Windows 10, i7, 16gb RAM - Evernote is a resource hog!

[Felix Felicis 3]

I have been using Evernote - as a paid user - for just about 10 years at this point, and I am truly on the verge of leaving the platform entirely. I started a new job about two months ago, and brought Evernote with me as always. Due to the security requirements of my new role, I'm forced to use a Windows 10 laptop instead of my trusty Mac's. The laptop is new - a brand new HP zBook with 16 gigs of RAM, an i7, and 512gb SSD. I don't do a ton with it simultaneously - I'm a senior leader, so my time is spent on video calls, writing documents, presentations, and spreadsheets, doing email and taking notes.

 

But Evernote... Evernote 10 is absolutely horrific on this machine. Evernote eats up RAM and CPU like Cookie Monster on a bender. It's come to the point where I now have to use my iPad to take notes during meetings or while working on projects because the application just shreds my resources and slows down my Windows machine. I've reinstalled twice in the last month to no avail. I don't wish to downgrade, either - the improved Dashboard is very convenient.

 

To the heads of Evernote's Product and Engineering teams, from one head of Product to my peers at Evernote, please focus more on resource optimization and less on your new features. If you're asking me to pay you more RMR, make it worth my while. Fix this awful experience - and quickly.

 

Thank you.

[agsteele 2,944]

I've yet to work out why some users share your experience and others, like me, have no problems at all.  Evernote 10 uses about the same CPU as the so-called legacy version on my PC which is similarly specc'd to yours. Evernote 10 does use more RAM than legacy on my PC but not an unduly large amount. It consumes about the same as my web browser that I have open.

So I do sympathise but have not idea why some have one experience and others something very different.

You could try running Evernote in your web browser of choice - that may resolve things for you. The browser interface is very similar to the desktop app.

Meanwhile, as you may have realised, these forums are primarily peer support so you may not get any connection with Evernote staff. As a paid user you might do better opening a support ticket.

[PinkElephant 8,088]

No issue on my Mac either. EN typically uses 6-8 % of the CPU when in use (2-3 % when idle) and occupies 1GB or a little above of RAM. It does not even start the cooler ventilator. MacBook Pro, i7, 32GB RAM.

One tip if the app runs away is to really quit it. Not only hit the close (X), because then the background jobs will continue. Quit (on a Mac cmd-q) and restart.

And if it was running away: Jot down your last actions with EN somewhere, open the task manager and make a screenshot, and issue a support ticket with activity log.

My impression is that sometimes jobs don’t terminate as they should. These runaway jobs blow the resources out of the window. Stuff like this is hard to find, so every well documented ticket should help.

[miktro 0]

I am having the same problem on my Windows 10 desktop PC at times.

I updated to Professional and updated my version of evernote this week.  Previously no CPU load problems.

When I check task manager I find several instances of evernote running (6+) and several of them (3) are using > 25% CPU.

After restarting Evernote (which uses > 90%) CPU I now have 8 instances running - using 0%-1% CPU each.

I'm going to have to install an earlier version.

 

[PinkElephant 8,088]

To run the package to which you subscribed v10 is needed. The features that make up the difference will not run in legacy, nor in most of the older releases of the v10 client.

To get sorted out which jobs are consuming your PCs resources, I would try to work with support on it. They probably need your help to get activity logs, and additional information about what you did when the processes started clogging up your CPU.

[agsteele 2,944]

16 hours ago, miktro said:

I am having the same problem on my Windows 10 desktop PC at times.

I updated to Professional and updated my version of evernote this week.  Previously no CPU load problems.

When I check task manager I find several instances of evernote running (6+) and several of them (3) are using > 25% CPU.

After restarting Evernote (which uses > 90%) CPU I now have 8 instances running - using 0%-1% CPU each.

I'm going to have to install an earlier version.

Evernote has always had multiple instances running (even with Legacy).  When running correctly these are different parts of the Evernote application rather than duplicates of the one program. The solution to this is, sometimes, to completely uninstall the application and remove all trace of the directories on the PC.  Revo Uninstaller is good at this or check and delete %AppData%\Evernote as well as %LocalAppData%\Programs\Evernote  Have cleaned the system then reinstall the new version of the app and allow your data to be rebuilt and then see what is happening.

[ScottM1234 20]

I am a heavy EN user with high reliance of it.  I run current release EN on 3 different PC's and 2 MACs.  Absolutely no performance issues whatsoever.

 

 

[Leoaragao98 1]

Em 03/08/2021 at 16:15, PinkElephant disse:

Nenhum problema no meu Mac também. EN normalmente usa 6-8% da CPU quando em uso (2-3% quando ocioso) e ocupa 1 GB ou um pouco mais de RAM. Nem mesmo liga o ventilador mais frio. MacBook Pro, i7, 32 GB de RAM.

Uma dica se o aplicativo fugir é realmente encerrá-lo. Não apenas aperte o botão de fechar (X), porque então os trabalhos em segundo plano continuarão. Saia (em um Mac cmd-q) e reinicie.

E se ele estava fugindo: Anote suas últimas ações com EN em algum lugar, abra o gerenciador de tarefas e faça uma captura de tela, e emita um tíquete de suporte com registro de atividades.

Minha impressão é que às vezes os empregos não terminam como deveriam. Esses trabalhos descontrolados estouram os recursos pela janela. Coisas como essa são difíceis de encontrar, então todos os tíquetes bem documentados devem ajudar.

Um aplicativo como a finalidade do Evernote usando 1GB de ram não é bom. É terrível. Talvez para quem tem computadores com grandes quantidades de memória ram não seja um problema, mas muitos usuários usam computadores com 4GB de ram ou menos até.

 

[PinkElephant 8,088]

The new EN app runs inside of a framework, that is practically a Chromium browser without a user interface. You have the framework using its share of memory, plus the app itself.

If your computer is not up to it, you may switch to the web client. It has nearly feature parity to the desktop app.

Or you can install the legacy client, alone or side by side with v10. It lacks all new features, but as a native app it runs with less demand on resources.

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

[Mishkafofer 26]

@Felix Felicis

Mine Evernote V10 uses 483MB of RAM and 0-1% CPU.

What's going on on your machine? May be some update or sync process? When it happening?

[PinkElephant 8,088]

The core app is not consuming a lot. But look out for processes called Evernote Helper (Renderer) - they are hot on resources.

[Constantine001 27]

On 8/3/2021 at 10:15 PM, PinkElephant said:

No issue on my Mac either. EN typically uses 6-8 % of the CPU when in use (2-3 % when idle) and occupies 1GB or a little above of RAM. It does not even start the cooler ventilator. MacBook Pro, i7, 32GB RAM.

1GB of RAM is a lot!!! Even on my Windows 11 laptop it consumes 750MB which is excessive. This is not normal app usage at all - saying this because in another forum someone said it is normal for apps to consume so much RAM nowadays. No it's not. I'm a digital productivity coach and I compare apps all the time. I don't even have many notes in Evernote (because I use many different note-taking apps for my job, for the sake of comparison). Evernote is the only app I have on my laptop, after Chrome, that uses so much RAM. UpNote only uses around 100MB (and has more features), Notion desktop, which again offers lots more, consumes around 300MB. And not to mention complex project management like ClickUp which also consume less RAM.

But, to be fair, CPU usage remains normal with Evernote, it's just the RAM consumption that is insane.

[Boot17 1,445]

Memory consumption on Evernote is definitely high -- especially when you have multiple windows open.

I can't compare it to Notion because I don't use that currently. And I've only briefly looked at ClickUp on their site one time.

I'm a big fan of UpNote. I paid for the lifetime subscription about a year ago. It has quite a few features that Evernote doesn't have (collapsible sections, inline table of contents, backlinks), but overall I don't think it has as near as many or complex features as Evernote: no inline PDF reader, no OCR, no PDF or image search, the table support isn't as good, can't drag and drop list items, no task feature, no internal audio playback, not near as robust search, no PDF annotation, image annotation... just to name a few -- but that list goes on.  Overall, the UI/UX of UpNote just isn't near as feature-rich (or heavy depending on your point of view) either to me overall (but that could be a good thing depending on the case!).

This is what I have with just the main window open of each program: 761.8 MB for Evernote, 290.6 for UpNote:

Note -- this isn't a justification for Evernote memory consumption being so high. It's more along the lines of UpNote for me is using almost 300 MB and doesn't have near the UI complexity or feature-set that Evernote has in my opinion.

Edit: Oh - just realized this was a Windows 10 thread. What I posted was on a Mac. Here are my comparable sizes on Windows 10 right now:

• UpNote: 181.4 MB
• Evernote: 652.2 MB

So in my anecdotal scenarios, Evernote faired even worse on Windows (3.6 times the memory) than Mac (2.6 times the memory) compared to UpNote.

[PinkElephant 8,088]

14 hours ago, Konstantin1 said:

1GB of RAM is a lot!!! Even on my Windows 11 laptop it consumes 750MB which is excessive. This is not normal app usage at all - saying this because in another forum someone said it is normal for apps to consume so much RAM nowadays. No it's not. I'm a digital productivity coach and I compare apps all the time. I don't even have many notes in Evernote (because I use many different note-taking apps for my job, for the sake of comparison). Evernote is the only app I have on my laptop, after Chrome, that uses so much RAM. UpNote only uses around 100MB (and has more features), Notion desktop, which again offers lots more, consumes around 300MB. And not to mention complex project management like ClickUp which also consume less RAM.

But, to be fair, CPU usage remains normal with Evernote, it's just the RAM consumption that is insane.

If 1 GB of RAM is a lot for you, you don’t have enough …

Just run a browser like Chrome, and open some tabs. Now look at the resources. See what I mean ? And this for „just“ displaying a few websites, loaded from the internet,  no local data involved.

EN is an app running inside of a browser. It is not exactly this, but you can compare it to a Virtual Machine running the browser as its OS, and the apps code and data inside of it. Sure it needs resources, no surprise here. It needs to load notes into memory to work on them - a single note can have up to 200MB. 

So use it as it is, if your computer is upgradable, think about getting that other RAM stick you avoided on purchase. Or if you are always short on resources, and feel it, use the web client.

[Constantine001 27]

On 11/11/2022 at 2:22 AM, PinkElephant said:

If 1 GB of RAM is a lot for you, you don’t have enough …

Just run a browser like Chrome, and open some tabs. Now look at the resources. See what I mean ? And this for „just“ displaying a few websites, loaded from the internet,  no local data involved.

EN is an app running inside of a browser. It is not exactly this, but you can compare it to a Virtual Machine running the browser as its OS, and the apps code and data inside of it. Sure it needs resources, no surprise here. It needs to load notes into memory to work on them - a single note can have up to 200MB. 

So use it as it is, if your computer is upgradable, think about getting that other RAM stick you avoided on purchase. Or if you are always short on resources, and feel it, use the web client.

Thank you. While I appreciate your reply, it is not very rational. "If 1 GB of RAM is a lot for you, you don’t have enough …" - how does this even make sense? Which law/rule states that? But to answer your hypothesis, I already have 16GB of RAM and have no intention of upgrading, my laptop usually uses around 50% of the RAM at the most. But still, I cannot accept that a note-taking app consumes 1GB of RAM when more complex note-taking apps consume just 200MBs. I mean, it's just a note-taking app for God's sake!

As for the Chrome browser tabs consuming lots of ram, this is common sense. I am a digital productivity coach so I know well how RAM is utilised by browsers and other apps.

There are other Electron apps out there "running inside of a browser" to quote you, that don't require so much RAM. 

But since I am not using Evernote anymore this is not an issue for me : the point of my post was that 1GB is definitely not standard usage - it is on the excessive side.

 

[bmcl26 488]

On 8/3/2021 at 5:22 PM, Felix Felicis said:

I have been using Evernote - as a paid user - for just about 10 years at this point, and I am truly on the verge of leaving the platform entirely. I started a new job about two months ago, and brought Evernote with me as always. Due to the security requirements of my new role, I'm forced to use a Windows 10 laptop instead of my trusty Mac's. The laptop is new - a brand new HP zBook with 16 gigs of RAM, an i7, and 512gb SSD. I don't do a ton with it simultaneously - I'm a senior leader, so my time is spent on video calls, writing documents, presentations, and spreadsheets, doing email and taking notes.

 

Windows 11, i7, 16gb  no problems CPU & Memory less than my browser.