Bring back searching notes in Spotlight search on the homescreen and lockscreen

[_jmes 18]

I can no longer find notes in the native iOS Spotlight search (on the homescreen and lockscreen). This was my most frequently used feature in Evernote and saved me a lot of time – I’d love to see it back.

[Mark Derman 2]

This is the primary reason I left Evernote for Apple notes a few years back.

And I would switch back to Evernote (because I use Apple Notes via the web in Windows which is non optimal) if iOS, Mac and Windows search indexing was built in.

 

[Mimspkt 5]

This is a huge issue for me. I spotlight everything. I'd love to be able to search notes in spotlight

[PinkElephant 8,073]

The forum is mainly user to user.

You could issue a support ticket, or use the feedback function build into the clients.

[Thorz 52]

As a reply to @PinkElephant: I have left feedback, many times. I have been doing this since they introduced the horrible nightmare that is v.10 of Evernote. How on earth can a company remove features as important as Spotlight integration in ALL platforms when releasing v10 of the product when it has been offered since the start on previous versions?

It is an atrocity.

[PinkElephant 8,073]

Obviously - they can. Your question is more if they should - probably not.

The v10 clients were developed with the idea of a unified app, that works and feels similar on all platforms.

OS-specific features like Spotlight (only available on Apple devices) were skipped. This is a design decision, like it or not.

There are more of that breed, like the standardization of fonts, no support for iPadOS-specific features, no Apple Watch app etc. I am no fan of these decisions, but can only explain to you what I see.

For an atrocity one may end up in front of a firing squad - we better let the devs live, to get further improvements. Maybe one day even spotlight, who knows.

[Calion 26]

This is insane. I had no idea this had changed until today; I was just wondering why I couldn't find things I was sure I had put somewhere. Yeah, moving to Apple Notes (or Obsidian!) seems the only move here. 

[PinkElephant 8,073]

Just go ahead …

EN keeps a local copy, but it is not easily readable. It makes not much sense to search it by Spotlight, because knowing it is there does not make the note open. The way to find content is through EN search.

Beside this, Spotlight search was already cut years ago. This did not happen with v10, if I remember it correctly it happened 2-3 years ago, with EN 7.14 and a MacOS X release.

If you did not notice all the time it’s gone, you have a hard time to convince anybody you really use it. Your pompous posting here is for me looking like thin hot air.

[Calion 26]

I have used it. I just didn’t realize it wasn’t working, so I just didn’t find the things I was looking for.

[PinkElephant 8,073]

You came out with ZERO hits since quite some time (as I said, it stopped either with Mojave or Catalina), but didn’t notice ?

OK, fine with me, but as I said this is not new. With legacy if it had worked it would have shown at least attachments, because in the old database they were saved as such. But it didn’t work either. In the new versions database Spotlight makes no sense any longer, because the storage uses a native format.

It is EN search, good to know …

[Calion 26]

First off, this discussion is about iOS, not Mac. And yes, I couldn’t tell. I only use Spotlight search for this sort of thing when I don’t know where I saved something; whether it’s in Evernote, or Books, or Notes, or what. Since I didn’t get any results at all from Spotlight, I didn’t know exactly why.

[PinkElephant 8,073]

Spotlight on iOS is only working on a few apps, and these are Apple provided, like Mail, Calendar or Files. Most 3rd party apps don't show.

In general apps in iOS run in sandboxes. The sandbox restricts access from the app, but as well to the app from other apps. Furthermore I think all storage on an iOS device is encrypted, and EN will do this with a key created from the user account, not the general key provided by iCloud keychain. Plus the app itself is running based on a framework, which isolates it against the OS level further.

If you want to find content saved in EN, use the search inside of the EN app.

If unhappy about how it works today, contact support.

[Calion 26]

On 2/2/2022 at 3:26 PM, PinkElephant said:

Spotlight on iOS is only working on a few apps, and these are Apple provided, like Mail, Calendar or Files. Most 3rd party apps don't show.

And yet Evernote once had Spotlight support; look at the first post in this thread. So this is not a valid point.

Quote

If you want to find content saved in EN, use the search inside of the EN app.

The entire purpose of Spotlight, and the reason Apple allows other apps access to it, is so you don’t have to individually search inside every single app in order to find things.

On 2/2/2022 at 3:26 PM, PinkElephant said:

If unhappy about how it works today, contact support.

I did so, by upvoting and posting a comment on a feature request in the Product Feedback/Feature requests forum on Evernote.com.

[PinkElephant 8,073]

In the prior version attachments were stored as files, like .pdf, .docx, .xlsx and the like.

Not any longer - you need EN to open these converted files. Then you can use EN search to find them as well.

[Calion 26]

57 minutes ago, PinkElephant said:

In the prior version attachments were stored as files, like .pdf, .docx, .xlsx and the like.

Not any longer - you need EN to open these converted files. Then you can use EN search to find them as well.

I’m not specifically talking about attachments. But EN could still give access to their own converted database to Spotlight.

[PinkElephant 8,073]

Not sure if a) the database is readable and b) if it can be opened from the outside.

It limits the usefulness of Spotlight if it finds something, but does not allow to access it.

[Calion 26]

On 2/4/2022 at 9:24 AM, PinkElephant said:

Not sure if a) the database is readable and b) if it can be opened from the outside.

It limits the usefulness of Spotlight if it finds something, but does not allow to access it.

Then that is something I would like them to fix as well.

[PinkElephant 8,073]

You are wishing for something that has more to do with the operating system than with EN. Furthermore the EN data is app specific. To search and open it you need the app that provides access.

Thus use the EN app. MacOS or iOS would need to launch it anyhow to get access.

[Calion 26]

16 hours ago, PinkElephant said:

You are wishing for something that has more to do with the operating system than with EN. Furthermore the EN data is app specific. To search and open it you need the app that provides access.

Thus use the EN app. MacOS or iOS would need to launch it anyhow to get access.

You don’t seem to grasp the very purpose of Spotlight, which is to be able to search in various apps’ databases all at once. Yes, it’s an operating system feature—one which Evernote has decided to cease supporting. I’m not sure what’s difficult about this idea.

[PinkElephant 8,073]

Not that difficult to understand (Mac user since 1989).

Even if it would show, AFAIK no way to access it directly. EN v10 is more a browser-based app than anything - to protect against corruption with the permanent syncing, everything must probably pass through the app.

It is a restriction, and you can continue to ask it to be changed. I just do not see the sense in banging my head against the same wall again and again, but fine with me if you try. Get a decent helmet ...

[Calion 26]

It’s a basic system feature, which Evernote could easily support if it wished: Just index the files and have the index in the app.

But yes, Evernote’s changes are pushing me farther and farther from using it.

[Boot17 1,439]

What other apps does spotlight on iOS work for a text search in other apps? I just tried searching for a piece of text that exists in three other apps (Things, UpNote, and Apple Notes itself) and Spotlight came up empty handed.

However, I did then notice this option at the bottom of the Spotlight results:

Tapping on "Search Notes" did bring up the Notes App and auto-search my term for me.

I did have better results on MacOS with Spotlight returning a specific note from the Notes App, but the other third party apps were not displaying results.

Anyway, I guess my point is here that it doesn't really seem like it's a basic system feature (at least any longer?) on either iOS or MacOS if other apps are not leveraging it. Maybe I'm missing some kind of setting somewhere that would enable this (for any app in iOS and for other third party apps in MacOS).

[PinkElephant 8,073]

Spotlight included searching the local EN database in the past, and people seem to believe this would be for granted.

As we learned a while ago (maybe 2 years), this was naive. AFAIK it was killed by Apple restricting Spotlight search. The bigger reach of it on the Mac simply lies in the sandboxing of all apps and their data on iOS. Some of the native apps from Apple can be selected, but I have not seen 3rd party apps. It lists hits in the Files app, and in accounts held in Apple Mail.

Who wants to find something that was saved in EN, needs to open the app, and use the integrated search function.

[redynstruc 6]

I'm not sure where this issue is at as I just now discovered that Spotlight no longer indexes Evernote attachments and, hence, Houdahspot will only find those that were created before May 2021, or thereabouts.  Anyway, I would like to see this capability return, but I'm not sure if it is an OSX or EN issue.

[PinkElephant 8,073]

Since it disappeared already with legacy. when a large MacOS yearly update was released I assume it has to do with MacOS changes.

If EN could somehow circumvent it - no idea. Since the new EN client does not store attachments in an easily read format, I doubt it would be of much use anyhow. Even id something would be found, to locate and open it you need to use the EN client anyhow.

If you want more details, you can try to ask support.

[Phil14 7]

On 8/17/2021 at 1:54 AM, PinkElephant said:

The v10 clients were developed with the idea of a unified app, that works and feels similar on all platforms.

Yes that is a good excuse to make life easier for the developers, and to try to lock users in. It just shows the ignorance of management.

Catching new customers is always more important than keeping old ones because they would need to take the effort and find a different app and migrate all their data. Management knows that because of this we would be reluctant to move away, so we are the idiots being milked.

I kept wondering why I am using my EN notes less and less, and I just found the reason - which is that they are no longer shown when I search for something on my Mac (obviously I use Spotlight for searching).

I really need to look for an alternative to Evernote...

[Calion 26]

16 hours ago, Phil14 said:

I really need to look for an alternative to Evernote...

I’m trying to move everything to Obsidian.

[PinkElephant 8,073]

For everybody happy about spotlight searching: This was killed already when the client was still „legacy“. And it was killed by an MacOS update, not by a new EN release (there were hardly any new releases these „good old“ days). So blame whoever you want to blame, but it has nothing to do with v10, and likely nothing with EN.

And I have to ask „and then ?“. If you found something with spotlight, you can’t open it. It is there, but to access it you need to open the EN client, and use the search there to locate the note. Then you can search in EN right away.

All the rest is Blabla - if anybody wants to switch apps, just go ahead, and good sailing. It is not impressing anybody here - the forum is user2user, and I don’t give a sh….. if another user continues, or skips. We are free people, taking free decisions about the apps we want to use. So if you think for yourself switching is the right thing, the DO it, and enjoy the ride. But stop the bloating, it just tells YOU, for your use cases took a wrong turn before.

[Angry 45]

19 hours ago, PinkElephant said:

For everybody happy about spotlight searching: This was killed already when the client was still „legacy“. And it was killed by an MacOS update, not by a new EN release (there were hardly any new releases these „good old“ days). So blame whoever you want to blame, but it has nothing to do with v10, and likely nothing with EN.

And I have to ask „and then ?“. If you found something with spotlight, you can’t open it. It is there, but to access it you need to open the EN client, and use the search there to locate the note. Then you can search in EN right away.

All the rest is Blabla - if anybody wants to switch apps, just go ahead, and good sailing. It is not impressing anybody here - the forum is user2user, and I don’t give a sh….. if another user continues, or skips. We are free people, taking free decisions about the apps we want to use. So if you think for yourself switching is the right thing, the DO it, and enjoy the ride. But stop the bloating, it just tells YOU, for your use cases took a wrong turn before.

Spotlight search was on iOS legacy:

The search searched only the title of the notes. A touch opened the note. 

And legacy iOS App did the same when you typed sth. in the search line the titles got filtered and it showed all fitting notes. Only when you hit enter, the whole note were searched.
I prefere that behaviour then the new *****.

[PinkElephant 8,073]

OK, learned something. Thanks for posting.

And now it is gone. I probably never really used it, because when I search, I want to find. So I open the app, employ filters, maybe some advanced syntax, get what I knew was there (some-where) in a short(!)list, use it, and move to the next task.

I often wonder how some fellow users seem to live their lives entirely in the past, bathing in „good old days“ memories. But maybe they wonder as well how somebody can simply embrace new stuff, conspicious as it is.

So just to sum it up: Spotlight search is long gone, and you better come to terms with this dire, unrequested, not so new reality.

[raonoy72 13]

On 6/9/2022 at 1:19 AM, Phil14 said:

Yes that is a good excuse to make life easier for the developers, and to try to lock users in. It just shows the ignorance of management.

Phil, correct, unfortunately Evernote’s product management lost its way completely. Very sad since I was an avid user and now more and more rely on Apple notes.

[PinkElephant 8,073]

Where is the core of your message ?

Oh yes, you are relying on Apple Notes now. Did it ever cross your mind that Apple enables Spotlight search for system apps, but not for 3rd party ?

 

[raonoy72 13]

On 6/12/2022 at 6:01 PM, PinkElephant said:

Where is the core of your message ?

Oh yes, you are relying on Apple Notes now. Did it ever cross your mind that Apple enables Spotlight search for system apps, but not for 3rd party ?

 

No, it did not cross my mind since iOS Spotlight beautifully searches Google Keep notes.

As to Evernote losing its way, I’d take back my comment if the company demonstrates that NPS (or equivalent) and market share are increasing. As a customer I feel less and less comfortable in keeping my 2K+ notes with a company that I don’t believe is going to be around in a couple of years.

[PinkElephant 8,073]

A feature that has not existed for the last years … but just go ahead if you don’t feel comfortable any more.

[raonoy72 13]

@PinkElephant Would you please clarify which is the nature of your relation with Evernote?

[PinkElephant 8,073]

Paying customer …

And yours ?

[raonoy72 13]

Me: same.

And you are not directly or indirectly affiliated to EN in any other way?

[PinkElephant 8,073]

What are you ? Lawyer ?

Take an answer for what it is, and enjoy the forum.

[Brian W 4]

On 6/20/2022 at 9:55 AM, raonoy72 said:

@PinkElephant Would you please clarify which is the nature of your relation with Evernote?

It would appear that they are someone with far too much time and not nearly enough to do. 

[PinkElephant 8,073]

The appearance of something should not be taken for the real thing.

You posted 6 posts here since October 2019. How many fellow users have you helped ?

The forum would be a pretty hopeless place if there would only be users questioning each other’s integrity.

[Ryq G 27]

When I need to find something on my Mac, I can search for anything--except on evernote.

I may have saved a file to the computer,. or to a cloud site.   I could have placed it in a word file or a texteddit file or excel.  I might have written a reminder or shated it via mail to someone.  It could have been a discussion in a text.    It could have  been handwritten notes on a photo.

I used to be able to search for it all in spotlight.  Now if not in spotlight, I have to open Evernote and search there.  And  if it's in both places, I might use one of thavehe searches and think I have all of the information I need.

It takes extra time, more memory and increases the chance of errors.  I've yet to find another application or tool that stoires information on my computer that prevents me from finding it using the search tool built into the operating system.

I'm not a programmer or engineer and have no idea why this was done.  But it is an impediment to my gathering my own information.  I know I am not the only one.  I also know that some trolls find great pleasure in putting down anyone who needs something that they do not need or want, or those who don't know enough to figure workarounds (for thiings that should not need workarounds).

[Anthony G 8]

8 hours ago, Ryq G said:

When I need to find something on my Mac, I can search for anything--except on evernote.

I may have saved a file to the computer,. or to a cloud site.   I could have placed it in a word file or a texteddit file or excel.  I might have written a reminder or shated it via mail to someone.  It could have been a discussion in a text.    It could have  been handwritten notes on a photo.

I used to be able to search for it all in spotlight.  Now if not in spotlight, I have to open Evernote and search there.  And  if it's in both places, I might use one of thavehe searches and think I have all of the information I need.

It takes extra time, more memory and increases the chance of errors.  I've yet to find another application or tool that stoires information on my computer that prevents me from finding it using the search tool built into the operating system.

I'm not a programmer or engineer and have no idea why this was done.  But it is an impediment to my gathering my own information.  I know I am not the only one.  I also know that some trolls find great pleasure in putting down anyone who needs something that they do not need or want, or those who don't know enough to figure workarounds (for thiings that should not need workarounds).

Well said!

[Calion 26]

After the latest debacle where I would open notes recently created on my iPhone or iPad and discover that last several paragraphs didn’t save, I’m switching to Obsidian.md.

[Ryq G 27]

Is it my imagination, or is Evernotes migrating to become something designed for an in team of specialists who live and breathe it.  I find more and more simple or obvious actions that I want to take require me to search online and find that a simple task is now impossible or convoluted or called something proprietary and hidden.

I know not all software is designed to be mass market, but it seems Evernote is becoming something only designed for some inner core of people who want to turn Evernote in to some Shiboleth to separate the whiz-bang-technos from the unwashed masses.  Using it successfully requires one know all the secret handshakes of the "in crowd."

That IS one approach to marketing a product.

[PinkElephant 8,073]

Instead of filling paragraphs with general observations: Could you post some examples ?

Personally I disagree with your opinion - but since use cases are different, so may be the personal perception.