Evernote is incredibly slow! Is there any way to speed up load times?

[Sean12122 8]

I've been using Evernote for years and it works great with one major exception:  frequently it's incredibly SLOW! 

For no apparent reason, I'll be in the middle of using Evernote the way I typically would and then Evernote will just freeze up completely or I'll see the spinning circular icon indicating that Evernote is trying to load. While this happens Evernote becomes useless and I have to stop using it. Nothing seems to help fix the slow loading issues. I've tried updating Evernote, closing/reopening it, logging out/logging back in, clearing cache/cookies, rebooting my Macbook, etc. 

Evernote:  do you have any definitive plan to fix these issues and to speed up load times? If so, WHEN can we all expect these slow loading issues to be fixed once and for all? 

Please advise. I'm a big fan of Evernote and would like to keep using it, but to do so the slow loading issues need to be fixed. Otherwise, I'll have to look for some other alternative.

Thank you!

[ghon 78]

I had a similar issue (see thread "spinning wheel"), but it is now gone with the new IOS version.

What helps is to go offline, e.g. put into flight mode, then you can continue to work wirhout interruption.

[agsteele 2,944]

@Sean12122 A little difficult to know without being sure of your app version and/or OS.

Most users don't experience major issues although there is some better evidence of the issue affecting some Android users with specific devices. Possibly an issue for users with larger collections of notes but that is less well evidenced.

Give us a chance with the app/OS and I'm sure someone will come back.

[ehrt74 240]

@Sean12122 Hi! this is a user forum. If you would like somebody from Evernote to look into the issue you're having, you can contact support directly.

[LindasLlama 0]

Hi everyone

Up until recently I was experiencing the same problem but I contacted Evernote and they suggested the solution below which seems to have worked. 

On the backend I noticed the way we package your notes for syncing and sharing hadn't updated in a while. Typically this updates automatically but sometimes it can get hung up. I have went ahead and updated this manually for you. In order for this to fully take effect, I am going to recommend you do the following:

1. Log out of Evernote on all of your devices, including the web version, if you are still logged in there.
2. Reinstall the application according to the instructions below. Step-by-step as this will ensure the troubleshooting I did will take effect.
3. Log back into your Evernote account.

Before reinstalling Evernote for Android, make sure to copy the contents of any unsynced notes somewhere outside of the Evernote app. Any unsynced notes (marked by red or green corners) and photos are deleted when you reinstall the app. To save any unsynced notes, tap the options menu (three dots) and select Note Info > Export Note and select a save location.

Then follow these steps:

1. Open the Play Store.
2. Search for Evernote, choose it, then tap Uninstall.
3. Restart your Android device.
4. Download Evernote from the Play Store.

 

[ciffor 3]

Hi @Sean12122 and everyone else,

Up until recently I was experiencing the same problem. Very frustrating!
Although EN support has been contacted, they seem unable to fix it or even know where to begin.  
This morning, I decided to try a few things that I even remotely thought had any chance of working.

It is with great pleasure that I report that EN is now almost as good as new.  

I found that the following was the solution for me:

1. Clear trash in EN Windows.
2. Manually synch EN on phone by clicking the gears icon in Start Menu and choose Synchronize.
3. Log out of both EN Windows and EN Mobile.
4. Do a Force Stop and Clear Cache in EN settings on the phone.
5. Sign in to EN mobile again.

After this process, everything worked like a charm again, fast as lightning 🙂

I hope this will be helpful to anyone who is experiencing a similar problem.

Evernote: I don't know if you see this, but perhaps this solution will give you a clue as to what the problem is and how to advise users on how to resolve it.

[eric99 980]

3 hours ago, ciffor said:

Hi @Sean12122 and everyone else,

Up until recently I was experiencing the same problem. Very frustrating!
Although EN support has been contacted, they seem unable to fix it or even know where to begin.  
This morning, I decided to try a few things that I even remotely thought had any chance of working.

It is with great pleasure that I report that EN is now almost as good as new.  

I found that the following was the solution for me:

1. Clear trash in EN Windows.
2. Manually synch EN on phone by clicking the gears icon in Start Menu and choose Synchronize.
3. Log out of both EN Windows and EN Mobile.
4. Do a Force Stop and Clear Cache in EN settings on the phone.
5. Sign in to EN mobile again.

After this process, everything worked like a charm again, fast as lightning 🙂

I hope this will be helpful to anyone who is experiencing a similar problem.

Evernote: I don't know if you see this, but perhaps this solution will give you a clue as to what the problem is and how to advise users on how to resolve it.

If you are talking about android, then it's probably a temporarily relieve. After every update (or logout), EN is "almost as good as new" on my phone. However, after a couple of weeks, depending on the usage, it's so slow again that it's almost impossible to use. I wonder if Evernote SQA  ever tested long enough to find this kind of degradation.

edit: as I already said before: if EN engineers can't pinpoint the problem, they could easily workaround by providing a cold start (without login or default reconfiguration of course)

Please keep us informed how it evolves on your devices

[FrancescoFinucci 4]

Hello,

just found something that helped enormously with speed in Evernote.

I realized that, when opening notes, the app required some time to show the spelling check, that is, adding the red, curved line under the word. And I had lots of them, as I use both English and Italian, in Evernote. But I guess this check might slow down users also when not detecting errors, because it needs to go through the entire text anyway.

Removing the spelling check, in settings, helped me a lot. I suggest to try that, also because we're talking about notes, so I don't see too much need for perfect spelling (although useful on key concepts, if searching through notes).

Hope this helps.

Best

[bmcl26 488]

2 hours ago, FrancescoFinucci said:

Hello,

just found something that helped enormously with speed in Evernote.

I realized that, when opening notes, the app required some time to show the spelling check, that is, adding the red, curved line under the word. And I had lots of them, as I use both English and Italian, in Evernote. But I guess this check might slow down users also when not detecting errors, because it needs to go through the entire text anyway.

Removing the spelling check, in settings, helped me a lot. I suggest to try that, also because we're talking about notes, so I don't see too much need for perfect spelling (although useful on key concepts, if searching through notes).

Hope this helps.

Best

I have Spelling Check unticked as I use Grammarly 

[ciffor 3]

21 hours ago, FrancescoFinucci said:

Hello,

just found something that helped enormously with speed in Evernote.

I realized that, when opening notes, the app required some time to show the spelling check, that is, adding the red, curved line under the word. And I had lots of them, as I use both English and Italian, in Evernote. But I guess this check might slow down users also when not detecting errors, because it needs to go through the entire text anyway.

Removing the spelling check, in settings, helped me a lot. I suggest to try that, also because we're talking about notes, so I don't see too much need for perfect spelling (although useful on key concepts, if searching through notes).

Hope this helps.

Best

Thanks for the tip. Hope it works for win/os users with that problem.

As for me, I've never experienced slow Evernote on my win laptop.

It is on my Android phone (fully updated etc) that it is slow. Don't think it is possible to neither activate nor deactivate spelling on phone version.

BTW, I'm still experiencing the problem.

[idoc 400]

Another quick tip that's worked for me.  Sometimes on my iphone I've experience EN slowing down to a crawl.  Occasionally when I try to force a sync it just spins endlessly.  I've found that by simply swiping the app closed and then re-opening it and repeating the sync, it starts to function normally again.  In fact, over time I've gotten into the habit of simply swiping it closed and reopening it when I need it.  Just seems to work better that way rather than leaving it forever in the background.

[ciffor 3]

17 hours ago, idoc said:

Another quick tip that's worked for me.  Sometimes on my iphone I've experience EN slowing down to a crawl.  Occasionally when I try to force a sync it just spins endlessly.  I've found that by simply swiping the app closed and then re-opening it and repeating the sync, it starts to function normally again.  In fact, over time I've gotten into the habit of simply swiping it closed and reopening it when I need it.  Just seems to work better that way rather than leaving it forever in the background.

Yup. That's what I've gotten use to do too. It works!

[viverechristus 10]

After being astonished with how bad EN's "unified" release was a year or more ago (dreadfully slow, missing core features), I found Legacy and switched back. I've been using Legacy happily for all this time (apart from a few bugs that I can live with).

A couple weeks ago I tried switching back to EN's current version on my MacBook Air, and I'm sorry to say it's still inferior to their old product. I don't have consistently good internet, and I need software to run whether internet is off, or slow, or adequate. If I had time to find a better app, I would, but EN has got me (like it probably has a lot of other users) since I'm invested too deeply. I hope they sort this out someday.

I've read that I need to wait for EN to download all my notes. But I don't see anything happening when I leave EN open. And it shouldn't take 1 min or more for the program to simply open. Please, developers, don't give us bells and whistles when the gasket has blown!

[ciffor 3]

11 minutes ago, viverechristus said:

After being astonished with how bad EN's "unified" release was a year or more ago (dreadfully slow, missing core features), I found Legacy and switched back. I've been using Legacy happily for all this time (apart from a few bugs that I can live with).

A couple weeks ago I tried switching back to EN's current version on my MacBook Air, and I'm sorry to say it's still inferior to their old product. I don't have consistently good internet, and I need software to run whether internet is off, or slow, or adequate. If I had time to find a better app, I would, but EN has got me (like it probably has a lot of other users) since I'm invested too deeply. I hope they sort this out someday.

I've read that I need to wait for EN to download all my notes. But I don't see anything happening when I leave EN open. And it shouldn't take 1 min or more for the program to simply open. Please, developers, don't give us bells and whistles when the gasket has blown!

Amen!

Where did you find legacy and how did you install it? 

[viverechristus 10]

Google "Evernote Legacy". EN provides the download.

[viverechristus 10]

2 hours ago, viverechristus said:

I've read that I need to wait for EN to download all my notes. But I don't see anything happening when I leave EN open. And it shouldn't take 1 min or more for the program to simply open. Please, developers, don't give us bells and whistles when the gasket has blown!

I now see that in fact all my notes are downloaded. If I go into EN 10 with internet turned off, it works great. But if my internet is iffy, then nothing works right. Any note I click on, there's a long delay, or just a spinning green thing. Same for opening the program itself. Bizarre.

[PinkElephant 8,095]

Think of it as a browser. While it has a glimpse of the web, it tries to use it. You need to take it offline to make it fall back to the local database.

On the Mac I use an extra tool where I can selectively allow or cut internet access, for every single app. I use it for EN especially when on the train, where the internet quality will change from minute to minute.

[idoc 400]

I have excellent internet access both at my home and at my work, so I rarely experience a tremendous delay with v10.  Overall I like the look and feel and some of the bells/whistles of v10 and I use it throughout the day.  However, when I have some serious work that needs to be done I go straight to Legacy.  For example, occasionally I notice that there are 60+ notes in my "Inbox" that need to be tagged, merged, assigned to various notebooks, edited etc and for this kind of stuff I find that Legacy is more efficient.  Also, for anything that involves dragging around pdfs and spreadsheets between various notes I find that Legacy is smoother.  And, of course, anything that involves selecting hundreds of notes I go straight to Legacy.  Other than these issues I'm very happy with v10.

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,954]

Here is the help article on installing Legacy: Install an older version of Evernote. There have been many reports that Evernote is working on a greatly improved syncing process, which hopefully will sort out these issues of speed on iffy Internet connections.

[ciffor 3]

 

On 2/4/2023 at 9:44 PM, Dave-in-Decatur said:

Here is the help article on installing Legacy: Install an older version of Evernote. There have been many reports that Evernote is working on a greatly improved syncing process, which hopefully will sort out these issues of speed on iffy Internet connections.

Unfortunately, legacy only seems available for Mac and Win, not for phone, so it ain't for me, as I only use it on my phone. I hope they're on it and sit it out soon. Really frustrated about it.

[agsteele 2,944]

You are correct that the Legacy version is a desktop only application. However, for Android, there is access to the APK for the older version. You can search in these forums to locate a link or grab it from a service such as APK Mirror.

There is no option for iOS devices.

[Pasi_Party_Master 2]

I had postponed updating Evernote for years and everything worked perfectly. Today, I finally updated the program and I regret my decision badly because this software became SOOOO SLOOOOOOWWWW.

Is there any way to turn back to an older version that works fast and smoothly?

[idoc 400]

I assume you are referring to a desktop version?  Windows?  Which version of windows?  More details would help.  In general, this has been answered many times, but you can go to filehippo and look for the windows desktop Evernote Legacy version (sometimes referred to as Evernote 6.25). However, the newest version (v10) should not be as slow as you are claiming.  Granted it's somewhat slower than Legacy but if you feel that something is wrong you may have another issue.  You can have both Legacy and v10 on your windows desktop at the same time and thus compare their speeds.

[PinkElephant 8,095]

@Pasi_Party_Master "Today I finally updated my program ...", and while it probably is still busy downloading the whole data hoard and organize the local database, I will go to the forum and complain about everything being slow.

While it has not downloaded and set up the local database, it will still run like a web based app, getting everything from the server. No idea how much this may be, and on what sort of internet connection you are, but it can take long, even days. Watch the network traffic in the Task Manager. While there is traffic when you don't actively use the app, it is probably still downloading.

There is a second issue that may lead to notes opening slowly. But I think in your case it's probably more the missing local content.

[jukeboxjulie11 0]

Really disappointed as I have been using Evernote since 2014 and the web option is really not working well for me. INCREDIBLY slow to load notes that's IF they load at all... and on top of this I have lost LOADS of encrypted content which DISAPPEAred in thin air... I am going to start looking for an alternative. This is no longer working for me.

[PinkElephant 8,095]

This (Slow opening, damaged content) looks like a corrupted local database to me. I have described how to replace it by a fresh copy from the server too often to repeat it again. You can find it in the forum.