iOS Clipper is terrible

[NightStalker 407]

The iOS Share Clipper used to work.  It was slow, but it worked.  It would transfer the whole page, etc as required. It would also automatically create a title, let you set tags, and would also send the source URL.  It would sync it to Evernote directly.  Slow, but reliable.  Fine tuning could be done on the Mac or PC if needed.

Now - it is hopeless.  It has become a laborious multi-step process.  Clip an article and you get a message saying it will be synced next time you open Evernote on this device. So you then have to leave what you're doing and open Evernote, whereupon it then takes several minutes just to import the clip. But even then, it has only clipped locally - you then need to manually sync (pull down and release) to get the local Evernote to send the clip to the Evernote servers.  Not until you've done all of that can you access the clip on any other device.

And only then can you go back to whatever it was that you were doing in the first place.

It is truly awful, counter-productive, and staggeringly mind-blowing how software engineers could possibly take something that worked and ***** it up so badly!!  What on earth are they suggesting are the "improvements"?  And don't even get me started on the main program - that is a disaster all to itself.  This post is only about the clipper via the Share function.

Once again, we have to ask that they simply pull ALL of the new versions of Evernote off the market, replace them with renumbered old versions that worked perfectly, and then either give up on the new version (nobody actually asked for an Electron version as far as I know from the forums) or spend several months getting it right.

And do that while you still have a semblance of a customer base, and before the class actions start....

[HeBoIz 241]

IMHO this is the standard clipping routine with v10 since the first release on 16th October 2020. It‘s obviously slower and more complicated than before, but meanwhile it is at least working reliably.

And you choose this topic to deeply criticize v10 in whole - once again and now? Didn‘t you make this point already with other issues? If we are talking about clipping on iOS wouldn‘t it be better to start a request for improving in the request forum?

But I‘m sure, you probably get more likes this way...

(To much criticism, to negative mood, to simple point of views, to less constructive discussions nowadays in these forums IMHO anyway.)

[NightStalker 407]

40 minutes ago, HeBoIz said:

And you choose this topic to deeply criticize v10 in whole - once again and now? Didn‘t you make this point already with other issues? If we are talking about clipping on iOS wouldn‘t it be better to start a request for improving in the request forum?

But I‘m sure, you probably get more likes this way...

I don't care how many or how few "Likes" I get - I don't count or take notice of them.  My point is that after several months, as a paying Premium customer for the past 12 years, I still have iOS versions of Evernote that have flaws, missing functions, slow syncing, scrambled web page clipping, multiple steps to clip where we had a simple and working Clipper previously, etc etc.  I'm back on v7.14 on my Macs, and have unchecked all updating.  But my iOS versions autoupdated before I became aware of all the faults and missing features.  I called for replacement of v10 with previously working versions a few weeks ago.  Nothing happened, and we all still have faulty version 10 apps.  So I'm renewing my call for reverting to the previous versions.  We're still paying Evernote good money...!

[PinkElephant 8,091]

iOS clipping never was great, now it is less so. There is a workaround using share, print, create a pdf and share this into EN. Does the job, especially when the website supports reader mode. I copy the URL into the new note to be able to go back to the web if needed.

We will see if the clipping get improved. No deal breaker for my use of EN on iOS. In general I like EN iOS v10.3, although there are still relevant missing functions.

[s2sailor 2,187]

I don’t use the iOS clipper much.  It works ok for me.  Not great, but ok.  What I really dislike though is having to go to the app before the clip is saved into Evernote. This is also standard behavior on the Mac when scanning. I really hope they find a way to remove this intermediate step.

[Rowan 4]

18 hours ago, NightStalker said:

The iOS Share Clipper used to work.  It was slow, but it worked. 

<snip>

Now - it is hopeless.  It has become a laborious multi-step process.  Clip an article and you get a message saying it will be synced next time you open Evernote on this device.

<snip>

 

I want to add a hearty second to NightStalker's complaint: Since sometime in December, I had naively been syncing notes from my iPad to Evernote only to discover in the past few days they never synced to my master Evernote database.

This morning, I discovered version 10.2 on my iPad Pro was stuck trying to sync 13 notes. I discovered 10.3 was available and after restarting my iPad, could not make the App Store recognize an upgrade was available, so was left with deleting and reinstalling Evernote, which did bring it to 10.3 but at a heavy cost:

I lost those 13 notes.

Then I discovered, as NightStalker rightly points out, a new, cumbersome and annoying procedure to get notes to sync has been implemented (if you're using the Share Tab).

Why, oh why, does a technology for which its reason to exist is to literally synchronize notes making it so difficult to do exactly that? (It feels like a major work-around for a possible Apple-implemented security issue but would like to hear from someone at Evernote as to why this user-unfriendly procedure is now the norm. The most-recent reviews on the App Store of version 10.3 are shockingly bad.)

[PinkElephant 8,091]

Sorry, but I sense a portion of skeleton racing spirit here: Install a new version of an app, just continue doing whatever I did, never checking whether it works, and then watching up when I find myself in a treetop, widely off track.

If you open the app right on the iPad just once after sharing, you see the notes trying to be loaded to the local data base. This has nothing to do with sync, it is the share created before being received by the EN app locally, during an import process.

This is quite normal for iOS apps, there are other apps as well that need to process a share first before it shows in the app. But usually the app opens right with the first share, and it runs the import. EN allows for several shares to be stacked, and tries to process them when opened.

It counts down the notes in process, and usually it goes through after a short wait. Newly imported notes will show a green triangle, which does NOT mean they are syncing in this moment, it means they wait to sync. A little while later syncing starts, the notes are moved to the server, and the green triangle is removed. 

First import from share, then syncing. If you say you lost notes, they had not imported firsthand, this has nothing to do with syncing. 

Yes, there was a problem with this import with the first release versions of EN iOS. There was sometimes no import when too many shares were queued, and sometimes notes went bad, ended up in a corrupted status. These problems were solved up to my knowledge with rel. 10.2 in November. My impression is that they did shorten the import time again with 10.3, but I have no measure for it.

So if you still claim this situation, you are first right to do so, second you are among others that did it here and probably in support tickets (I have run my share of them), and third you are very late to the party if you show up with this cold case now.

There are still other things to claim with EN IOS V10.3 (at least I do), but the import from sharing AFAIK is working since 10.2 was released.

[Rowan 4]

I seems to me that before 10.2 I was able to use the Share Tab and know EN would reliably get all my notes (usually from my RSS reader News Reader) to EN. Then, sometime 10.2 got installed and I assumed syncing would continue but then discovered they weren't. This morning, still using 10.2, there was a message saying the iOS client was syncing 13 notes but was unable to and that's when I had to delete 10.2 to force my iPad to install 10.3. But, more to your primary point...

I don't remember needing EN to be open (and running in the foreground to initiate a sync) to make syncing work. When did that become a requirement? That's the thing I (now) don't get. Hence my question about whether this is some kind of work-around for a newly implemented change in iOS architecture.

[PinkElephant 8,091]

You need to keep 2 things separate: Sharing and syncing.

Sharing means you grab content in one app, and define a target app to which it shall be copied. Because on iOS everything runs in sandboxes, it it grabbed in one sandbox, put into a system container and placed at the inbox of another sandbox. This means it is at this point not already inside of the second, receiving app.

EN v10 iOS is build in a way that the real import from that inbox only starts when the app is opened. There are other apps where the sharing always starts the receiving app. This does not happen with EN, don’t know whether it is not possible or they wanted to avoid to start the app all the time. We know especially on older devices it is slow to start, not a good experience for example on the iPad Air 2 of my wife.

But now your 13 shares were there, waiting at the inbox of EN for the app to open. But when opened you say it could not import the content - nobody probably knows why. Maybe there was content EN did not know how to proceed, or it simply was too much. So it got stuck in the inbox. 

When you deleted the app then, the app was dumped and the defined sandbox (with the inbox and their content) was homeless. So it was dumped as well. Reinstalling the app just creates a new sandbox with a new, pristine inbox.

The procedure that the app needs to be opened to import a share was in place since EN released v10, which is (if you Auto updated) since September 2020. The first releases were pretty buggy, and part of the bugs were concerning the import from shared content. I had twice corrupted notes that could only be deleted by uninstalling. Since 10.2 AFAIK import was stable, it was for example possible to import several pictures at once into a note, among other improvements. 10.3 had other focus features, but my feeling is it is faster on importing as well.

 Now that about importing from a shared content inbox. What EN does on importing is to create a note (as a container for content), put the content from the inbox into this container, structure it in a way to match the internal needs of EN and file it locally.

There it is, but still only on the device.

Now every time and then (don’t know it triggered by a timer, or by an event like a new note, or both) the device and the server connect. New or changed content is then send from the device to the server, and back. This is syncing. On EN iOS you can force a sync by simply pulling the left column down a little, and let it go. And there is an option in the apps settings to „sync now“.

My experience is that this works pretty well. But if the first step to import shared content is not done, this content will never reach syncing.

[Rowan 4]

OK, that's very helpful. Thanks for the detailed reply. I do a manual update of apps so may have avoided some of the earlier pain you described (and experienced).

It does seem like EN could make the syncing part smoother/easier but maybe that'll happen later.

I will say the upside is the sharing part is nearly instantaneous since I'm not waiting for it to also sync, which I now understand thanks to your explanation.

My biggest worry is letting the shares build up and forgetting to go to Evernote for the syncs. Seems like a potential big gotcha.

[NightStalker 407]

Jut to clarify a point, though - previous versions of Evernote did NOT require us to open EN in order to "receive" the share.  I have done it for years, particularly from Flipboard, and the share went straight from Flipboard to Evernote in the background. I've never had to open Evernote on the iPad or iPhone to "receive" the share first.  When I opened EN the next time, all the shares from Flipboard were already there, and if it was a period of time before I actually opened EN, it had already synced to the EN servers in the background. 

My question is - why can't it go straight to EN from Flipboard the way it used to do?  In the background?  And sync to the EN servers - in the background?  Or is it that I'm now using v7.14 on the computers but v10.3 on the iPad?  Is it the mixed versions causing the hiccups, although I can't see how or why that would be the case?

I'm very clear on understanding the difference between sharing and syncing.  The current problem is primarily a sharing problem - we shouldn't need to open the target app to "receive it".  If I choose to share to Facebook (I very rarely do that) from Flipboard, it posts directly to Facebook.  I don't have to go to the Facebook app, or the browser, to receive it first.  And it used to do the equivalent thing sharing to Evernote.  Now it doesn't, and we have to go through contortions and multiple steps opening different apps just to share to EN. 

It's a royal PITA...!  And we're paying for this downgrade...!