New Evernote Note extremely slow to open (21 seconds per note) on Mac 10.60.4

[RichW 26]

I've been using Evernote for 13 years and I have 32,198 notes as of today.  Until recently (I don't recall which version or date), it was still snappy and very usable.  Now that it takes 19 to 21 seconds just to open a new note so I can jot down some thoughts, which is almost unusable.  This is for NEW notes, not clicking on existing notes that may need to be updated to a new format.  I don't understand why they would design their code so that just opening a new note would bring the system to its knees, regardless of how many notes you have.

It appears they made some design choices that do not support the customers who have been with Evernote for a decade or more and have their whole life in Evernote.

I'm running Evernote for Mac 10.60.4 and this has been happening for months.  However, when I just upgraded from the previous version to 10.60.4, the time to open a note went from 16 seconds to 21 seconds by my stopwatch.  I'm running Ventura 13.4 and I'm on a 2020 Macbook pro with 64GB of memory.  While the note is opening, the MacOS Activity monitor says Evernote is using 115% of the CPU, whatever that means. 

[PinkElephant 8,189]

The CPU measure is per core. It means that EN uses a little more than an entire core.

That‘s a lot, and the time to open a note is excessive. These are 2 signs that something is wrong with your install.

I would completely erase the current install from the Mac, using the app AppCleaner. The regular uninstall won’t do. Check all program parts for uninstalling, including the database.

Then restart the Mac. Download EN from the website, open and login.

Should be much better now. Creating a new note is maybe a second on my Mac. CPU is below 10% on idle, and rarely goes briefly up to 30% (MBP 15“ 2018, i7).

[RichW 26]

@PinkElephantThanks.  I will try that today as soon as my meetings are over, and let you know if it helps.

Rich

[PinkElephant 8,189]

Yes, would be interested in some feedback.

Just to mention: Since the local database is erased, and needs to be rebuild from the server, initially notes will tend to load a bit slower, just like on the web client. Leave the app running in the background - it will download a full copy of the server database to your local drive.

You can use the activity monitor to check whether it is still downloading. When there is network activity for EN while it is ideal, it is still rebuilding the local copy. This can take several days !

It gets snappier while the local database is filling. Notes will go first, and then attachments.

[RichW 26]

@PinkElephant I wiped it with AppCleaner and reinstalled 10.60.4.  I forgot to mention that adding a new note and deleting a note previously took about the same amount of time (19 to 21 seconds).   After the wipe and fresh install, adding a new blank note now takes an average of  6.8 seconds and deleting a blank note takes an average of 6.5 seconds.  That is definitely way better.  However, it is still way too slow.  Deleting a note still pigs my CPU to 115% while it is happening.  Almost the same for adding a new note. 

Until relatively recently, it was almost instantaneous to add a new note and delete a note.  Since it is a fresh install, I would not expect the fact that I have 32k notes to have any effect on that.  Right?

[PinkElephant 8,189]

The number of notes shouldn't have an effect.

What may have an effect is at the moment the fact that the offline download has not happened. This means you are practically running the web client at the moment.

You could open the web client and compare the time. How fast is your Internet connection ?

Just tried the CPU on my M1 MacMini - it is the basic M1. The CPU goes up to maybe 60% on searching, but falls off within of a few seconds again. Regular all EN related processes are together below 10% - which is 10% of one core.

A new note is maybe 2 seconds.

[RichW 26]

My internet connection at the router is 538 Mbps down and 23 Mbps up.  My access speed over wifi in my office is 79Mbps down and 22 Mbps up.  I attached a screenshot of my computer specs.  I thought it was a 2020 since that is when I purchased it, but apparently, it is a 2019 year model.  It was just before the Apple processor switch.  The processor does not explain the recent slowdown in performance.

I realized that I forgot to reboot after wiping and reinstalling as you suggested.  After rebooting, creating a new note takes an average of 17.2 seconds, and deleting a note takes an average of 16.1 seconds.  That is an average of 3 tries of each and they were all within 1/2 second.  In other words almost back to where it was before I wiped the install.  That makes no sense to me.

This is so frustrating that I have to create a few blank notes just in case I need them because it is so slow.  I should not have to do that.

I attached a screenshot of my Activity Monitor looking at the Network Activity of Evernote downloading my 32k notes. However, as you can see, there is no network activity going on.  The CPU usage is very low except when creating and deleting notes, which appears to be the only improvement from wiping and reinstalling.  Prior to the wipe and reinstall, Evernote would commonly creep up to 75% CPU with the fans running and I would then kill Evernote and restart it to get it back down.  I still think it is possible that they have made some design choices that do not support large note counts.

[RichW 26]

@PinkElephant Also, I logged into the web client to test creating and deleting notes.  The results are very strange:

• After wipe and reinstall, adding a new blank note now takes an average of  6.8 seconds and deleting a blank note takes an average of 6.5 seconds.  However, I had forgotten to reboot as requested by PinkElephant.
• After Reboot, creating a new note takes an average of 17.2 seconds and deleting a note takes an average of 16.1 seconds.
• I tested the same thing using the Evernote Web client
  • Creating a new note - average of 3 notes = 0.25 seconds
  • Deleting a blank note by dragging it to Trash - 4 minutes and 30 seconds.  Yes, FOUR MINUTES! Got a green swirly the whole time.
  • Delete another blank note - 1 minute and 10 seconds
  • Created a new note 1 min and 3 seconds
  • Deleted the same note - 2 seconds
  • Created a new note - 2 seconds
• Moved back to the desktop app to see if it speeded up like the web client.
  • New note - 19 seconds
  • Deleted blank note - 17 seconds

[PinkElephant 8,189]

OK, sorry for being out, but we live in different Time Zones, it seems 😉

CPU looks normal now, that's a good step.

What bugs me is there is no download activity. Could it be by chance that the local copy is disabled in settings ? To enable it this checkbox must be checked.

[RichW 26]

@PinkElephant I'm not sure where you were getting my time zone, but I'm in Austin TX and I don't recognize that language in your settings image.  German maybe?     Regardless, here is my settings pain.  Local copy is enabled and I have not changed any settings since I did a clean install.  

I was away from my computer for 12 hours and I just came back to the cooling fans blasting away.  This is steady-state and you can see that to top CPU user is Evernote, so the CPU issue is now fully back after a fresh wipe and install and I'm not even trying to open or delete a note. I'm doing nothing (see attachment). 

Would an activity Log help?

[Paul A. 631]

@RichW Have you opened a support ticket? You've already done a lot of troubleshooting so that seems like the next step if you haven't done that yet.

It's probably rare, but I've seen a handful of reports in these forums over the years of performance issues being caused by something wrong in a user's Evernote-hosted database. The solution in these cases was level 2 support running some utility or another on the Evernote back-end to fix it.

[RichW 26]

I have not.  Submitting one now.  Thanks.

 

[RichW 26]

I just opened Bug ticket #3731297 for this issue.  Let's see what happens.

[MartijnM 1]

I have the same issue. Let's hope Evernote fixes this.

[PinkElephant 8,189]

You have any proof for always posting negativities ?

We need not be happy with the latest releases. But there is a wide difference between criticizing points for improvement, and plain naysaying and spreading of foul odor.

[PinkElephant 8,189]

If  you read the posts before your latest, your answer is at least off the road of discussion.

But ok, I shouldn’t expect more. Anything you posted in the last time is void of content.

 

[kassieann 0]

I recently had to remove tons of notes - some in which I've now lost with sensitive data on them to try to GET MORE SPACE> 

 

I removed 3/4 of my notes and still getting "DIS FULL" 

 

It takes up all my CPU - seeing message here, can Evernote help with this? I cannot use it due to speed/cpu. 

[PinkElephant 8,189]

Since 10.59 (I think) you can move the local database to another location. Which only works with the direct download, not with the AppStore version, due to Apple’s restrictions. Case you have the AppStore version, you should switch to the direct install.

You can turn off the space notification as well in settings. 

The main question is how much free space you really (!) have. We know that calculation of space is sort of freaky on Macs that manage storage through iCloud.

But you should have 30GB or more available to ensure a proper function of EN and all system services.

[Paul A. 631]

On 8/9/2023 at 4:47 PM, RichW said:

I just opened Bug ticket #3731297 for this issue.  Let's see what happens.

Hi Rich, curious whether you made any progress on this issue through your support ticket.

[W Consulting 0]

Two systems one about 6 months old with i9 and 64 GB ram NVMe SSD;

It doesn't matter if evernote cache sits on the my OS NVMe SSD or if I move it to a 4 bay raid 0 array.  There is no significant disk i/o usage locally so this appears to be a networking problem and we are waiting on some kind of network issues.

I would be happy to debug more but I'd rather not use up my time for a problem that is globally apparent for anyone that is a power user of evernote they will see it crash and burn with the current performance issues.  My two cents.

I have another computer with i7 32 GB ram about 1 year old.

Evernote 10 was finally starting to be performant until the multi editor came into play.  I will admit the multi editor is nice it seems to have fixed the idea of notes self duplicating at random, but it has come at a huge performance impact.

For the last couple month duplicating a note with a few hundred lines takes upwards of 60 seconds.  This previously took less than 1 second.

10.60.4 is even worse.  I can duplicate a note and then it sits there without any loading and then after 20 seconds I wonder if I hit duplicate.  So I hit it again and the first one pops in 20 seconds later and then its locked up loading waiting for the next duplicate to happen....

Since this happens on multiple computers of mine it surely cannot be the database as I only add maybe 5 notes a day.  So my total notes is only around 5000 and not too large.

Is there a tool that can tell us how slow our database is responding?  As I think that would help us eliminate a lot of these inquiries if we could confirm our database locally is slow.  Yes I have the option to copy the database locally as I am not fond of web only applications that do not cache locally.

[PinkElephant 8,189]

Everything you tell are symptoms of a corrupted local database. 

Log out, uninstall using Revo Uninstaller. Dumping it through Windows will NOT remove everything. Then restart the PC.

Case you are on a Mac, do the same, but use the app AppCleaner instead.

Download the app from the EN website. Install, log in. It will show your notes after a little. Now leave it running (can be in the background). It will rebuild your local database.

Until it has done it, there may be a small delay when opening a note with an attachment that is not yet loaded locally.

[wetter11 2]

Same issue here - with EN since more than 10 years and 23000 notes --- running 10.60.4 since 2 weeks, only updated b/c the reminders for 6.25 legacy became too ennoying (multiple times a day). I am utterly disappointed. 

- Opening a new note takes roughly 20 seconds. (unless I do it inside of a Notebook that contains only a few notes ...)

- No option to edit font on title of note. No option to minimise font size to say 10 pts --- now every print takes 3 pages which previously took 1 page. Leaving the note title off the print is not possible. And on top of that looks ugly. 

- 

 

[RichW 26]

YES!!!!!   FINALLY, this bug was just fixed in version 10.61.5-mac-ddl-public (20230831054637).  THANK YOU guys.  This has been a nightmare.

[RichW 26]

@PinkElephant  Pinging you to let you know this was solved and validated on my end.

[orpheus 1]

Joining this discussion after quite some time. Would it be better to open a new discussion? I'm not here very much, so I don't know which is best.

Anyway, I have the same problem to the point where Evernote is unusable for me. It takes 41.66 seconds to open. Once it's open, it takes over 11 seconds to start a new note. And opening it invariably kicks the cooling fans on. According to Activity Monitor, EN uses about 22% CPU, and EN Helper about 67%.

I have Evernote version 10.77.3 on a 2020 MacBook Air running Sonoma 14.3.

I'd really appreciate any help.