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Evernote performance: How many notes are too many?


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I am a long time Evernote user and there are currently 20030 notes in my account. I wonder if this may affect performance.

Currently, I use Evernote on Windows and Android. On Windows it is fine, a bit slow, but fine. One Android it is too slow, to the point of not being very useful.

I wonder if general performance would improve if I reduce the number of notes, maybe by splitting my database into two accounts.

p.s. I started to think about this when I discovered that the developers Obsidian Notes state that their app is optimized for up to 20k notes. So maybe Evernote faces similar changes.

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The official limit is 100k notes per account.

With the mobile app we found it ok on iOS with newer devices (up to 5 years old), and pretty slow on our oldest devices (2014/2015). Maybe it has to do with the device performance - the iPhone chips are superior to their Android counterparts, and in terms of the processor there is no „middle class“ with iPhones. Even the  budget SE has the chip that was current when it was released.

On desktop sometimes it may help to dump the local database, and download a fresh copy.

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I recently topped 60,000 notes.  On my 4-year old laptop the app struggles a bit,  but on a recent SSD fitted desktop it still flies...                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    

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2 hours ago, PinkElephant said:

Yeah, it sounds like a Android device with a performance gap. No idea, other than to replace it. There is no „economy“ switch in EN, and the „framework“ design asks for power.

... and memory ( >= 8 GB) !

 

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6 hours ago, Pere said:

OK. Thanks. On my ThinkPad (4 year old) it is okay, a little bit slow sometimes, but ok. The problem is a Xiaomi A3 (Snapdragon 665 2GHz, 4GB of RAM).

There are known problems with speed on Android, and no clear solutions yet. If you search for a thread with "Android" and "slow" in the title, you'll find a lot of posts.

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22 hours ago, PinkElephant said:

Yes, Android is a memory hog. Much less efficient in using it than iOS. 

Yes, due to the closed ecosystem, iOS and native apps can be heavily optimized for memory and processor usage, completely controlled by Apple.

However, this is changing now for the new generation of "cross platform" apps which are built around memory hungry and inefficient bloated frameworks. Apple has much less control over this.

So, if you would like to use your phone (android or iPhone) longer than 3 years, you better buy a phone with a lot of memory and power...

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True for Android, where processors are going from entry class to top models, with a wide variance in performance.

Not true for iOS - all iphones run on current CPUs, an iPhone 14 has basically the same chip as an iPhone SE 2. The only exception are (since this year) the Pro iPhones that are 1 generation ahead. There is an estimate that even the newest Qualcomm top level CPU is appr. 30% behind the equivalent A-series chips.

You can see it in the OS updates as well, where the most current iOS is available much further back than for Android.

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11 hours ago, PinkElephant said:

True for Android, where processors are going from entry class to top models, with a wide variance in performance.

Not true for iOS - all iphones run on current CPUs, an iPhone 14 has basically the same chip as an iPhone SE 2. The only exception are (since this year) the Pro iPhones that are 1 generation ahead. There is an estimate that even the newest Qualcomm top level CPU is appr. 30% behind the equivalent A-series chips.

You can see it in the OS updates as well, where the most current iOS is available much further back than for Android.

The problem is not the CPU but the amount of ram which may differ, even between iPhones of the same generation (for instance iPhone 13: 4GB, 13 Pro 6 GB). I would certainly go for a 6 GB version, since ram size will bottleneck our phones with the rise of inefficient cross platform apps.

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Repeating „inefficient cross platform apps“ does not make it a more helpful statement.

Fact is that more device resources drive a better user experience. Who buys budget devices should not expect the same performance than on devices two or three times the price.

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23 hours ago, PinkElephant said:

Fact is that more device resources drive a better user experience.

Unfortunately, this isn't necessarily true: you gave a good example yourself, iOS needs less cpu power and memory for the same user experience because it's optimized for a specific device.

edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirth's_law

"Gates's law ("The speed of software halves every 18 months"[9]) is an anonymously-coined variant on Wirth's law, its name referencing Bill Gates,[9] co-founder of Microsoft. It is an observation that the speed of commercial software generally slows by 50% every 18 months, thereby negating all the benefits of Moore's law. This could occur for a variety of reasons: feature creep, code cruft, developer laziness, lack of funding, forced updates, forced porting (to a newer OS or to support a new technology) or a management turnover whose design philosophy does not coincide with the previous manager.[10]"

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Let's not convert this to an Android vs iOS discussion, because it isn't.

I fully understand why the new Evernote needs more ressources and why the chose the Electron way. That I understand.

Concerning the performance on Android: yes, probably it is lower on Android than on iOS due to how the platforms function at the software and hardware level, but I have many other apps that work well on my old Android phone. 

I think that there is some wrong with the specific implementation of Evernote and I'm sure there is space for improvement. Other complex apps work well on my phone.

A final comment: this situation is sad. Evernote became popular because it was great on phones! I used to use it all the time on older phones, before the transition to the new Evernote, and I'm very sad I lost this. It's frustrating to have to write Evernote notes using the Gmail app (I send emails to my Evernote account). 

I guess Evernote should send us a new phone every year, so we can use the app, because I have no budget for yearly upgrades! 😉

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3 hours ago, Pere said:

I think that there is some wrong with the specific implementation of Evernote and I'm sure there is space for improvement. Other complex apps work well on my phone.

I guess Evernote should send us a new phone every year, so we can use the app, because I have no budget for yearly upgrades! 😉

I fully agree that there is a lot of space for improvement. That's what the discussion was about. Evernote support already confirmed they are trying to solve some bugs concerning these issues. Unfortunately, it seems they can't  pinpoint the problem or they don't put high prio on it.

Can you please specify what is slow on your android phone: is it note retrieval or only note creation

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It is sync, not retrieval and tasks. Tasks seem never to be synced. I often open notes and they don't load and I often can't find recent notes, because they have not been synced yet.

Concerning note creation, I could not say, as I always write them as e-mails in Gmail and send them to my Evernote account. The last time I tried it was too slow. Same for scans, I now use Microsoft's Offiece Lens and e-mail the results to Evernote. That is sad. I guess I should try again with Evernote directly, but I don't want to lose my notes because the didn't sync and I often I'm on a rush when I need to scan something, so I did not have time to try. I have kids, so no time at home for play with the app. I need results and thus I use the workaround that always works.

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1 hour ago, Pere said:

It is sync, not retrieval and tasks. Tasks seem never to be synced. I often open notes and they don't load and I often can't find recent notes, because they have not been synced yet.

Concerning note creation, I could not say, as I always write them as e-mails in Gmail and send them to my Evernote account. The last time I tried it was too slow. Same for scans, I now use Microsoft's Offiece Lens and e-mail the results to Evernote. That is sad. I guess I should try again with Evernote directly, but I don't want to lose my notes because the didn't sync and I often I'm on a rush when I need to scan something, so I did not have time to try. I have kids, so no time at home for play with the app. I need results and thus I use the workaround that always works.

Have you also noticed a temporarily huge improvement whenever you logout-login or after a new update?

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...
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23 minutes ago, feyyaz_kasli said:

4 years here, just tapping 100 notes... I still don't know how you guys managed to even 60k notes...

If nothing else, I create a journal/planner note each morning   
Every receipt I receive is scanned and stored as a note 

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Just now, DTLow said:

If nothing else, I create a journal/planner note each morning   
Every receipt I receive is scanned and stored as a note 

I am doing the same just in a diffirent manner... 

I am using google drive as a backup for most of the time. I can easily convert them to notes again. This way, i am trying to keep my quick search bar clean. Otherwise whenever i look for a date i would see a file for diffirent times. So i am just trying to be as clean as possbile while storing information. 
 

Using google drive as a back-up is allowing me to use diffirent tools so i can actually use my arsenal at a bigger picture. 

At the end of the several days, there is a task of mine which reminds me to clear my notebook in order to keep it simple. But i am still keeping all the information needed in a back-up file on drive.Completed tasks! there. Recepiets! there. Meetings or projects! all checked. 

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On 9/25/2022 at 11:08 AM, PinkElephant said:

Repeating „inefficient cross platform apps“ does not make it a more helpful statement.

Fact is that more device resources drive a better user experience. Who buys budget devices should not expect the same performance than on devices two or three times the price.

Yes, but the old Evernote worked very well on phones with limited resources (those that phones had at the time) and now this is not the case. So, it is not only that cheap or old phones are slow, the current software trends are horrible in this regard and computers are becoming slower despite more powerful hardware. 

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On 9/27/2022 at 12:05 PM, eric99 said:

Have you also noticed a temporarily huge improvement whenever you logout-login or after a new update?

Yes. From time to time I uninstall the app and reinstall. It works fine for a time, but then it slows down. Notes seem to sync, after a long time. Tasks never sync correctly.

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13 hours ago, feyyaz_kasli said:

4 years here, just tapping 100 notes... I still don't know how you guys managed to even 60k notes...

Everything goes into Evernote. I document all my work, so most large tasks have a note. This is several new notes a day. 

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  • Evernote Expert

Do you have your notes configured to be available offline in your phone? Others users have reported a significant performance improvement of they limit the number of notes stored off line on their phones.

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9 minutes ago, agsteele said:

Do you have your notes configured to be available offline in your phone? Others users have reported a significant performance improvement of they limit the number of notes stored off line on their phones.

I thought that as well but in the mean time I noticed that performance always degrades, independent whether off line notes are activated or not.

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8 hours ago, Pere said:

Everything goes into Evernote. I document all my work, so most large tasks have a note. This is several new notes a day. 

Most of my large tasks just goes down the list. Which i archive them for future use but you gave me a idea. Thank you! 

It's still going to be date sorted for archive with one note for each week but this time i am going to unite all the notes i created in the note, in order to keep all my archive in just one notebook. Weekly note archive is my way to go with just one note per week 😅

Like i said before, use another archive for my daily mood trackers etc. It's direct sync to the drive. I should create more notes in order to feel more satisfied i guess.

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The new v10.42 has been installed on my android phone now. I'm always surprised how responsive it can be after a fresh install. The android client would be perfect if it would stay this way. Why is it so hard for the evernote engineers to find the cause of the performance issues that occur after a while.  This problem is so easy to reproduce and completely predictable. It looks like garbage is building up over time and this, combined with their obsession to cache everything,  results in this behavior. Ironically, the warm start, intended to save a little startup time, causes much more performance problems during normal operation later on. 

Or maybe EN is just not interested in these problems since they are so focused on new fancy features?

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  • Evernote Expert

Or perhaps it isn't as easy and predictable... I am sure that it is for you just as you are sure that it isn't for me. That's what makes the issue difficult to fix. 

Keep on banging on the tech support door. We'll empathise here but nothing more we can do 😥

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2 minutes ago, agsteele said:

Or perhaps it isn't as easy and predictable... I am sure that it is for you just as you are sure that it isn't for me. That's what makes the issue difficult to fix. 

Keep on banging on the tech support door. We'll empathise here but nothing more we can do 😥

I just issued an extra support ticket to wake them up, all affected users should do as well...

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Speaking as a former support team manager - please don't start a new ticket for an ongoing issue.  Responding to the last email should be enough to wake the matter up without tying an agent up for 20 minutes doing the internal admin to link the new query to an older report...  Not much if one person does it,  but a bunch of new reports can tie up a person for a day.  Plus if it was me,  I'd re-prioritise the query with the latest report and not the original one.  Just sayin'

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3 hours ago, gazumped said:

Speaking as a former support team manager - please don't start a new ticket for an ongoing issue.  Responding to the last email should be enough to wake the matter up without tying an agent up for 20 minutes doing the internal admin to link the new query to an older report...  Not much if one person does it,  but a bunch of new reports can tie up a person for a day.  Plus if it was me,  I'd re-prioritise the query with the latest report and not the original one.  Just sayin'

Yeah, but the reason that I issued a new ticket is that my previous ticket is in the closed state. So it isn't ongoing anymore. If they are still working on it, they shouldn't close it. Also, in my new ticket I emphasized a few things that were not mentioned explicitly before...

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  • Evernote Expert

In Evernote tech support, CLOSED means that first level have passed it on and aren't going to take any more action. It doesn't mean that it isn't receiving attention (nor that it is for that matter). In the past, when I respond to a now closed ticket it starts a new ticket anyway but does, I think, connect with the earlier but now closed ticket.

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"...Thank you so much for getting back to me. I appreciate your clarification and insight. 
 Upon checking, this is currently a known issue that our team is working to fix. Although I am unable to provide a definite time on when it will be resolved, I can assure you that our development team is working diligently to address this issue..." 

When receiving this same reply 8 months ago, I was confident that the performance issues would be solved soon, but now I'm afraid I slightly misunderstood the expression  "working diligently"...

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