EN both at home and at work. Many months ago I downloaded v10 at work and didn’t like it. However during the installation my highly stable version of EN was uninstalled. I reinstalled Legacy which was supposed to be the same version but I have never been as satisfied with it as the version I use at home (6.25.1.9091). I posted on this many times and several users disagreed and said that Legacy was identical etc. Because of this I never downloaded EN v10 at home because I’m afraid to lose my last perfect working model of EN. In answer to your question I find that I can use V10 but that I prefer 6.25. This is not scientific and probably based on my comfort levels, my computers, work flow etc. Having said that, there is no doubt that v10 is heading in the right direction and will eventually be clearly superior to earlier versions. Some people may feel it had already reached this point but I am not quite there yet.

PinkElephant · May 15, 2022

We have to trust EN on this, but both on Mac and Windows it is the same release level as the latest version before it. The only difference is that legacy will never try to (auto-)update.

CalS · May 18, 2022

On 5/15/2022 at 10:58 AM, idoc said:

I reinstalled Legacy which was supposed to be the same version but I have never been as satisfied with it as the version I use at home (6.25.1.9091)

Yeah, "Legacy" is a slightly different version than the final version of EN pre V10, which was 6.25.1.9091. You can still get that version at Filehippo, I think.

idoc · May 18, 2022

Is there any way to install v10 while leaving the current EN version intact? In other words, does installation of v10 need to include an uninstall of EN6.25?

PinkElephant · May 18, 2022

First install v10, for example by upgrading from the old 6.25. Take care to save all local notebooks. They will be converted into cloud notebooks, or you need to remove them yourself.

After v10 is up and running, you can install legacy using this procedure:

https://help.evernote.com/hc/en-us/articles/360052560314

It will create the legacy client, running on its own, second local database. Both will sync to the same cloud database.

dbvirago · June 18, 2022

On 5/15/2022 at 8:52 AM, agsteele said:

I've been very happy with Windows v10 performance for a good while.

Performance, yes, except recently clipping isn't stable.
But, you still can't select more than 50 notes and export Notebook as PDF still doesn't work.

So, I still need the (very nearly one year-old) beta version. AFAIK, neither of these problems have been addressed in months. My ticket from last August has still not been updated.

agsteele · June 18, 2022

As I said it works well for me. As ever YMMV.

PinkElephant · June 20, 2022

@dbvirago If performance was fine, and starts to suffer (especially if startup time is going up), it may be the local database took a hit. In this case it should be replaced by a fresh copy from the server.

Depending on what you want to do with a multiple notes selection, the limit of 50 notes can be sort of a nuisance. The limit can be raised with a system intervention - I know the way on a Mac, I believe it is similar on Windows. I put it to a comfortable 500 on my Mac. I could not go beyond 1.000, so probably there are more limitations.

If interested I can drop the recipes here.

AnneMKE · June 25, 2022

Just downloaded version 10 after using an old version as an uncategorized archive for many years. It's unbelievably slow; I don't think I can stay with it for frequent daily use.

jdmarch · June 25, 2022

5 hours ago, AnneMKE said:

Just downloaded version 10 after using an old version as an uncategorized archive for many years. It's unbelievably slow; I don't think I can stay with it for frequent daily use.

I'm still avoiding v10 myself based on reports here. A few questions: how many notes do you have? It would not be surprising for the initial startup / loading / indexing to be very slow. Is it still slow on subsequent usage?

PinkElephant · June 25, 2022

@AnneMKE If you "just downloaded" the new version, you shouldn't be surprised it is not yet racing ahead.

While you are busy to keep it busy, it is busy without you keeping it busy. Why ? Because it needs to download and organize all your stuff from the server first. @jdmarch you were on the right path with your post.

EN tries to have the client up and running as fast as possible. This means only a fraction of the complete database is initially downloaded. It is just enough to make it work. All the rest it will first load on demand, from the server.

What you experience now is practically a web client, loading your specified content when you feel you need it. Maybe your Internet connection is a little on the slow side, and voila: The client is slow.

But magic happens in the background: It is keeping on downloading all of your database. This is, when you keep EN running (can be in the background), and the computer does not go dormant.

If you are able to monitor your network traffic, you can see how data is imported. Once this stops, your local database has been build, and the client will be significantly faster.

Last hint: Hope you don't run a turning disk as main drive any more. On this, all recent EN versions (including the ones called legacy now) are not performing well.

Mark. · June 25, 2022

I really wanted to continue using evernote (after many happy years)... moved all my notes over to Joplin, which is super quick by comparison. The Joplin iphone app especially is super quick - reminds me how I used to use notes!

PinkElephant · June 25, 2022

iPhone 11 Pro max, iOS 15.5, EN iOS 10.34.

Time from hitting the EN app icon to open Home screen: 3 seconds
Time from hitting the new note button until new note is ready to type, with app open: Below 2 seconds
Time from hitting the new note button in the widget, app closed, until ready to type: 3 seconds

Yes, measuring time may tell that there are apps that are still faster. But for all practical reasons, EN iOS is as fast as anybody will ever need.

Disclaimer: On older devices it will not match these times. We run it on an iPhone 6S+, which I would evaluate as usable, but not fast.

Paul A. · June 25, 2022

11 minutes ago, PinkElephant said:

iPhone 11 Pro max, iOS 15.5, EN iOS 10.34.

Time from hitting the EN app icon to open Home screen: 3 seconds

Time from hitting the new note button until new note is ready to type, with app open: Below 2 seconds

Time from hitting the new note button in the widget, app closed, until ready to type: 3 seconds

Very interesting data. We are in the Windows forum and I think this thread is mainly about Windows performance, so what I'm about to write might be slightly off-topic...

That said, as you may remember, I've complained about Android performance for quite some time. Recently however (in the last couple of Android app updates), I've noticed pretty substantial performance increases. Compared to your tests above, I think I'm getting slightly better performance on my Pixel 6 Pro, which amazes me. I know the iPhone 11 hasn't been the fastest iPhone for almost two years, but given how bad Android performance was at one time, I'm pretty impressed with the improvement.

TiLung · July 16, 2022

Hi

I have been facing one issue recently, whenever I use Alt + Tab to move between windows, there is a 3s 4s delay in Evernote, so I cant no copy, or paste or do anything with Evernote during that time frame. This become very annoy when I have to copy/paste or paraphrase material from other website/slides.

My current version is as below

10.40.9-win-ddl-public (3494)
Editor: v151.4.18473
Service: v1.54.5
© 2019 - 2022 Evernote Corporation. All rights reserved

PinkElephant · July 20, 2022

I assume you run EN on a pretty current PC, with an SSD drive.

In this case it may be your local database took a hit. To replace it you can do this:

Go to File > Sign Out [name] from the menu bar.
Select the "Remove my Evernote data from this device" option, then click Sign out.
Restart your computer.
Sign back in to Evernote

Carl-L-ND · May 25

Been using Windows v10 for a solid 2 or 3 weeks since the new Sync feature was added. I'm forcing myself to leave v6 unused.

There are a few oddball issues with v10 - one of them is that it will seem to freeze for a fairly long period of time - maybe 30 to 60 seconds - as if it is checking back with the main EN servers and my data connections was not available. It does not do this often but often enough that it has become a thing - one time I was on a client call and trying to confirm some info.

What is this lag?

Oh NVM..... I think it is the issue per this thread.... when I try to view a note I think I can still see the Title but all the body text is not viewable while frozen, just a blank area.

.

Boot17 · May 25

2 hours ago, Carl-L-ND said:

What is this lag?

Oh NVM..... I think it is the issue per this thread.... when I try to view a note I think I can still see the Title but all the body text is not viewable while frozen, just a blank area.

It could be that, but it could also be this:

(Also do a Ctrl-F in your browser and look for the work "delay" on that page.)

With the new RTE sync that was pushed out a few weeks ago, there is a delay when you click to view a note that hasn't been viewed since before RTE. This delay is because of some conversion that happens to prepare the note for the RTE capabilities. Sometimes the delay is small -- like a few seconds, but I've had it be up to 30 seconds for me before too -- especially on larger notes that may include a lot of images with text.

It's a one time thing though and when I click away and then back, it loads faster on subsequent times.

Carl-L-ND · May 25

@Boot17 Thanks! Will watch for this.

Doesn't seem to happen on all notes though or maybe it does it is so quick that it is not noticeable. It might be a predictive function as I work my way through a date sorted list of notes so that by the time I get to the next note, it has already been "converted".

I've been going through several hundred notes to add in info that v10 does not enumerate (per a PDF bug) and I can say that most of these notes have not been viewed from before the RTE singularity (yeah.... all the latest features in EN are like a SciFi movie to me now). 😉

.

dkj201 · June 2

I've not been able to use EN all week. Created an account here to see if others were having issues.

I create tasks, and they disappear 30-40 seconds later.

My laptop fans go crazy when I open EN and it is taking >20% CPU. What is going on?

Dave-in-Decatur · June 2

1 hour ago, dkj201 said:

I've not been able to use EN all week. Created an account here to see if others were having issues.

I create tasks, and they disappear 30-40 seconds later.

My laptop fans go crazy when I open EN and it is taking >20% CPU. What is going on?

Hi, and welcome to the forums. Those are two separate issues; if you use the forum search feature you will find more than one thread on each of them. One thing that is happening is that Evernote, about a month ago, rolled out a new sync structure that requires each note to be converted to the new system. This causes notes to take some seconds to open. I don't know if that is related to these issues or not; I believe some who have reported heavy CPU usage are saying that the new updates have actually helped that issue.

WhiskeyCowboy · June 5

Just took a page of notes in a meeting with client. Go back to my notes just now and they are blank and gone. I just can't trust Evernote at this point to work. And collaborate editing didn't work and then it started working and now it doesn't work again. Team is all on latest version. Doesn't seem to matter.

Yeesh.

I'm exploring alternatives at this point, but I don't honestly think there is another solution out there that is like this so feel kind of stuck. Love the idea of this but the execution of it is killing us.

HighcardEN · June 7

Windows 11 22H2

10.57.10-win-ddl-public (4133)
Editor: v169.1.20965
Service: v1.68.5

Hi - Lately I've been working on a project that has me pulling up some rather old notes. When I do this, the note takes an extremely long time to load. I started timing them and it takes around 60 seconds. This feels like an eternity when I'm busy, especially if I'm on a call with people waiting for a response.

I don't recall seeing this until relatively recently (a few weeks?), but then again I don't access old notes all that often.

What's going on here? Thanks.

agsteele · June 7

There's are lots of reports of this issue in these forums.

It is an issue that arose with the new real time editing/sync.

HighcardEN · June 7

Okay, glad it's not just me. So it's safe to assume this is on the dev's radar?

agsteele · June 7

Yes. The note opening time and the data loss experienced by some users are the two things being worked on at the moment.

Dave-in-Decatur · June 7

3 hours ago, agsteele said:

There's are lots of reports of this issue in these forums.

It is an issue that arose with the new real time editing/sync.

Specifically, the issue is that notes must be updated to the new sync structure before being displayed. People report this happening on all platforms (desktop, mobile, Web). If the notes are larger, they may take longer, but even that does not seem to be consistent. I will say that 60 seconds every time seems extra long. Are there any other things happening on the computer that could be soaking up processor time?

HeBoIz · June 7

2 minutes ago, Dave-in-Decatur said:

I will say that 60 seconds every time seems extra long. Are there any other things happening on the computer that could be soaking up processor time?

This in my case (with Web-App on Windows) isn't extra long but rather the new evernote average (web-) standard.

PLUS: Conversion to RTE-structue obviously seems not to allways be a one-time-prozess...
As far as I can see notes converted in the web-app yersterday need to be converted again today with the same or similar delay - at least if the web-app for security reasons is forced to be logged in and load and build cache new every day).

This means: In average no fast access to thousands of notes may them be long, complex or very simple unformatted text.

May be RTE needs and works with only temporarily converted notes in cache? Could this be the reason why every note displays saving-info in the lower right corner on opening, even before loading?

This would make the sync-issues EN ist working with far bigger..

To be clear: there is no disturbing extra process running which could cause the delay, just a question of communication with web-frontend and EN-Server.
(An yes, I know: Issues may be smaller while working with windows- oder apple-app, but conversion and sync should be requested if working with frequently different devices like me.)

agsteele · June 7

The Evernote developers are VERY aware of the note loading issue. It is one of two issues that is currently getting the full attention of the developers. Describing the issue is easy, identifying what is probably going on is, apparently, not too challenging. Working out the sure and certain resolution is more challenging.

HighcardEN · June 7

1 hour ago, Dave-in-Decatur said:

I will say that 60 seconds every time seems extra long. Are there any other things happening on the computer that could be soaking up processor time?

It seems to correspond with how important the note is to me, and how quickly I need it 😄

But yeah, now that I'm paying more attention, notes seem to either come up quickly (less than 5 seconds) or take ages (45-60 seconds). Nothing particularly interesting or different between them. My system is pretty capable (Ryzen 9 5950X, 64 GB memory) so I doubt there's a significant CPU bottleneck, but next time I get a slow one I'll pop open task manager and take look.

You guys helped by letting me know that the devs are working on it, so that's the main thing. Things for your replies!

Dave-in-Decatur · June 7

1 hour ago, HighcardEN said:

But yeah, now that I'm paying more attention, notes seem to either come up quickly (less than 5 seconds) or take ages (45-60 seconds). Nothing particularly interesting or different between them.

This matches my experience too, esp. on the Android app, sometimes on Web, seldom in the Windows desktop app. But it seems to happen differently for everybody.

AlbertR · June 8

16 hours ago, agsteele said:

The note opening time and the data loss experienced by some users are the two things being worked on at the moment.

So may I come back to a suggestion posted before three weeks? (see here)

If RTE will be disabled completely for non-paying users and enabled as an option for the others, both problems (load delay and data loss) might go away immediately 😉 (along with an appropriate update of their clients)

Dave-in-Decatur · June 12

On 6/8/2023 at 4:03 AM, AlbertR said:

So may I come back to a suggestion posted before three weeks? (see here)

If RTE will be disabled completely for non-paying users and enabled as an option for the others, both problems (load delay and data loss) might go away immediately 😉 (along with an appropriate update of their clients)

The thing is, as I understand it, that "RTE" is simply a kind of operation that can now be performed on notes having the new sync structure. It is the conversion of notes to that structure that seems to be partly responsible for the problems, especially load delay. To try to limit the structural conversion to a certain subset of users (paying users who opt in) sounds to me like a recipe for chaos on the server end.

AlbertR · June 14

On 6/13/2023 at 1:16 AM, Dave-in-Decatur said:

To try to limit the structural conversion to a certain subset of users (paying users who opt in) sounds to me like a recipe for chaos on the server end.

Maybe - but it's already in work because Legacy client do not use new sync and RTE. But works fine...

New EN10 clients are able to work without new sync and RTE until EN decided to switch (and I believe it is only a switch within the client software) to the new features.

s2sailor · June 14

2 hours ago, AlbertR said:

New EN10 clients are able to work without new sync and RTE until EN decided to switch

For now. I think maintaining two separate sync structures will be inefficient, limiting and problematic over time. My 2 cents …

AlbertR · June 14

1 hour ago, s2sailor said:

maintaining two separate sync structures will be inefficient, limiting and problematic over time. My 2 cents …

OK, counted 😉. But this argument has been mentioned already and answered thereafter. Read here to see that there is no need to change anything on server site.

Latest update (10.58) shows improvements - but the problem is by far not solved. During my trys to switch to EN10 it's always disappointing to see how long it takes to simply duplicate a note (which I often do to retain tags as opposed to a template) and then adjust its content. Simply not usable 😞

Carl-L-ND · June 14

I'm sitting here watching the back & forth and pondering how this is going to affect offline note performance on my phone and on my laptop.

I guess I need to find one of my dead zones or simply turn off WiFi and Cell data and see what happens looking up information.

My sole reason for going with Evernote back in 2013 was offline look-up of information stored locally in my phone or on my laptop.

And those friggin reminders on my laptop to migrate from legacy to v10 when I already have v10 installed. Can Evernote coders not work out a piece of code that detects that v10 is running along v6? Not confidence inspiring!

s2sailor · June 14

5 hours ago, AlbertR said:

there is no need to change anything on server site.

Sure ... and my point was, there is no need to change anything ... yet. They are phasing in the new sync so the old one needs to be maintained for a while, but it would be pretty inefficient for them to keep this going for long. For example, any change, or enhancement that could affect the sync now needs to be tested on each sync method and could require fixes to both.

That said, I had very few note duplication problems with the old sync and many more problems with the new, but I do see the new as the future and think and hope they will continue to work through the teething pain.

AlbertR · June 15

11 hours ago, s2sailor said:

... but I do see the new as the future and think and hope they will continue to work through the teething pain.

Yep - and I'm not argueing to completely fall back to the old. It was only an idea to slide in new features without disturbing well defined workflows, upset masses of users and load the own servers and support with hard to reproduce cases of "unusable or at least ugly slow"...

I've to use my time to work productive in my job - not to waist it with coffee, smalltalk or looking for workarounds because of a tool.

davidFot · June 30

I have used evernote for years and loved it. It has become unusable on Windows 10. I have 10.27.8-win-ddl-public(4175). Today I sat at my machine to add an item to a note. Last month it would take a few seconds. I clicked on the evernote icon. Nothing. No response at all. This is Software Design 101, guys. When your app is launched, give user feedback within a second. Put up a spinner or something. I tried clicking again. Nothing. I closed all my windows and found an installer popup that was under the other windows. The installer took about a minute, and killed the performance of my browser. When the install finished, again there was no indication of anything happening. No inication that evernote was launching. When it did launch it took maybe 20 seconds to become usable.

PLEASE, pass this on to your product marketing people. Responsiveness is much, much more important than adding new features. Many great apps have died because "new feature creep" killed the usability. I loved Evernote. If this continues, I'll be forced to switch to another soltution, and I really don't want to do that.

More info: there was an update recently that required a new chrome browser extension. I installed the extension, and it killed the browser. Youtube started leaking memory and the window would be killed. I removed both the old and new evernote browser extensions, then reset the browser settings to get chrome working again. I haven't installed the evernote extension again, and I won't. Perhaps this long delay is because the app is trying to communicate with the browser extension?

If your devs need my assitance to reproduce this, I'm available. I'm a devloper myself.

Melissa L · July 13

Just upgraded to v10.58.8-win-ddl-public (4175), Editor: v172.19.3, Service: v1.69.5. Now whenever I paste an image into a note Evernote hangs and crashes. Also, Evernote now consumes a huge # of CPU cycles and is generally laggy. Should I downgrade?

idoc · July 19

I noticed something strange on my win10/ EN v10 yesterday. I needed to refer to a note that had two images in it. The images were photos of a contract that I had taken days ago and sent to EN. For some reason I could not see the images at all. On the left I could see the tiny thumbnail with the two images; but on the main screen...nothing. I tried different things and finally went to a win7 machine running Legacy. Sure enough the two images were there. After a while they also appeared on the v10 machine. This is not the first time and it's troublesome because my first reaction is to think that I messed up and the content is lost.

fredhammersmith · July 19

4 hours ago, idoc said:

I noticed something strange on my win10/ EN v10 yesterday. I needed to refer to a note that had two images in it. The images were photos of a contract that I had taken days ago and sent to EN. For some reason I could not see the images at all. On the left I could see the tiny thumbnail with the two images; but on the main screen...nothing. I tried different things and finally went to a win7 machine running Legacy. Sure enough the two images were there. After a while they also appeared on the v10 machine. This is not the first time and it's troublesome because my first reaction is to think that I messed up and the content is lost.

Yes this happens to me from time to time too. I think if I change the focused note while it is generating the preview of another, something bad happens. A bit scary.

DarrylG · August 22

Long term EN paying user here ... Like many people in this forum I've been frustrated by EN over the years. They seem to focus on shiny new toys while ignoring the basics. Like many, I tried to ignore the BS. What is killing me now is this real time editing/syncing rubbish. Sometimes notes "upgrade", sometimes not. I've had one note open for 10mins now and it still says "Saving ..." in the bottom-right corner.

Plainly EN management (I use the term very loosely here) are out to lunch. Perhaps the company is going down the tubes - it happens. Such a pity because for years, EN was the player to beat. Maybe there was a change of CEO or something, but at a certain point which I can't put my finger on, EN started going downhill and the slide not only continues, but the pace is increasing. It takes a special lack of talent to do that to a star player.

Anyway, with that off my chest, I'm actively looking into alternatives and I want to say a big thank-you to the people on this forum who have made suggestions.

Best of luck, everyone ...

PinkElephant · August 22

It seems something was changed today on the server.

On my Mac, offline is OK, online some show, some don‘t, and these that don’t show display the „Saving…“ marker. If I toggle the Note Status on, I see that the note appears to be offline and trying to find the server. At the same moment a similar note shows online, connected and everything is OK.

It looks a lot like a server side issue, and I think it needs to be resolved there.

Meanwhile on a desktop it may help to take the client offline, and continue this way. Hopefully the server is back to sync all changes later.

Dave-in-Decatur · August 22

9 hours ago, DarrylG said:

Long term EN paying user here ... Like many people in this forum I've been frustrated by EN over the years. They seem to focus on shiny new toys while ignoring the basics. Like many, I tried to ignore the BS. What is killing me now is this real time editing/syncing rubbish. Sometimes notes "upgrade", sometimes not. I've had one note open for 10mins now and it still says "Saving ..." in the bottom-right corner.

Plainly EN management (I use the term very loosely here) are out to lunch. Perhaps the company is going down the tubes - it happens. Such a pity because for years, EN was the player to beat. Maybe there was a change of CEO or something, but at a certain point which I can't put my finger on, EN started going downhill and the slide not only continues, but the pace is increasing. It takes a special lack of talent to do that to a star player.

Anyway, with that off my chest, I'm actively looking into alternatives and I want to say a big thank-you to the people on this forum who have made suggestions.

Best of luck, everyone ...

Best of luck to you also. Meanwhile, here is news from the Evernote blog:Future-proofing Evernote’s foundations | Evernote Blog.

WeCanLearnAnything · August 27

On 8/22/2023 at 4:38 AM, DarrylG said:

Long term EN paying user here ... Like many people in this forum I've been frustrated by EN over the years. They seem to focus on shiny new toys while ignoring the basics. Like many, I tried to ignore the BS. What is killing me now is this real time editing/syncing rubbish. Sometimes notes "upgrade", sometimes not. I've had one note open for 10mins now and it still says "Saving ..." in the bottom-right corner.

Plainly EN management (I use the term very loosely here) are out to lunch. Perhaps the company is going down the tubes - it happens. Such a pity because for years, EN was the player to beat. Maybe there was a change of CEO or something, but at a certain point which I can't put my finger on, EN started going downhill and the slide not only continues, but the pace is increasing. It takes a special lack of talent to do that to a star player.

Anyway, with that off my chest, I'm actively looking into alternatives and I want to say a big thank-you to the people on this forum who have made suggestions.

Best of luck, everyone ...

I left Evernote a while back for markdown files the following reasons:

(1) File over app

(2) $0 price for unlimited devices, cloud synced easily

(3) This extraordinarily consistent string of promises:

I'm sure there are many more promises from ads, blog posts, discussion threads, etc. about fixing bugs, firm foundations, making Evernote just work, etc. All I see are device limitations, branding changes, business socks, a home screen (the scratch pad is a note-taking app within a note-taking app), price increases for features I don't want or need, etc.

Can anybody imagine Apple Notes acting like this for 9 years?

All I really need is are simple, reliable notes. File over app meets that need. Evernote does not.

I tried to check Evernote web to see what it was like. Here is what happened:

I signed in.
A loading screen appeared for a long time.
It finally loaded the old Evernote web version, which if I recall correctly, lacked many basic features and wasn't very compatible in terms of tables, formatting, etc. with the desktop versions.
I clicked to see the new Evernote web.
It showed me an ad, offering me 40% off, but before I could do anything, Evernote logged me out for no apparent reason.
I signed in again.
Another loading screen lasted a long time.
A popup forces me to either sign up for a free trial - presumably giving credit card information - or I can sign out of other devices. I don't see any way to access the old Evernote web.
I give up.

At this point, I cannot think of any reason at all to come back to Evernote. If anybody can, please reply. Otherwise, I'll probably delete my Evernote and Evernote Discussion accounts forever in a month or two.

WilliamL · August 27

3 hours ago, WeCanLearnAnything said:

I left Evernote a while back for markdown files the following reasons:

(1) File over app

(2) $0 price for unlimited devices, cloud synced easily

(3) This extraordinarily consistent string of promises:

Jan 2014 - Evernote CEO Phil Libin: "Reliability is just around the corner!"

Oct 2015 - Evernote CEO Chris O'Neill: "Reliability is just around the corner!"

Jan 2019 - Evernote CEO Ian Small: "Reliablitity is just around the corner!"

Aug 2023 - Evernote CEO Federico Simionato: "Reliability is just around the corner!"

I'm sure there are many more promises from ads, blog posts, discussion threads, etc. about fixing bugs, firm foundations, making Evernote just work, etc. All I see are device limitations, branding changes, business socks, a home screen (the scratch pad is a note-taking app within a note-taking app), price increases for features I don't want or need, etc.

Can anybody imagine Apple Notes acting like this for 9 years?

All I really need is are simple, reliable notes. File over app meets that need. Evernote does not.

I tried to check Evernote web to see what it was like. Here is what happened:

I signed in.

A loading screen appeared for a long time.

It finally loaded the old Evernote web version, which if I recall correctly, lacked many basic features and wasn't very compatible in terms of tables, formatting, etc. with the desktop versions.

I clicked to see the new Evernote web.

It showed me an ad, offering me 40% off, but before I could do anything, Evernote logged me out for no apparent reason.

I signed in again.

Another loading screen lasted a long time.

A popup forces me to either sign up for a free trial - presumably giving credit card information - or I can sign out of other devices. I don't see any way to access the old Evernote web.

I give up.

At this point, I cannot think of any reason at all to come back to Evernote. If anybody can, please reply. Otherwise, I'll probably delete my Evernote and Evernote Discussion accounts forever in a month or two.

The web works very well for me, as does EN 10. I guess if you’re having to ask what’s the point of the app for you and you simply want to take notes it’s maybe not the right app for you? EN is great for notes but as you say Apple notes can do that.

Boot17 · August 27

They've probably moved on to something like Obsidian -- since the referenced "file over app" specifically mentions that markdown app. But it could be any app where your notes aren't housed within the app, rather they are external to it.

I checked Evernote v10 on web just now to see what it was like too. I clicked a bookmark and it opened within 3 seconds ready to go. Pretty nice.

WeCanLearnAnything · August 27

57 minutes ago, WilliamL said:

The web works very well for me, as does EN 10. I guess if you’re having to ask what’s the point of the app for you and you simply want to take notes it’s maybe not the right app for you? EN is great for notes but as you say Apple notes can do that.

Evernote limits the number of devices to two! I have EN6 installed on my desktop and laptop, so it won't let me experience the web version.

Given EN10's offerings - feature bloat that makes your data not very portable - I can't imagine it's worth the effort to try.

WeCanLearnAnything · August 27

37 minutes ago, Boot17 said:

They've probably moved on to something like Obsidian -- since the referenced "file over app" specifically mentions that markdown app. But it could be any app where your notes aren't housed within the app, rather they are external to it.

I checked Evernote v10 on web just now to see what it was like too. I clicked a bookmark and it opened within 3 seconds ready to go. Pretty nice.

Obsidian is probably going to do it for me. Owning my own data, a durable file format, collapsible sections, and basic features that **JUST WORK** - this is all I need. Evernote offers none this.

PinkElephant · August 27

You know how popular kids are who pick only the cherries from a cake, leaving the crumbs for the others ? That's my equivalent for people coming here to post a very narrow selection of features. Half of them are even wrong when comparing, but never mind.

Farewell - only eating cherries give a sore stomach.

Boot17 · August 27

I'm very familiar with Obsidian and have a pretty great setup with it. I could possibly migrate to it someday, but there are some limitations for my personal use cases that make Evernote a better experience for me.

idoc · August 28

51 minutes ago, PinkElephant said:

You know how popular kids are who pick only the cherries from a cake, leaving the crumbs for the others ? That's my equivalent for people coming here to post a very narrow selection of features. Half of them are even wrong when comparing, but never mind.

Farewell - only eating cherries give a sore stomach.

Personally I'm giving up windows 10 because I don't like the blue color, Quickbooks because it takes 7 seconds to open, Gmail because the G is capitalized and Amazon because some items are expensive.

WeCanLearnAnything · August 28

4 hours ago, PinkElephant said:

You know how popular kids are who pick only the cherries from a cake, leaving the crumbs for the others ? That's my equivalent for people coming here to post a very narrow selection of features. Half of them are even wrong when comparing, but never mind.

Farewell - only eating cherries give a sore stomach.

I don't know what it means to "post a very narrow selection of features" or what that has to do with cherries and crumbs from a cake. I don't know if I am in the half that you believe are making wrong comparisons or what those wrong comparisons are.

Perhaps you could try replying by saying what you mean literally. Or if you have nothing useful to say, you can also choose to not respond.

WilliamL · August 28

9 hours ago, WeCanLearnAnything said:

Evernote limits the number of devices to two! I have EN6 installed on my desktop and laptop, so it won't let me experience the web version.

Given EN10's offerings - feature bloat that makes your data not very portable - I can't imagine it's worth the effort to try.

Evernote doesn’t limit the devices to two - that restriction is only there for people who want to use it for free. Software costs to be developed, they have to encourage people to pay to keep the machine going as it were. If you think Obsidian is a good option maybe that’s the right one for you, for me obsidian can’t cut it, I copy text in and out and I want consistent formatting, EN does that with ease, obsidian can’t.

Dave-in-Decatur · August 28

22 hours ago, WeCanLearnAnything said:

(3) This extraordinarily consistent string of promises:

Jan 2014 - Evernote CEO Phil Libin: "Reliability is just around the corner!"

Oct 2015 - Evernote CEO Chris O'Neill: "Reliability is just around the corner!"

Jan 2019 - Evernote CEO Ian Small: "Reliablitity is just around the corner!"

Aug 2023 - Evernote CEO Federico Simionato: "Reliability is just around the corner!"

I'm sure there are many more promises from ads, blog posts, discussion threads, etc. about fixing bugs, firm foundations, making Evernote just work, etc. All I see are device limitations, branding changes, business socks, a home screen (the scratch pad is a note-taking app within a note-taking app), price increases for features I don't want or need, etc.

Just to be clear, the apparent consistency comes from the poster creating near-identical titles for the links. The linked content is quite varied. As for branding and socks, years old, who cares, might as well blame Windows 11 for Clippy. Do I smell gas?

WRT price increases for features you don't want or need, good for you on finding Obsidian, but other people do in fact want and need those features, and a fair number of us find them worth paying for. But since you're a FREE USER anyway, what do you care about price increases? Hope that Obsidian or whatever continues to be developed as a hobby by its developer, who'll never get a dime from your use of a product that is exactly what you need.

WeCanLearnAnything · August 29

On 8/28/2023 at 12:44 AM, WilliamL said:

Evernote doesn’t limit the devices to two - that restriction is only there for people who want to use it for free. Software costs to be developed, they have to encourage people to pay to keep the machine going as it were. If you think Obsidian is a good option maybe that’s the right one for you, for me obsidian can’t cut it, I copy text in and out and I want consistent formatting, EN does that with ease, obsidian can’t.

You're right. I'm only talking about free options. Why would I do that?

There are superior free options out there for my needs.

In the past 10 years, Evernote has been quite buggy and unreliable, feature bloated, the company has chased weird shiny new things, and I actually was a paying customer previously.

If I had told anybody two months ago that ~all US employees were on the brink of being laid off and that Evernote finances were still unsustainable/unprofitable and had been for years, who here would have believed it? [Source: Verge article, Arts Technica]

Evernote could convince me to pay by creating reliable software combined with files and data that are very likely to last for decades. Clearly, Evernote offers neither, so I'm not interested in paying.

WilliamL · August 29

1 hour ago, WeCanLearnAnything said:

There are superior free options out there for my needs.

What’s the issue then? If you have free options more suited to your needs, you have no issue. Evernote is what it is, you either see value in that or you don’t, either is fine - based on circumstances and needs.

PinkElephant · August 29

@WeCanLearnAnything Clearly you say you will never pay, so give them a reason to keep folk like you on their servers for nothing indefinitely ?!

Because you obviously need some help to learn that there is nothing like a free lunch, forever. I hope EN is going to restrict this eternal happy hour soon - because I start to ask myself if the value I receive is really enough to continue to feed with my subscription a bunch of ungrateful, never satisfied users who don't spend a dime themselves.

No problem with people on education or on a shoestring, bringing up children and working 3 or more jobs to keep everybody housed, fed and happy. My respect for those, no issues.

But these guys who are proud to declare "Oh, I could pay, but they allow me to use the service since 10 years for free, so why should I subscribe" are a bad bunch. Only topped by those who say they are on board since 10 years, and everything was and is miserable, and if EN would "fix" this and that, they would subscribe.

Because beside being a modern clone of Mr. Scrooge, these guys are plain liars on top of it all. Disgustful.

But OK, everybody is excused, because EN lets you do it ...

WeCanLearnAnything · September 1

On 8/27/2023 at 10:21 AM, WeCanLearnAnything said:

...

I tried to check Evernote web to see what it was like. Here is what happened:

I signed in.

A loading screen appeared for a long time.

It finally loaded the old Evernote web version, which if I recall correctly, lacked many basic features and wasn't very compatible in terms of tables, formatting, etc. with the desktop versions.

I clicked to see the new Evernote web.

It showed me an ad, offering me 40% off, but before I could do anything, Evernote logged me out for no apparent reason.

I signed in again.

Another loading screen lasted a long time.

A popup forces me to either sign up for a free trial - presumably giving credit card information - or I can sign out of other devices. I don't see any way to access the old Evernote web.

I give up.

At this point, I cannot think of any reason at all to come back to Evernote. If anybody can, please reply. Otherwise, I'll probably delete my Evernote and Evernote Discussion accounts forever in a month or two.

On 8/29/2023 at 10:11 AM, WilliamL said:

What’s the issue then? If you have free options more suited to your needs, you have no issue. Evernote is what it is, you either see value in that or you don’t, either is fine - based on circumstances and needs.

I came back to Evernote and to these forums to see what the software was like and to ask more experienced users of V10 if there's anything I don't know about it that might be a reason to give Evernote one last try before cutting ties for good.

I was and remain genuinely curious.

So far, I've gotten snark, false accusations, and eye rolls, but nobody has listed a single reason to stick with Evernote, not to mention actually paying for it. I'll wait a little while longer.

WeCanLearnAnything · September 1

On 8/28/2023 at 8:57 AM, Dave-in-Decatur said:

Just to be clear, the apparent consistency comes from the poster creating near-identical titles for the links. The linked content is quite varied.

The consistency comes from consistent content. Perhaps you say big differences in the announcements because you're deep in the weeds - the same way an expert pianist perceives big differences between 4 pianists playing the same sonata - but for most users, the announcements are basically the same.

Example quotes from those links:

The 2014 link
- Jason Kincaid: "Evernote’s applications are glitchy to the extreme; they feel as if they’re held together by the engineering equivalent of duct tape,” Kincaid wrote, noting he’s jotted more than 7,000 notes using the service."
- Evernote CEO Phil Libin: “... in the big picture, he’s right. We’re going to fix this.”
The 2015 link
- David Pogue: "... I sent him a list of bugs and problems. He could not have been more gracious or more determined to make things better."
- Chris O'Neill: “We already have the team working to replicate and resolve the bugs you found,” he said, “and we are working around the clock with a significant portion of our development team building a better editor.”
The 2019 link
- Ian Small: "... each version of Evernote ... exhibits its own unique collection of bugs and undesirable behaviors. ... in order to invent the future of Evernote, we first need to improve Evernote’s foundations"
The 2023 link
- "as the company’s stewards our immediate priority is to make the fundamentals far more solid than has been the case"

On 8/28/2023 at 8:57 AM, Dave-in-Decatur said:

As for branding and socks, years old, who cares, might as well blame Windows 11 for Clippy. Do I smell gas?

As for the socks, I mentioned them as evidence of Evernote's longtime shiny-new-object syndrome that does not appear to be fading.

If Microsoft was still outputting junk as stupid as Clippy in Windows 11, then Clippy would serve as evidence of deep entrenchment of shiny-new-object syndrome and being out of touch with users.

But Microsoft changed their ways.

Evernote has not.

On 8/28/2023 at 8:57 AM, Dave-in-Decatur said:

WRT price increases for features you don't want or need, good for you on finding Obsidian, but other people do in fact want and need those features, and a fair number of us find them worth paying for. But since you're a FREE USER anyway, what do you care about price increases? Hope that Obsidian or whatever continues to be developed as a hobby by its developer, who'll never get a dime from your use of a product that is exactly what you need.

I'm not upset over the price increase's impact on my personal finances, lol. The fact they did this, while laying off a ton of employees, moving continents, and not offering a rock-solid product, etc., can't help but make me think the product and company are/were not stable or sustainble. They said so themselves. From the 2023 link: "... a few short months ago Evernote’s prospects were rather gloomy..."

And I'm using Obsidian for free now, but may start paying for their sync if it's worth paying for.

Unlike Evernote, Obsidian only has 15 employees. They seem to be doing OK. 🙂

WeCanLearnAnything · September 1

@PinkElephant

Regarding the tone, I wrote

On 8/27/2023 at 8:57 PM, WeCanLearnAnything said:

... Perhaps you could try replying by saying what you mean literally. Or if you have nothing useful to say, you can also choose to not respond.

Perhaps I was not explicit enough: If you can't write respectfully and truthfully, you should write nothing, and you know it.

Now, onto your falsehoods.

On 8/29/2023 at 12:47 PM, PinkElephant said:

@WeCanLearnAnything Clearly you say you will never pay, so give them a reason to keep folk like you on their servers for nothing indefinitely ?!

Your comment is falsified by

On 8/29/2023 at 9:06 AM, WeCanLearnAnything said:

...

Evernote could convince me to pay by creating reliable software combined with files and data that are very likely to last for decades. Clearly, Evernote offers neither, so I'm not interested in paying.

Here, you appear to falsely accuse me of lying and call me and/or the lies "disgustful". At a minimum, you grouped me with other people you call "a bad bunch" and more or less call them disgusting liars.

On 8/29/2023 at 12:47 PM, PinkElephant said:

... But these guys who are proud to declare "Oh, I could pay, but they allow me to use the service since 10 years for free, so why should I subscribe" are a bad bunch. Only topped by those who say they are on board since 10 years, and everything was and is miserable, and if EN would "fix" this and that, they would subscribe.

Because beside being a modern clone of Mr. Scrooge, these guys are plain liars on top of it all. Disgustful.

Your presumptuous and judgmental comment about "a bad bunch" is unworthy of these forums.

Here is one of my receipts from when I paid Evernote.

I stopped paying after a couple of months because Evernote was way too buggy. My posting history in these forums clearly shows me persistently begging Evernote to focus on reliability, not fluff. I begged for years.

Evernote did not deliver.

Previously, a reliable application would have been something I would have paid for. Evernote never offered it.

Now, I'd like reliable software PLUS files and data that will stand the test of time. I don't want to pay for Evernote's lock-in features which do the exact opposite of what I want.

Anyways, @PinkElephant, it does not appear you want to communicate respectfully or truthfully, so perhaps you should stop replying to my posts and stop addressing me. Perhaps you could learn to address your apparent anger issues instead. Disrespectfulness and falsehoods do not contribute positively to these forums.

Dave-in-Decatur · September 1

@WeCanLearnAnything, quoting stuff about bugs getting fixed in 2014 and 2015 proves less than nothing about Evernote today. If Obsidian has never had a bug that needed fixing, then congrats, you've found the Holy Grail of software. If they've ever had to fix a bug, oops. If they've ever had to fix a bug and then fix something the fix unfixed, then they're as terrible as Evernote, I guess.

EDIT: Perhaps the problem of Evernote's "history of" whatever comes from the fact that Evernote has a history (for much of which it has been declared nearly dead, and yet...). Obsidian just got here. Give it some time to act like ... a software company.

You and I agree on almost nothing and further chatter seems pointless. Fire off whatever else illogical, unfair, ad hominem, and meaningless, whatever, I'm done.

WilliamL · September 1

7 hours ago, WeCanLearnAnything said:

I came back to Evernote and to these forums to see what the software was like and to ask more experienced users of V10 if there's anything I don't know about it that might be a reason to give Evernote one last try before cutting ties for good.

I was and remain genuinely curious.

Well that’s not true at all is it. You have literally written you have no need of it so why are you here? It’s for attention and frankly I’m done giving it to you.

WeCanLearnAnything · September 1

7 hours ago, WilliamL said:

Well that’s not true at all is it. You have literally written you have no need of it so why are you here? It’s for attention and frankly I’m done giving it to you.

11 hours ago, Dave-in-Decatur said:

@WeCanLearnAnything, quoting stuff about bugs getting fixed in 2014 and 2015 proves less than nothing about Evernote today. If Obsidian has never had a bug that needed fixing, then congrats, you've found the Holy Grail of software. If they've ever had to fix a bug, oops. If they've ever had to fix a bug and then fix something the fix unfixed, then they're as terrible as Evernote, I guess.

EDIT: Perhaps the problem of Evernote's "history of" whatever comes from the fact that Evernote has a history (for much of which it has been declared nearly dead, and yet...). Obsidian just got here. Give it some time to act like ... a software company.

You and I agree on almost nothing and further chatter seems pointless. Fire off whatever else illogical, unfair, ad hominem, and meaningless, whatever, I'm done.

@WilliamL Did you read my posts?

If not, I'll recap: I stoped using Evernote regularly a while back. I've found that I need

(1) Simple, reliable software and

(2) Durable and portable data/files.

I then came back to the Evernote web client to see if it could meet my needs. It did not, glitching very badly, twice.

My purpose in these forums is to ask more knowledgeable users if Evernote has changed their ways towards (1) and (2). I was curious.

Instead, the "more knowledgeable users have falsely accused me of: lying, seeking atention, ad hominem, etc.

@Dave-in-Decatur compares any/tiny bugs in Obsidian (e.g. something being incorrectly indented in V1.3.1, fixed in V1.3.2) with showstopper bugs in Evernote (e.g. notes like @DarrylG's that don't update, my random log outs in web client, etc.).

All of that and still nobody has affirmed Evernote's ability to deliver (1) or (2)! I really wanted to have those two reasons to come back.

Since all respondents so far here appear to prefer snark, anger venting, personal attacks, etc., I'll ask another way, a final time:

@EvernoteEmployees:

(1) Is Evernote software simple and reliable? i.e. Will it last for many years? Do its basic functions just work?

(2) Is the data as durable and portable as, say, markdown files? Will it last for many years?

CalS · September 1

You might as well ask if @EvernoteEmployees are still beating their dogs.

You have to ask those questions of your own use case. Which it would appear the answer is yes based upon your post, Them saying it is so won't make it so. Time to move on. I did.

WeCanLearnAnything · September 1

@CalS I get where you're coming from - even if the beating dogs comparison is ridiculously harsh - but isn't the situation with Evernote now fundamentally different? Nearly all of the US and Chilean employees were laid off recently and operations shifted to Europe. Might the new/newly empowered EU employees have new ideas/insights/perspectives?

And, BTW, what are you using for note-taking nowadays?

CalS · September 1

Workflowy for notes and tasks. Rolled my own repository using Windows folders and Windows indexing for my paperless stuff, with MEGA as the sync engine. Directory Opus as the gateway to the repository (file explorer on steroids). Put all my 56k EN notes in the repository in HTML form. I am amazed at the speed of Windows search (27 GB repository). Fast or maybe faster than legacy EN for me. It is a solution cobbled to my needs, not for everyone. FWIW..

Boot17 · September 1

1 hour ago, WeCanLearnAnything said:

(1) Is Evernote software simple and reliable? i.e. Will it last for many years? Do its basic functions just work?

(2) Is the data as durable and portable as, say, markdown files? Will it last for many years?

#1 - It has been for me - 99.99% - not perfect, but it has been pretty good. (And I expect it to get better now that BS is hyper focused on improving performance and reliability.) In your use case above that you struggled with -- it took me 3 seconds to do the same.

#2 - For sure as durable, not quite as portable since there seems to be more support out there for markdown than ENEX/xml. But even a human can read an XML file -- the same as markdown. As long as I can export my Evernote notes into ENEX (XML/plain text or HTML) and get out the images, PDFs and other documents just fine then I have no worry. And I can do that now. There are also other third party tools that can backup/export Evernote into many different formats. If this is a concern for anyone using Evernote than they should periodically export/backup to another tool (and it's a good practice for anything -- you don't want your markdown files to *only* be on your one or even two devices).

WeCanLearnAnything · September 1

28 minutes ago, CalS said:

Workflowy for notes and tasks. Rolled my own repository using Windows folders and Windows indexing for my paperless stuff, with MEGA as the sync engine. Directory Opus as the gateway to the repository (file explorer on steroids). Put all my 56k EN notes in the repository in HTML form. I am amazed at the speed of Windows search (27 GB repository). Fast or maybe faster than legacy EN for me. It is a solution cobbled to my needs, not for everyone. FWIW..

Interesting. I use Dynalist for tasks now and it works pretty well.

If your notes are in HTML, does that not drastically slow down the speed at which you can edit them? Or do you have some kind of WYSIWYG editor for HTML? (Forgive me if this is a dumb question as I know very little about software.)

CalS · September 1

They are old notes so they don't get edited. There for research. And probably half of my notes on EN legacy were PDFs.

WeCanLearnAnything · September 1

7 minutes ago, Boot17 said:

#1 - It has been for me - 99.99% - not perfect, but it has been pretty good. (And I expect it to get better now that BS is hyper focused on improving performance and reliability.) In your use case above that you struggled with -- it took me 3 seconds to do the same.

#2 - For sure as durable, not quite as portable since there seems to be more support out there for markdown than ENEX/xml. But even a human can read an XML file -- the same as markdown. As long as I can export my Evernote notes into ENEX (XML/plain text) and get out the images, PDFs and other documents just fine then I have no worry. And I can do that now. There are also other third party tools that can backup/export Evernote into many different formats. If this is a concern for anyone using Evernote than they should periodically export/backup to another tool (and it's a good practice for anything -- you don't want your markdown files to *only* be on your one or even two devices).

Thanks for your perspective.

I hope that "BS is hyperfocused on improving performance and reliability", but I just find such promises hard to believe after hearing similar promises for so many years. David Pogue complained about Evernote slowness in 2015. There are still pretty bad complaints about slowness and sync problems in the forums 8 years later. Perhaps I'll reconsider Evernote after the basic features just work... but I don't think I can tolerate using slow and unreliable software, waiting indefinitely for that to be fixed.

Can you share some of those tools for exporting Evernote data?

Dave-in-Decatur · September 1

2 hours ago, WeCanLearnAnything said:

@EvernoteEmployees:

(1) Is Evernote software simple and reliable? i.e. Will it last for many years? Do its basic functions just work?

(2) Is the data as durable and portable as, say, markdown files? Will it last for many years?

Naïve boy that I am, I'm going to try taking you at your word after all. Of course, there aren't Evernote employees hanging out here. I'm even going to suppose that after years of using these forums you didn't realize that. So, naïvely, I'll pipe up.

(1) In my experience, Evernote v. 10 is feature-rich and yet reasonably easy to use. Its basic functions absolutely work. So do some pretty exotic ones, like OCR-searchable images and PDFs. There were major problems a couple of month ago, when the new sync structure was introduced without (it seems) adequate background preparation. That's in the rearview mirror for me now, and even back in May and June I experienced minor data corruption or loss, but no serious damage. Should have bought a lottery ticket, I don't know. These answers may or may not line up with your experience, but they are my experience.

Whether the software will last for years is not within my experience. It's computers on a badly damaged planet, who knows whether anything will last for many years. Evernote has been around for most of this century, which is not bad as software goes, especially software that (you claim) has never delivered on promises of reliability.

(2) If the software and storage are reliable, I don't feel the need for portability. For those who do, others here can discuss the various export possibilities. As for "many years," see above.

One of the nice things about Evernote is that I don't need to learn a special formatting language like Markdown. I can just type, using standard keyboard shortcuts for basic formatting, and either shortcuts or menus for less-basic.

1 hour ago, WeCanLearnAnything said:

do you have some kind of WYSIWYG editor for HTML?

Don't know about @CalS, but I do. It's called Evernote.

So there are some, I hope, straightforward answers to purportedly straightforward questions. If your experience differs from my experience, so be it. But since you're sincerely asking, not trolling, I'm sincerely answering.

CalS · September 1

Twice in the 21 months I've been off EN I have wanted to do something with an old note. In both cases I opened up legacy and copy/pasted the bits I wanted.

I guess in my use case old notes are basically archive. A few were transitioned early days.. For example any of the tables I used for logs in EN morphed to a Google Sheet. 🤷‍♂️

WeCanLearnAnything · September 8

On 9/1/2023 at 10:59 AM, Dave-in-Decatur said:

Naïve boy that I am, I'm going to try taking you at your word after all. Of course, there aren't Evernote employees hanging out here. [Emphasis added]...

The emphasized claim appears quite false.

Here are two example posts from an Evernote employee in this very thread.

On 10/9/2020 at 10:12 AM, Shane D. said:

Hi All,

I'm using this thread to centralize posts regarding app performance issues.

This will help me better track your issues. I'll be looking to merge threads that fit the description into this one.

On 10/13/2020 at 12:55 PM, Shane D. said:

Hi All,

Just wanted to let you know that we are tracking your reported issues.

Additionally, I've created the Mac equivalent of this thread here:

Here are more posts from other employees elsewhere in these forums.

On 12/15/2020 at 11:04 PM, Austin G said:

Hey everyone. Thanks for your feedback. We hear you and will continue to work on performance. Our 10.5 update released today contains performance improvements for note loading, the sidebar, and attaching files.

But we're not done. If performance issues continue on 10.5 please let us know with the following details in your report:

Note Count

Specific actions in the app that are too slow For example, Files ~XMB in size take too long to attach. Merging X# of notes with X# of attachments takes too long .etc.

If possible, a screen recording of the behavior

If you notice the issue while working with specific notes, and you're comfortable sharing them please attach an exported .enex copy of the note or include a note link.

These details will help up prioritize our areas of ongoing performance improvements. thanks again.

On 12/2/2020 at 1:25 PM, Austin G said:

Understood. You don't need access to that inbox to login to Evernote. Just type the email address and evernote account PW you used to login. Let me know if you see any errors when trying to login using that original email and PW. thanks!

The CEO of Evernote posted in these forums, dozens of times.

Furthermore, there has been massive employee turnover at Evernote.

On 9/1/2023 at 10:59 AM, Dave-in-Decatur said:

Naïve boy that I am, I'm going to try taking you at your word after all. Of course, there aren't Evernote employees hanging out here. I'm even going to suppose that after years of using these forums you didn't realize that. [emphasis added] So, naïvely, I'll pipe up.

You're right - I have been in these forums for years. And I have seen employees posting in them.

The only way I can see your claim, tone, and supposition as even remotely defensible is if:

(a) You haven't been paying attention to all the posts by employees in these forums for years AND

(b) You somehow know that after nearly 100% recent employee turnover, none of the new employees will be involved in these forums AND

(c) Anybody who doesn't know (b) is an idiot.

The chance that (a), (b), and (c) are all true/reasonable is negligible. Your condescending tone built on falsehoods... is really not helpful. If anything, you ought to apologize.

On 9/1/2023 at 10:59 AM, Dave-in-Decatur said:

(1) In my experience, Evernote v. 10 is feature-rich and yet reasonably easy to use. Its basic functions absolutely work. So do some pretty exotic ones, like OCR-searchable images and PDFs...

After the fiery passion I read about in this thread recently, I decided there *must* be something to V10 worth experiencing. I did try the web version as stated above, but that literally did not work at all.

So, this afternoon I downloaded the V10 for Windows.

Within a few minutes, I noticed

GOOD: Dark mode is excellent. 🎊
GOOD: Tables and formatting both appear improved by about an order of magnitude. 👍So, two major improvements right off the bat, at least when messing around with a blank note. Then I started going into my old stuff...
ANNOYING: Note load times were slow, especially if there was a picture. Pictures loaded section by section over 5+ seconds, even if I had just had the note open a minute earlier. 😕
DEAL BREAKER 1: Copy/Paste failed very badly, immediately followed by an Evernote pop up ad. The pop up ad may have been random, but it did come up during this recording and some of the other times I was reproducing the bug. 😠

5. DEAL BREAKER 2: There was an upload or sync error for no apparent reason. :angry:

So, in my experiences with V10, on both the web and desktop clients - the only ones I need - Evernote's most basic features do not "just work", while everything else on my computer seems to be working just fine.

😞

On 9/1/2023 at 10:59 AM, Dave-in-Decatur said:

Whether the software will last for years is not within my experience. It's computers on a badly damaged planet, who knows whether anything will last for many years. Evernote has been around for most of this century, which is not bad as software goes, especially software that (you claim) has never delivered on promises of reliability.

(2) If the software and storage are reliable, I don't feel the need for portability. For those who do, others here can discuss the various export possibilities. As for "many years," see above.

One of the nice things about Evernote is that I don't need to learn a special formatting language like Markdown. I can just type, using standard keyboard shortcuts for basic formatting, and either shortcuts or menus for less-basic.

I can't imagine a future in which I do not need portability. After having been burned many a times, I am trying to shed anything that doesn't emphasize portability.

Other than tables, it only took a few minutes for Markdown to feel intuitive. YouTube introduction to Markdown are usually a few minutes long.

On 9/1/2023 at 10:59 AM, Dave-in-Decatur said:

Don't know about @CalS, but I do [have a WYSIWYG HTML editor]. It's called Evernote.

So there are some, I hope, straightforward answers to purportedly straightforward questions. If your experience differs from my experience, so be it. But since you're sincerely asking, not trolling, I'm sincerely answering.

I'm glad it's good enough for your needs. But total failures of V10 on the web, then copy/paste failures followed by a pop up ad, and a sync/upload fail, all coming from a company whose stability is not discernable to outsiders (mass layoffs, major price changes, acquisition at unknown price, etc.) ... Man, that does not come anywhere near meeting my needs.

The improvements in the dark mode, formatting, and tables, though, were enough to convince me not to delete my Evernote account. Instead, I made a note - in another app - to retry Evernote in 2026. But until then, I think I'm done with Evernote.

See you all in a few years.

Dave-in-Decatur · September 8

The things that fail for you work for me. It's not just a matter of different needs. Why they fail for some and work for others I can't begin to say.

See you in 2026. If you quote examples from 2024 to prove what you're saying, please don't ask others to apologize.

WeCanLearnAnything · September 8

I don't know which year you meant by "2024".

But Ian Small's last visit to these forums was January 2023. His last post was 2021.

Austin G posted about a little over a year ago.

Federico Simionato posted twice in the last 24 hours and dozens of times in the past month or so, often responding to user-generated threads and posts.

Is that recent enough for you?

Your claim that Evernote employees do not post in these forums is falsified.

More thorough searching might find more employee posts in these forums (I don't know enough employee names to search) and I'd bet there are a ton more employees reading than writing.

Are you still defending

Your presumption that new and future employees of Evernote do not and will not post here?
More-or-less criticizing me for asking Evernote employees fair and important questions on the assumption that they might read and respond?
The tone in your previous post?

PinkElephant · September 8

I don't think this discussion is going anywhere, except maybe into a future violation of our rules of conduct.

What has been said is here, for others to read and come to their own conclusions.

Personally I don't expect EN staff to "hang around here". I hope they have their fingers glued to the keyboard, coding whatever it takes to make EN great again.

s2sailor · September 8

While I don’t expect EN staff to hang around here, having someone as a designated presence, such as Shane use to, would be nice. Back in the day staffers would say even if they didn’t respond to all posts they did read them all. I have no idea if that was true or not but I tended to believe it. Other than the threads that Frederico is in, it is hard to say what the team may pick up from these discussions.

Dave-in-Decatur · September 8

15 hours ago, WeCanLearnAnything said:

Your claim that Evernote employees do not post in these forums is falsified.

More thorough searching might find more employee posts in these forums (I don't know enough employee names to search) and I'd bet there are a ton more employees reading than writing.

Are you still defending

Your presumption that new and future employees of Evernote do not and will not post here?

More-or-less criticizing me for asking Evernote employees fair and important questions on the assumption that they might read and respond?

The tone in your previous post?

What I said was:

Quote

Of course, there aren't Evernote employees hanging out here.

You even quoted me. I never said they don't post here. Please apologize for misrepresenting me.

As to your bet ... it's easy to bet on something none of us has any way of verifying, but it's meaningless imagining.

Yes, I defend my criticizing you for asking Evernote employees questions in a venue other than the one in which they take questions, the support and feedback systems.

And that really is the end. Make any further misrepresentation you wish, and let it be the last word. Call me anything but late for dinner.

WeCanLearnAnything · September 8

Are you actually claiming that Federico Simionato, who posts here and interacts with users here, does not hang out here?

Of course not.

His many posts falsify your claim that Evernote employees don't hang out here. Perhaps my wording was inexact. But his posts falsify your claim nonetheless.

Plus there are likely other employees who likely do hang out here but do not post here. Plus there has been massive employee turnover and you are presuming all the new ones are not and will not be here. Plus you also have repeatedly dodged my points about your rude tone. I cannot think of a good faith reason for not addressing these points and you have not been willing to provide one. If your next post to me does not address directly the points I made in this paragraph, I will stop reading your posts.

PinkElephant · September 9

Dear „@all&everybody here“ :

Reported

Read my post above and check the forum code of conduct. This thread has IMHO taken a bad turn.

GarySam · October 3

On 10/9/2020 at 12:12 PM, Shane D. said:

Hi All,

I'm using this thread to centralize posts regarding app performance issues.

This will help me better track your issues. I'll be looking to merge threads that fit the description into this one.

Hi Shane -

I just noticed some serious performance issues begginning with the installation of Evernote 10.63.1

I installed 10.63.1 to fix, or bring back the feature, of lookup suggestions. Lookup, or search, suggestions lost with the AI upgrade. Also noting that the AI search upgrade also does not support suggestions while typing.

s2sailor · October 3

50 minutes ago, GarySam said:

Hi Shane -

I just noticed some serious performance issues begginning with the installation of Evernote 10.63.1

I installed 10.63.1 to fix, or bring back the feature, of lookup suggestions. Lookup, or search, suggestions lost with the AI upgrade. Also noting that the AI search upgrade also does not support suggestions while typing.

You are quoting a three year old post. Shane no longer works for Evernote. It would be best to submit a support ticket and report the issues that way.

Dave-in-Decatur · October 4

The slowness has been discussed in this thread, near the end:

I believe there's a newer version out (10.63.2?) at evernote.com/download which should have fixed it.

Aranguez Hardware · October 4

Good day, I am currently on the latest version of Evernote (10.62.5), I was forced to update after I got an error message stating that i needed to update because my version will become unusable. This new version is by far the worse. We use EN to scan and tag invoices, also to search for older invoices if we need to find a product. It took me 4 mins to scan and tag one (1) invoice. I opened a ticket but I am still awaiting a response. The program is slow and sometime unresponsive all together, and I get an error message that it is not responding and to either relaunch or wait. I have uninstalled and reinstalled and not progress. It's also slowing down other programs on the computer while it's trying to load. I just did this update on Friday and my patience has already grown thin. I need to be able to scan and tag these invoices as fast as I was able to in the previous version and be able to search and find the note I am looking for. When tagging invoices, I will type and have to wait for the words to be processed. It is very very slow and no longer does what we need it to do effectively. We have been using EN for years, is there anyone that was able to find a solution this problem and if so can you share please. Or, if you have found another application that can do the same thing and is efficient as the version before can you please share that as well, thank you.

PinkElephant · October 4

There was a general outage today, for some leading to a slowdown, for others to syncing not available.

They seem to have fixed most by now, but there are still some reports from users with problems.

Scanning depends on how it's done, and on which platform. Since you don't post it, no help. Regular uninstalling won't really remove the app. You believe you uninstalled, but in fact you didn't remove all program parts. The fresh app goes on top of it, the problems persist. Again no platform, no help. After an install, the app needs time to download all content. Until this is through (which can take days of online time, depending on the size of the database and the internet connection), you basically run the app off the web server - which is slower than local. No platform, no ... you got the message by now.

Aranguez Hardware · October 5

18 hours ago, PinkElephant said:

There was a general outage today, for some leading to a slowdown, for others to syncing not available.

They seem to have fixed most by now, but there are still some reports from users with problems.

Scanning depends on how it's done, and on which platform. Since you don't post it, no help. Regular uninstalling won't really remove the app. You believe you uninstalled, but in fact you didn't remove all program parts. The fresh app goes on top of it, the problems persist. Again no platform, no help. After an install, the app needs time to download all content. Until this is through (which can take days of online time, depending on the size of the database and the internet connection), you basically run the app off the web server - which is slower than local. No platform, no ... you got the message by now.

Hi sorry that I didn't specify, I am using Windows 10.

Sid Tewari · October 14

I have a lag time whenever I am sketching/drawing on Evernote. Can someone help me figure out the problem?

erinsmclaughlin · October 20

I started having problems a few weeks ago with Evernote telling me I was logged out when I had not logged out. I am connected via Google, and I was getting an error message trying to log in. I gave it a few days, uninstalled and reinstalled and poof, Evernote went back to normal. Tonight, following an update, all it will do is load. I'm running version 10.63.4 on Windows.

PinkElephant · October 20

Have you logged in via Google, or by user & PW ?

In another thread, the fellow user reported he quit the app from the file menu. When restarting it, it worked again.

fredhammersmith · October 20

On 10/14/2023 at 12:17 AM, Sid Tewari said:

I have a lag time whenever I am sketching/drawing on Evernote. Can someone help me figure out the problem?

Drawing and annoting in the new Evernote is very bad. Very very bad. I dont use the feature anymore. I switched to Samsung Notes for this and import the notes in Evernote.

Mike Dundee · October 23

I was force to update to newest version some days ago, stating the old version will be unusable. But new version is far worse. Problem I experience every day:

- I was not able to log in, stating connection error. I finally managed to overcome this by clicking several times on the same log in button.

- Clicking on link is delayed. Only after 20 seconds the link is opened in browser.

- Sometimes causes high CPU usage, I have to restart app

- Sometimes freezes after I copy some text from the note, I have to close the window.

- unnecessary buttons in the most left panel. I cannot see my full notes tree, have to scroll through it, because there are large buttons above and below (one of them Upgrade button).

App Performance Issues: Slowness/Poor Responsiveness/Lag

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