So many bugs in iOS are rendering Evernote one of the worst apps in my phone

[DaniAmbrosio 5]

- when opening the app, it takes forever to sync (blue bar scrolling) and it remains completely unresponsive 

- been losing notes; I write down a new note and suddenly what I have is an empty note. Loose everything. Happened 3 times to me last week

- search; is becoming a joke trying to use search from the app. It cannot find notes that clearly match the query, forcing me to scroll and try to find

[PinkElephant 8,114]

My experience is completely different - it is working snappy, reliable and it is fun to use.

You can take two ways to solve the problems:

1) Completely uninstall, when asked dump all data, switch the device off, on again (Apple logo must show), and now get a fresh install from the AppStore.

Install, login and wait with using it while it downloads the initial set of data. If necessary turn autolockscreen off, make the app active and put the device to a charger.

It is much faster than the offline download, but still this will prevent the download to be cut off by iOS closing the app.

2) Contact support (who will probably prescribe a similar medicine).

[Samuel Hoppe 6]

Long-time user here. Having the same issues.  Fill out a note only to find it saved as a blank note or only saved the first line of text. I have noticed this tends to coincide with buggy UI-behavior (clicking the check mark in the upper left hand corner when done editing closes the keyboard, but then the checkmark stays a checkmark instead of turning into a back arrow; I thank have no way to leave this note and return to the home screen).  Furthermore it doesn't sync.  Notes from my phone are intermittently not showing up on my desktop.  

Ever since the major update a couple years ago, this service has been inexcusably buggy.  I would really like to stop seeing any more new features and just see the dev team make a lightweight app that does the basic well.  Once they have that down, then we can spend the next 67,000 updates adding one trivial shortcut per update.   

Using 10.37.3 on Windows 11 and 10.31 on iOS 15.5.

[PinkElephant 8,114]

It is interesting how experiences can differ. Taking from the number of posts / threads in the forum, iOS problems are on a significantly lower level than those on Android.

The usual steps have been described in my post above.

[Er-N-est 8]

On 5/18/2022 at 7:56 PM, DaniAmbrosio said:

- when opening the app, it takes forever to sync .

I have the same issue with EN on my iPad.

In addition to that: When editing a note, it often suddenly disappears and I have to find and select the note again.

[Er-N-est 8]

19 hours ago, PinkElephant said:

It is interesting how experiences can differ. Taking from the number of posts / threads in the forum, iOS problems are on a significantly lower level than those on Android.

The usual steps have been described in my post above.

For me, EN experience on iPad is no fun at all. It is the worst aoo on my iPad. The whole look and feel is terribla (especially the sidebars and the useless start screen). 

[Er-N-est 8]

20 hours ago, Samuel Hoppe said:

Ever since the major update a couple years ago, this service has been inexcusably buggy.  I would really like to stop seeing any more new features and just see the dev team make a lightweight app that does the basic well.  Once they have that down, then we can spend the next 67,000 updates adding one trivial shortcut per update.   

Using 10.37.3 on Windows 11 and 10.31 on iOS 15.5.

I absolutely agree. I think exactly the same.

[PinkElephant 8,114]

1 hour ago, Er-N-est said:

For me, EN experience on iPad is no fun at all. It is the worst aoo on my iPad. The whole look and feel is terribla (especially the sidebars and the useless start screen). 

About „Start“: If on subscription: Tailor it to your your needs. There are widgets with views that are not possible in the „classical“ app view. This was greatly improved with the new vertical orientation of widgets on tablets.

If on Free: I won’t say you need to subscribe, but better start options come with the paid accounts. You still have some options to try.

About the GUI: Actually nice and close to the desktop clients. But liking something is clearly depending on a person’s view. If you don’t, stick to your feelings - and look for an alternative, or accept it, as it won’t change.

[gewappnet 79]

The first problem (when opening the app, it takes forever to sync (blue bar scrolling)) is/was related to the Calendar widget. They have changed the behavior in the new version 10.33. Now the forever sync withe blue bar will start when you open the calendar only. When you open the app there is no more a delay. I can live with this solution.

[timmycomedy 14]

On 5/18/2022 at 2:36 PM, PinkElephant said:

My experience is completely different - it is working snappy, reliable and it is fun to use.

You can take two ways to solve the problems:

1) Completely uninstall, when asked dump all data, switch the device off, on again (Apple logo must show), and now get a fresh install from the AppStore.

Install, login and wait with using it while it downloads the initial set of data. If necessary turn autolockscreen off, make the app active and put the device to a charger.

It is much faster than the offline download, but still this will prevent the download to be cut off by iOS closing the app.

2) Contact support (who will probably prescribe a similar medicine).

I can confirm having taken all of those steps and the problem remains.  And by the way, this is the generic advice I get from Support when I first submit any issue and now the amount of times I have uninstalled and reinstalled the app (which is a time-suck nightmare when you have 10k - 20K notes) is beyond frustrating.

I agree with the original poster.  I can no longer use the app on my iPhone.  On any iPhone.  iPhone 12M, iPhone X, iPhone 11P.   I’m exploring other note taking options but that makes me sad and I hope it’s only temporary.

 

 

[PinkElephant 8,114]

Interesting …

Not my experience on a number of iOS devices.

Just to mention it: The green swash does not sync anything, at least not directly. It just stops editing mode and commits the changes / additions to local memory. Plus it flags the note to need a sync.

After hitting the swash you still are in the note, but editing mode has stopped, the soft keyboard is removed. You can go back to editing, or leave the note. The swash symbol is replaced by a back arrow, which takes you to the notes list.

 When you go to the notes list these notes carry a green triangle. It does not show a syncing activity, it just says “content not yet synced”. When syncing takes place by itself, you usually see nothing. Just the green triangle disappears after a while.

To the video: As I see it, you have a problem whenever it saves locally. When you go from title to the notes body, I think it makes a saving (in the background). The same happens when you hit the swash - it should save your changes to the note locally, on the device.

From what I see it does that in your vIdeo at about 2:10. It turns the edit mode off (keyboard goes away). The only difference to my experience is that the swash is not immediately replaced by the back arrow. This points to something going on locally, not to a syncing problem. It seems not to be able to write that little chunk of data in an instant to the local memory.

This is different when I try - the swash is replaced by the back arrow in a blink.

This is IMHO no case for a forum discussion - I don’t think that peer support can solve this issue. This is something for EN support, probably for the tech department (2nd level) there. 

[timmycomedy 14]

On 6/3/2022 at 7:22 PM, PinkElephant said:

Interesting …

Not my experience on a number of iOS devices.

Just to mention it: The green swash does not sync anything, at least not directly. It just stops editing mode and commits the changes / additions to local memory. Plus it flags the note to need a sync.

After hitting the swash you still are in the note, but editing mode has stopped, the soft keyboard is removed. You can go back to editing, or leave the note. The swash symbol is replaced by a back arrow, which takes you to the notes list.

 When you go to the notes list these notes carry a green triangle. It does not show a syncing activity, it just says “content not yet synced”. When syncing takes place by itself, you usually see nothing. Just the green triangle disappears after a while.

To the video: As I see it, you have a problem whenever it saves locally. When you go from title to the notes body, I think it makes a saving (in the background). The same happens when you hit the swash - it should save your changes to the note locally, on the device.

From what I see it does that in your vIdeo at about 2:10. It turns the edit mode off (keyboard goes away). The only difference to my experience is that the swash is not immediately replaced by the back arrow. This points to something going on locally, not to a syncing problem. It seems not to be able to write that little chunk of data in an instant to the local memory.

This is different when I try - the swash is replaced by the back arrow in a blink.

This is IMHO no case for a forum discussion - I don’t think that peer support can solve this issue. This is something for EN support, probably for the tech department (2nd level) there. 

It seems that whatever the green icon does, the local save issue, is the problem.  Local (Edit) Version Vs Cloud Version.   I think this also is why endless duplicate notes get created for myself and others.  In normal use, there is always one version on the device and one version on the cloud but it never seems to merge in a user friendly way on any iOS devices throughout the entire day.  During what would feel like normal usage, local version Vs Cloud version seems to be constantly in a war of attrition rather than constantly working in user-friendly tandem.  The end result is screen locks, missing text, and duplicate notes with ongoing consistency.

i guess that, yes, the best I can do is keep trying to get support to understand the issue until it’s resolved, rather than having them keep sending me to the forum.  They are likely working in ideal environments, so I wonder how they can ever duplicate it.  Let’s hope they can and I’ll keep nagging them on this one, because it’s become so time consuming & I see what feels like similar complaints all throughout this forum.

[PinkElephant 8,114]

Every app that holds a significant amount of data is running a first save to local memory first. This is nothing specific to EN.

Furthermore to work snappy the mobile clients will download core note data (which is mainly metadata) from the server. Else functions like search would not work.

It is pretty easy to see this process while it is executing: First the edited note appears with a green triangle in the notes list. When you look in parallel in the web client, you still see the old status on the server. Then it syncs, the green triangle goes away, and the server is updated (need to refresh the browser page, else it will show the cached old view).

Why this leads to duplicates for some, and it doesn't for others can only be reviewed by support.

[Don_Covin 53]

On 5/18/2022 at 11:36 AM, PinkElephant said:

My experience is completely different - it is working snappy, reliable and it is fun to use.

You can take two ways to solve the problems:

1) Completely uninstall, when asked dump all data, switch the device off, on again (Apple logo must show), and now get a fresh install from the AppStore.

Install, login and wait with using it while it downloads the initial set of data. If necessary turn autolockscreen off, make the app active and put the device to a charger.

It is much faster than the offline download, but still this will prevent the download to be cut off by iOS closing the app.

2) Contact support (who will probably prescribe a similar medicine).

I can’t honestly remember ever losing a note… duplicates yet but losing one no. Sometimes I’ve had to log out and uninstall as well and that usually fixes sync issues. 
I’m convinced most of my sync issues are because I’ll do something on one device and then immediately try and see if it’s synced on another. Having ZERO issues on iOS myself… 🤷🏻‍♂️

[Eric Explorer 4]

I had the sync/save issues described here for around 6 months. I'd lose entries, sometimes right before my eyes. It was frustrating. I have an iPhone XR with iOS 15.5.

A few days ago I uninstalled and reinstalled Evernote, as suggested in this thread, and it's like a completely different program now. It syncs/saves reliably every time. 

July 19, 2022 Update: The sync/save problem seems to have returned. Reinstalling the app again doesn't seem to correct the problem (BUT see new twist below). It definitely seemed to change things when I originally did reinstall the app. It seems like a mixed bag.

August 4, 2022 Update: I removed the app, powered off my phone and THEN reinstalled the app. This definitely fixed the problem and it works well now. My theory is the app has a bug (a memory leak maybe for you software engineers) which accumulates over time and then it starts to operate poorly. Reinstalled AND powering off the phone clears things out.

[BetterOffChris 0]

Alright, I'm going to have to try reinstalling it.  It's been basically completely unusable on my iphone since I upgraded it years ago.

To be fair, I'm a power user and have thousands of notes, but I've been totally shocked at how terrible the app is.

I'll let people know how it goes.  Thank God I still have legacy evernote on PC

[BetterOffChris 0]

Nope, still unbelievably slow.  Takes minutes to open an individual notebook at times.

As a business owner it's rare I complain about anything, but it certainly does feel like someone is almost intentionally sabotaging this product.  It's been over 2 years since the upgrade and still not working?

[PinkElephant 8,114]

On iPhone 11 or iPad Air 5, latest iOS, EN 10.35:

Start the app to Home: 2 seconds. Open a note from home, or switch to classic view: Less than 2 seconds. Open a notebook, either from Home or classic view: Less then 2 seconds. Open the app from a widget: About 2 seconds, longest was open a new Sketch, which maybe took a tick longer. No matter if online or in flight mode.

If you need longer, and the device is anything above an iPhone X, make a complete uninstall. Restart the iOS device (Apple logo must show). Reinstall the app, log in and wait until the initial download has run.

If this doesn’t help, ask support to look for a clue in an activity log.

[RL7836 13]

This thread does a decent job of sharing experiences similar to my own - duplicate notes, taking forever to sync, losing data, etc.

I've now started to create a new note when not at my desk. Then I'll deal with putting the information where it should actually be later in my Windows version (legacy).

I'm going to explore using the notes app to do the same thing as I find that when I'm outside, I'm reluctant to even open Evernote due to all the issues.

How far this software (& company) has fallen in the last few years is truly sad.

iPhone SE II, ios: newest version, Evernote: latest version

[JackSprat 0]

Been a paid subscriber to Evernote since 2012. My account has around ~6,700 notes.

Similar to @RL7836, I have stopped using Evernote on iOS and use Notes instead because Evernote is unresponsive and loses my data after I enter it. When I'm feeling patient, energetic, and willing to enter my data two or more times before it saves locally, it then won't sync in the same session. I've uninstalled and reinstalled as well. The issue returns. Super annoying because while Notes is reliable, responsive, and syncs better (not that fast though) it obviously has poor organizational abilities and I still have to copy and paste the notes into Evernote later on my desktop.

Similar to @Samuel Hoppeabove, I don't understand why they are releasing updates for all kinds of trivial items that have minor impact on the end users when they don't have basic functionality worked out yet.

[PinkElephant 8,114]

As said above, no issues on iOS, on different devices. Snappy, reliable. They can go ahead with new features - Apple Watch app somewhere in the making ?

If you have problems: What does support say ?

[Boot17 1,450]

On 7/23/2022 at 5:39 PM, JackSprat said:

I don't understand why they are releasing updates for all kinds of trivial items

I think they are capable of working on multiple things at the same time. And things that might seem trivial to you or I are great feature improvements to other users (Other user that are maybe not having the same performance issues).

I've seen Evernote continually improve on iOS since the initial v10 release. I think it still has room for improvement, but it's very service-able to me.

[mortac8 3]

On 6/12/2022 at 1:08 AM, timmycomedy said:

It seems that whatever the green icon does, the local save issue, is the problem.  Local (Edit) Version Vs Cloud Version.   I think this also is why endless duplicate notes get created for myself and others.  In normal use, there is always one version on the device and one version on the cloud but it never seems to merge in a user friendly way on any iOS devices throughout the entire day.  During what would feel like normal usage, local version Vs Cloud version seems to be constantly in a war of attrition rather than constantly working in user-friendly tandem.  The end result is screen locks, missing text, and duplicate notes with ongoing consistency.

i guess that, yes, the best I can do is keep trying to get support to understand the issue until it’s resolved, rather than having them keep sending me to the forum.  They are likely working in ideal environments, so I wonder how they can ever duplicate it.  Let’s hope they can and I’ll keep nagging them on this one, because it’s become so time consuming & I see what feels like similar complaints all throughout this forum.

This is pretty much my experience (excessive conflicts, unpredictable syncing, etc).  I use the Windows, iOS, and macOS apps.  I'm about to the point where I'll just try using the Evernote webapp when on mac or iphone.  Windows app seems to work pretty well and predictably with its "all changes saved" status while editing a note.

[Eric Explorer 4]

I wanted to update this thread to say that this sync issue has been resolved for me for four or five months (not sure exactly how long). Evernote has been syncing quickly and reliably. I have an iPhone XR, iOS 16.2.

I originally posted on this thread with sync issues in July of 2022.

[PinkElephant 8,114]

Same with me: I had the app freezing maybe 2 or 3 times last summer, but no more since then. Works fine, works fine as well when I had used it offline, and there is a bunch of edited notes to sync.