Rolling out AI-Powered Search on desktop

[Federico Simionato 1,027]

🎉 I'm super excited to announce that we started the rollout of AI-Powered Search on desktop!

Release status:

We are at 20% rollout. We are looking at feedback very closely and we'll increase the server-side rollout percentage in the next few days as we stay confident no major issue is present.

You need to be on Evernote Desktop 10.61.9 at least to use it, but I recommend 10.61.10.

 

How it works:

You can read more about how it works in this Help & Learning article.

A question missing from the FAQs (we'll add it soon) is: what notes get sent to the AI model?
Evernote identifies the most relevant notes for your question before passing any information to AI models. Then, a few notes (for now a maximum of 8, might change in the future) get sent to the AI model.

As usual, if you don't feel comfortable sending any of your notes to an AI model, you can safely ignore the feature and keep using Evernote as usual. In that case, no content gets sent to any model whatsoever. Well, assuming you don't use other AI features.

 

My experience:

I've been using AI-Powered Search for a few weeks. Initially I was "playing with it" to see how interestingly it would behave (it's a language model after all, so don't expect it to be perfect!), but lately I've really grown to enjoy its help in actual searches too! Try it, I believe you'll like it.

One of the things I am doing most frequently is using it to speed up filtering: it automatically translates a query such as "show me notes created after jan 2023 that contain PDFs" into a filter query, which is much faster than using the mouse to filter the search!

[janndk 536]

Does it only support English? Seems not to work in Danish.

[Federico Simionato 1,027]

It should support all languages GPT supports. What error do you get?

[janndk 536]

17 minutes ago, Federico Simionato said:

It should support all languages GPT supports. What error do you get?

I'm not getting an error, but the AI-search seems to behave as a normal "OR" search.

E.g. At the moment I'm working on a project on healty food. When asking AI-search to find notes about healthy food, it shows everyting with "healthy" and everything with "food" and also everything with words starting with healthy... and food...

When making a longer search sentense - find notes with healthy food, but not with xxxx - the result is same.

Standard Evernote search is working better.

Anyway, I try to test it further. Let's see how it goes.

[eric99 995]

Can the AI search be limited to a specific notebook so that sensitive notes are never sent to the AI server?

[Peter Sixsmith 1]

Great stuff. When you say 20% roleout how quickly can you get it to the other 80%. Really looking forward to trying this functionaliy. Are the plan to add more ai functionality. i.e. Simplify or deep drill into a paragraph or idea.

Keep going i am sure evernote will regain its crown with these new features along with it clean and easy interface.

[Jon/t 1,346]

22 hours ago, eric99 said:

Can the AI search be limited to a specific notebook so that sensitive notes are never sent to the AI server?

Interesting. Or maybe restrict a certain notebook(s) from ever hitting the Ai.

[eric99 995]

2 hours ago, Jon/t said:

Interesting. Or maybe restrict a certain notebook(s) from ever hitting the Ai.

Yes, but my question was even simpler than that: will the 8 notes for the AI always be limited to the specified notebook or tags in the query string (or possibly set via the side bar)? That would help a lot to gradually explore and build trust...

[agsteele 2,963]

I don't think so, but you'd have to ask @Federico Simionato...

[BrooklynBen 45]

Is there a way to tell it what 8 posts to prioritize? I have a couple major summary notes that link to hundreds of other notes, and those would be the most useful to train it on. 

[Arantes 37]

Terrible, with the implementation of AI, it stopped showing the notes related to the search. Now it only displays the search history.

 

[agsteele 2,963]

33 minutes ago, BrooklynBen said:

Is there a way to tell it what 8 posts to prioritize? I have a couple major summary notes that link to hundreds of other notes, and those would be the most useful to train it on. 

No

[eric99 995]

2 hours ago, BrooklynBen said:

Is there a way to tell it what 8 posts to prioritize? I have a couple major summary notes that link to hundreds of other notes, and those would be the most useful to train it on. 

This would be possible if you could constrain the AI search to a specific tag or notebook, specified in the search string or selected in the side bar before searching.

[Mike P 2,705]

11 hours ago, eric99 said:

This would be possible if you could constrain the AI search to a specific tag or notebook, specified in the search string or selected in the side bar before searching.

I just seasrched for 

notes tagged with $current updated in last 5 days

AND

notes tagged with $current about buying

and got the notes I expected in both cases. So I think tagging the notes you want it to search may be possible.

 

 

[eric99 995]

23 minutes ago, Mike P said:

I just seasrched for 

notes tagged with $current updated in last 5 days

AND

notes tagged with $current about buying

and got the notes I expected. So I think tagging the notes you want it to search may be possible.

 

 

have you already tried to set an AI search sandbox first by selecting the tag in the left side bar and then search for a specific topic? Do the 8 notes belong to the tag then (if they are shown)?

[Mike P 2,705]

4 hours ago, eric99 said:

have you already tried to set an AI search sandbox first by selecting the tag in the left side bar and then search for a specific topic? Do the 8 notes belong to the tag then (if they are shown)?

I don't think you can do that. I'm still trying to understand the two functions of the AI search ie

• finding notes by translating a natural language search into an advanced search string 
• answering a question by summarising or extracting information from a "handful" of found notes.

I'm not even sure you can combine the two things, in which case my answer above is probably unhelpful. I don't see why  the first function would need information from any notes to be sent to an external AI provider, although I'm nervous to just assume that.

My conclusion so far is that the first function works pretty well. The second is more variable with some good wins and some clear fails.

Note: for some bizarre reason this search works correctly

taged with $pinned maths

converts to:

math tag:$pinned

but if you spell the past tense of tag correctly 

tagged with $pinned maths

It doesn't work! However if you leave out the text search (math) you can use either the correct or incorrect spelling of tagged

[Pre 16]

Hello all,

I just got the update notification and updated my Evernote for Windows Desktop to "10.62.2".

While I appreciate the new "AI Powered Search" feature, unfortunately it has broken the "Standard" search for me.

For example, I rely very heavily on the "list of suggestions" that Evernote shows me when I search for any term in the "Search" bar.

However, after the update I see absolutely no suggestions for any matching "notebooks, notes, tags..." which was working fine before the update.

I am kind of disappointed that the "standard search" is broken with this new update since it significantly effects my productivity.

I tried a "force reload" and logging in/out to see if this is a cache issue but that did not help.

Hopefully, a fix will be rolled out soon.

Edited September 22, 2023 by Pre
login/logout did not work.

[ENnut 51]

Like @Pre and @Arantes, suggestions are now missing for me. I use search suggestions multiple times every day. Please fix this.

[laurence.glazier 107]

I'm looking forward to trying AI Search out when it gets to me, thanks to folks here for the cautionary notes, it looks like we have to adapt to a different approach. But old search boxes are starting to feel a little old fashioned.

[Csterwerf 2]

When doing a standard search, I don't see where tag options populate any longer.  Did that disappear with this new search bar with the option for AI Powered?

 

[iceman melb 10]

Im on a Mac and the "Switch to...." Command-J still works

 

Csterwerf

ENnut

@Arantes

[Csterwerf 2]

I don't want my employees to be using AI and having sensitive documents put in the AI.  How do I lock out my employees from being able to use it?

[PinkElephant 8,211]

Tell them ...

[Denis R. 0]

Does it support a search inside screenshots?

[Chi Ho Leung 8]

Please can anyone clarify that, when the Evernote announcement says none of our data will be used for the AI model training, in layman terms, does it mean that my sensitive data on my notes will not be shown in someone else's Google Bard, ChatGPT, or Bing etc session please?  The AI Search feature looks great but I am concerned of the confidentiality of my sensitive data because my Evernote being my second brain is storing more data than I can even remember.

[PinkElephant 8,211]

You should learn some more about how an AI is trained and later working. It won’t keep a copy of data in it‘s neural network and show to others.

What is more important in the clause is that it means that no copy of the notes content will be stored in the (huge) database that is used to train new versions of the AI.

Beside this it is up to you to use the AI functionality at all. Without you pressing the button nothing at all will happen.

[Jon/t 1,346]

2 hours ago, Chi Ho Leung said:

Please can anyone clarify that, when the Evernote announcement says none of our data will be used for the AI model training, in layman terms, does it mean that my sensitive data on my notes will not be shown in someone else's Google Bard, ChatGPT, or Bing etc session please? 

Thats right. Your note data sent to the Ai is only used to process your question or search. Its not used to train anything. Your notes won't appear in Bing chat sessions.

[Jon/t 1,346]

7 hours ago, Denis R. said:

Does it support a search inside screenshots?

It supports text inside images. It did a good job of finding my next MOT date from a scanned garage invoice.

[PinkElephant 8,211]

Hmmm - text in images is supported by EN search already, under certain conditions, and in all plans.

https://help.evernote.com/hc/en-us/articles/208314518

[Chi Ho Leung 8]

1 hour ago, PinkElephant said:

You should learn some more about how an AI is trained and later working. It won’t keep a copy of data in it‘s neural network and show to others.

What is more important in the clause is that it means that no copy of the notes content will be stored in the (huge) database that is used to train new versions of the AI.

Beside this it is up to you to use the AI functionality at all. Without you pressing the button nothing at all will happen.

Thanks

I know there is an enterprise version ChatGPT and a consumer version of ChatGPT, apparently Evernote is using the enterprise-level API integration which I think could provide better data security and privacy controls.  I recalled Federico in one of the previous interview mentioned such difference, but that is not mentioned in the announcement.  Will be great if more elaboration on that will be available for example put into the FAQs.

I just wonder why the notes sent to AI model for natural language processing are only deleted after 30 days.  If that is only for "caching" purpose (for users making similar queries), 24 hours or less might be more than sufficient, given that each query is considered as an independent query.

Security is my #1 concern and convenience/functionality is #2 so I'd like to be 100% sure before I press that button (although its very attractive)

[agsteele 2,963]

3 hours ago, Chi Ho Leung said:

I just wonder why the notes sent to AI model for natural language processing are only deleted after 30 days.  If that is only for "caching" purpose (for users making similar queries), 24 hours or less might be more than sufficient, given that each query is considered as an independent query.

I don't have an answer to the thirty day thing. Other than to note that it isn't that your data is held for thirty days and then deleted. Rather your data will not be held for more than thirty days.

But you're data isn't used for other 'users making similar queries'. The AI Powered Search only uses your data for your queries.

Have you seen the Evernote blog post? You might find that interesting.

https://evernote.com/blog/ai-powered-search/

 

[l0nEr 7]

just wondering... how useful is this AI-Search so far? 
 

Will we get other AI tools? like note writing etc?

[PinkElephant 8,211]

The first AI tool was actually not search, it was AI cleanup. It’s intended to take a draft note and convert it into a piece of art.

You can give it a try through the AI button in the note editor.

[laurence.glazier 107]

I have the AI-Powered search now. While in itself this is a necessary step forward, the benefit is outweighed by the removal of useful suggestions from the old search, and I am now using Switch (Ctrl-Q) instead.

In particular, the suggested tags would be nice to have back.

[agsteele 2,963]

The whole AI Powered Search is a beta project. The changes to the Standard search results are a trial too. Please feedback your thoughts to feedback@evernote.com or to @Federico Simionato

I don't believe that the intent had been to reduce the functions of Standard search.

[laurence.glazier 107]

I am finding that after doing a Standard search, some suggested tags appear above the filtered notes, so that is an alternative way of working.

It's always been cool in Evernote to zoom in and out of tag combinations. I think that would also work well with the list of notes provided by the AI-powered search.

[BeEfficient 44]

On 9/20/2023 at 8:26 PM, Arantes said:

Terrible, with the implementation of AI, it stopped showing the notes related to the search. Now it only displays the search history.

 

this is such a critical bug so far.

5 of my friends using en have the same problem.

[sandrog 4]

Great, thank you. However, the latest version no longer allows you to search easily and conveniently through tags. When I type in the search box it no longer shows the tags in the results. To use the tags now you have to go into the filters, making more clicks. A completely unnecessary worsening, since it was enough to leave an already existing and widely used feature... 
If there is something I didn't understand tell me! Thanks

[Mike P 2,705]

1 hour ago, sandrog said:

Great, thank you. However, the latest version no longer allows you to search easily and conveniently through tags. When I type in the search box it no longer shows the tags in the results. To use the tags now you have to go into the filters, making more clicks. A completely unnecessary worsening, since it was enough to leave an already existing and widely used feature... 
If there is something I didn't understand tell me! Thanks

I completely agree. Search used to do everything including finding tags and notebooks. One option is, as you say, to use the filter. If it's the first tag you are adding you can also use the search in the main tags pop out window or, on a desktop version, use the go to function - ctrl +q on Windows. I an now trying to re-train my brain to always use ctrl+q.

[Csterwerf 2]

Sure, we can trust all employees.  Evernote should give business accounts control

[stepru 3]

On 9/18/2023 at 12:25 PM, Federico Simionato said:

🎉 I'm super excited to announce that we started the rollout of AI-Powered Search on desktop!

Release status:

We are at 20% rollout. We are looking at feedback very closely and we'll increase the server-side rollout percentage in the next few days as we stay confident no major issue is present.

You need to be on Evernote Desktop 10.61.9 at least to use it, but I recommend 10.61.10.

 

How it works:

You can read more about how it works in this Help & Learning article.

A question missing from the FAQs (we'll add it soon) is: what notes get sent to the AI model?
Evernote identifies the most relevant notes for your question before passing any information to AI models. Then, a few notes (for now a maximum of 8, might change in the future) get sent to the AI model.

As usual, if you don't feel comfortable sending any of your notes to an AI model, you can safely ignore the feature and keep using Evernote as usual. In that case, no content gets sent to any model whatsoever. Well, assuming you don't use other AI features.

 

My experience:

I've been using AI-Powered Search for a few weeks. Initially I was "playing with it" to see how interestingly it would behave (it's a language model after all, so don't expect it to be perfect!), but lately I've really grown to enjoy its help in actual searches too! Try it, I believe you'll like it.

One of the things I am doing most frequently is using it to speed up filtering: it automatically translates a query such as "show me notes created after jan 2023 that contain PDFs" into a filter query, which is much faster than using the mouse to filter the search!

Is there a limit in the number of notes? I guess the more notes you have, the best AI-powered search will perform.

[Jon/t 1,346]

1 hour ago, stepru said:

Is there a limit in the number of notes? I guess the more notes you have, the best AI-powered search will perform.

👇

I think the key to getting the right answers is more down to how descriptive you are so Evernote understands what you mean. I've started taking much better notes.

[v1ncen7 0]

This is the reason I will never pay a subscription for Evernote. We keep getting new features nobody was asking for that keep breaking previous workflows.

This new search layout is terrible, if you mistyped something and are used to double click on what you type to select it all and type again from scratch, you will now keep double clicking on the line that says 'Select Mode'. Even though I selected standard mode and have no intention to use this AI thing.

It would have been so much better to actually improve the existing search by using caches. I search for my signature template about 15 times a day in average, and sometimes it takes 10 seconds+ to display the result, even after the whole day doing the same search.

[Jon/t 1,346]

37 minutes ago, v1ncen7 said:

I search for my signature template about 15 times a day in average

You could set it as a shortcut and have it display in the sidebar and home page. Could also add it as a pinned note.

It may be quicker to find it than search ever was.

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,980]

5 hours ago, v1ncen7 said:

This is the reason I will never pay a subscription for Evernote. We keep getting new features nobody was asking for that keep breaking previous workflows.

"I don't want this" ≠ "Nobody wants this." I'm not interested in AI search myself (at least not now), but some people in the forums have welcomed it with open arms. And by all means keep not paying, since Evernote is offering you new technology for free! Free lunch with an ever-expanding menu, and still the diners grumble....

[ENnut 51]

@Federico Simionato Can we please get the search suggestions restored?

[Mike P 2,705]

15 minutes ago, ENnut said:

@Federico Simionato Can we please get the search suggestions restored?

And the ability to search for tags and notebooks.

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,980]

12 minutes ago, Mike P said:

And the ability to search for tags and notebooks.

... other than by explicit tag: and notebook: search terms.

[EvErNoTe__user 4]

Who knows if my Evernote has notes in different languages, and when I enter a question into the AI search, it will be able to search among other languages, or will it only search for notes in the language which I asked the question?

[agsteele 2,963]

AI Powered Search supports languages that are available with the Open AI engine.

https://help.openai.com/en/articles/6742369-how-do-i-use-the-openai-api-in-different-languages

Regardless of language, your notes do not feed the AI.

[SteveLad 0]

Why has the search by tag option disappeared?  I tag all my notes and this was the easiest way to search.

[ChristianJB 94]

On 9/26/2023 at 5:01 PM, ENnut said:

Can we please get the search suggestions restored?

Back with the latest version 10.62.5

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,980]

2 hours ago, ChristianJB said:

On 9/26/2023 at 11:01 AM, ENnut said:

Can we please get the search suggestions restored?

Back with the latest version 10.62.5

Yes!! Also, for @laurence.glazier, @SteveLad and others, search results that are tags and notebooks are back! Download it from https://evernote.com/download (filename will be Evernote-latest.exe, but you can change that if you like to keep installers).

[ENnut 51]

2 hours ago, ChristianJB said:

Back with the latest version 10.62.5

Not for me on 10.62.5 web client

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,980]

2 minutes ago, ENnut said:

Not for me on 10.62.5 web client

Interesting, I just got that update also, and the tag and notebook search results are back, but you're right, not search suggestions. Hopefully with a bit more time they'll return there as well. At any rate, they haven't actually been ditched it seems.

[s2sailor 2,273]

After what I just experienced, I think, personally, I would like AI search to be a two-step process.  I would prefer that it first presents the list of notes that it planned on sending to the AI engine, and then the second step is that you give it approval to proceed.  I just gave it a try and I thought I read somewhere that initially it only sent over up to 8 notes.  When I just tried it, it appeared to send over many more than that, including some that I wish had not been sent.  If I had seen the list of notes first that it planned to send, I would have halted the search at that point.

Not knowing ahead of time which notes will be sent to the 3rd party, is making me even more hesitant to use this.

[Charles 412 1]

In the search feature, please bring back the list of notes list in the standard search. I new search is very frustrating to find things now. 

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,980]

1 hour ago, Charles 412 said:

In the search feature, please bring back the list of notes list in the standard search. I new search is very frustrating to find things now. 

Please see the posts starting about 6 above yours.

[laurence.glazier 107]

Thanks for the heads-up @Dave-in-Decatur. I downloaded the newest version 10.62.5, and am looking out for the extra suggestions. Curiously an answer which the AI-powered search found for me this afternoon is not working for me this evening (when I tried to demonstrate it).  A temporary glitch I suspect.

[Grant837 114]

Is it correct that tags that start with a special characters will not be 'naturally' recognized by the AI search?  When I ask " Notes with the tag <List " I get zero results, but if I put it in quotes, it works.  I prefer not to have to use quotes. (I have the latest Windows version installed)

[GarySam 26]

 

On 9/22/2023 at 2:28 PM, Pre said:

However, after the update I see absolutely no suggestions for any matching "notebooks, notes, tags..." which was working fine before the update.

I am kind of disappointed that the "standard search" is broken with this new update since it significantly effects my productivity.

I ran into exactly the same problem.
And, same impact on lost productivity.

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,980]

4 hours ago, GarySam said:

On 9/22/2023 at 3:28 PM, Pre said:

However, after the update I see absolutely no suggestions for any matching "notebooks, notes, tags..." which was working fine before the update.

I am kind of disappointed that the "standard search" is broken with this new update since it significantly effects my productivity.

I ran into exactly the same problem.
And, same impact on lost productivity.

You're quoting a week-old post. Please look at the most recent posts, which state that this has been fixed.

[bwydoogh 71]

9 hours ago, Dave-in-Decatur said:

which state that this has been fixed

I don't see any suggestions anymore for notes. I'm running the latest macOS client, version 10.62.5. So...?

[Frki2 77]

2 hours ago, bwydoogh said:

I don't see any suggestions anymore for notes. I'm running the latest macOS client, version 10.62.5. So...?

Same...same as before update.

[Grant837 114]

Humm, I was not much for using suggestions, but I checked on my windows system, and the only suggestions I see are recent and saved searches.

I would have been interested in the notebook and tag suggestions, but I do not remember ever seeing them...    One reason, for tags, is that I use special characters (<, ?,  etc) before all of them, and Evernote still has a hard time including these in when searching in various ways... 😞

[GarySam 26]

8 hours ago, bwydoogh said:

I don't see any suggestions anymore for notes. I'm running the latest macOS client, version 10.62.5. So...?

Not seeing any fix either.
same problem as it was and is.

from "update evernote"

"You’re up to date!

Evernote 10.62.5 is currently the newest version available."

 

[agsteele 2,963]

10.63.1 is about to start becoming available for direct download.  Amongst other things I'm told:

- Fixes an issue where the 'Add filters' and 'Go to' sections were not appearing within search suggestions.
- Improvements and fixes to AI-powered search.

[bwydoogh 71]

28 minutes ago, agsteele said:

Fixes an issue where the 'Add filters' and 'Go to' sections were not appearing within search suggestions

Installed it, and now the note suggestions are working again. Great!

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,980]

11 hours ago, bwydoogh said:

21 hours ago, Dave-in-Decatur said:

which state that this has been fixed

I don't see any suggestions anymore for notes. I'm running the latest macOS client, version 10.62.5. So...?

My apologies. It was fixed, but then it got unfixed. I'll see if I can get v. 10.63, and hope for a permanent fix.

[PinkElephant 8,211]

Just updated my Macs. EN provided 10.63.1 when downloading from the EN website.

It didn't show as pending update, however. When I click into the search field, some lists show. Once I enter a search term, all but one disappears.

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,980]

55 minutes ago, agsteele said:

10.63.1 is about to start becoming available for direct download.  Amongst other things I'm told:

- Fixes an issue where the 'Add filters' and 'Go to' sections were not appearing within search suggestions.
- Improvements and fixes to AI-powered search.

Went to https://evernote.com/download and downloaded it, and the search suggestions (as well as results that are tags and notebooks are back). Hope it sticks this time. As always these days, the download is called Evernote-latest and I renamed the file to reflect the version number for archiving purposes.

[GarySam 26]

1 hour ago, Dave-in-Decatur said:

Went to https://evernote.com/download and downloaded it, and the search suggestions (as well as results that are tags and notebooks are back). Hope it sticks this time. As always these days, the download is called Evernote-latest and I renamed the file to reflect the version number for archiving purposes.

This worked for me!
Thank you for posting the fix and download location.

Much, much better with those search suggestions returning.

[Grant837 114]

Alas, I am becoming less and less impressed by AI search.  Next to not finding really obvious documents (eg show me notes about using evernote, did not find a note titles Evernot Usage Notes), the results interface appears to be buggy too...

For example, I asked, "Show all notes created in August 2023".  I got a list of 99 files, all looking to be from the right time. BUT! when I did any kind of sort on the list view, I got a new list of apparently random documents from all years.

All in all, I am still getting more reliable results from the Normal search, although it takes longer to narrow down the results.

PS: I am giving regular feedback, also constructive when possible

[bayersdorfer 0]

 

AI Search does not seem to be searching in note titles - I have a bunch of notes with "To Do List" in the title, and it didn't find any of them.

[Calapine 1]

On 9/18/2023 at 6:25 PM, Federico Simionato said:

my experience:

I've been using AI-Powered Search for a few weeks. Initially I was "playing with it" to see how interestingly it would behave (it's a language model after all, so don't expect it to be perfect!), but lately I've really grown to enjoy its help in actual searches too! Try it, I believe you'll like it.

One of the things I am doing most frequently is using it to speed up filtering: it automatically translates a query such as "show me notes created after jan 2023 that contain PDFs" into a filter query, which is much faster than using the mouse to filter the search!

It would probably be a good idea to do a blog post or guide on how to get the most out of this new feature.

For example, I would generally consider myself quite IT savvy, but I haven't had any contact with AI/LLMs, so I wouldn't know what for or how to use the AI search instead of the normal search. 

BR, Susanne

[Jon/t 1,346]

22 minutes ago, Calapine said:

It would probably be a good idea to do a blog post or guide on how to get the most out of this new feature.

 

I think they have a few things planned but in the meantime:

My own humble offerings -
https://tamingthetrunk.substack.com/p/deep-dive-evernote-launch-ai-powered

https://tamingthetrunk.substack.com/p/one-week-in-with-evernotes-ai-powered

https://tamingthetrunk.substack.com/p/special-episode-ai-powered-search

Vlad also has some great video content:

 

 

Should keep you going for a couple of hours 😂

[LucaBen 23]

@Federico Simionato Hi Federico, as others have pointed out, new features like this one should not impair functionality that was working fine previously. The way I use EN and the way my notes are organised, I see no benefit whatsoever in this new feature, but it's not just that, the search UI is now significantly worst than before, and there is no way to disable IA-powered search, and go back to the old search UI. Some have complained about the lack of the autosuggest, which I would agree with. I also want to add that from an interaction design point of view, the new search UI has a higher interaction cost than it needs to be. I use search all the time, and the new interaction design is really an issue, because it's so inefficient, it really slows me down.

Here is a list of issues, observed on the Desktop version for Mac (1.62.3):

1. Clicking on the delete icon to delete the previous query does not automatically set the focus on the search field, meaning I have to click twice. See attached screencast as reference.
2. If I now double click on the existing search query, the focus is set onto the search field, but the existing query does not get automatically selected, so I either have to select it using the mouse (very time consuming), or use the cmd + A shortcut (very impractical anyway). With the previous search, as far as I can remember, this was not an issue. See attached screencast as reference.
3. Let's say that I want to use keyboard shortcuts instead, it's a non-standard one, difficult to type (why add the option key, and not just have cmfd + F, instead, which seems to have no functionality associated to it right now?), and still the existing query does not get selected, so I have to use the mouse or a keyboard shortcut.
4. I remember being able to search for content based on a URL that is part of the notes content. I am not sure if this is related to the recent update, but today I was not able to do it. It's an old note so I don't think it's likely to be an issue with indexing (see attached screenshots).
5. Lack of autosuggest, as already suggested by others. If you decide not to have autosuggest, then at least replace it with an incremental search, don't wait for the user to type enter to show the results. This is against the best practices. 

I hope that these issues get addressed soon, I am surprised that the interaction is so sloppy in an app used by millions of people, there should be no need for us to provide feedback on such things. When you guys introduce a new feature, there should be an interaction designer making sure that the interaction cost is optimised for efficiency. 

Please note that regarding point 2, I've already highlighted this issue in my post about why Previous search query should not be there unless I choose to, I don't see a valid reason to not select the previous query automatically, when starting a new one. I honestly don't understand why your team keeps imposing new features without giving the option to disable them, instead of listening to suggestions from your users about things that don't work as they should, in the first place. I've also submitted feedback at least twice about this, but apparently it went unnoticed. It's really demotivating to see no response from the EN team (same with many other feature requests done over the years by a number of paying customers), and see that there's no point in sending feedback.

I won't even mention how bad search is on the web version, the app is actually impossible to use on the web browser (Chrome), because it keeps crashing. I won't mention the Android app, because that's also so unstable and riddled with bugs, that it's almost unusable. I hope you guys understand why I stopped paying for Premium a long time ago. I am not going to support a business model that is dysfunctional and that won't change unless I see more engagement with users who take the time to provide feedback. There's many other products out there where the product team actively engages with users sending feedback in the public space, I haven't seen anything like that from the EN in years.

[agsteele 2,963]

28 minutes ago, LucaBen said:

Here is a list of issues, observed on the Desktop version for Mac (1.62.3):

You may find some improvements and fixes that resolve some of these issues is you install the latest version of three app 10.63.4

Download from evernote.com 

[LucaBen 23]

1 hour ago, agsteele said:

You may find some improvements and fixes that resolve some of these issues is you install the latest version of three app 10.63.4

Download from evernote.com 

Thanks @agsteele The only improvement I see is that they've added back autosuggest. All the other issues that I've described are still there.

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,980]

On 10/12/2023 at 8:57 AM, LucaBen said:

I won't even mention how bad search is on the web version, the app is actually impossible to use on the web browser (Chrome), because it keeps crashing. I won't mention the Android app, because that's also so unstable and riddled with bugs, that it's almost unusable. I hope you guys understand why I stopped paying for Premium a long time ago. I am not going to support a business model that is dysfunctional and that won't change unless I see more engagement with users who take the time to provide feedback. There's many other products out there where the product team actively engages with users sending feedback in the public space, I haven't seen anything like that from the EN in years

Just to point it out, you're replying to a thread started by the product head. Your experience is your experience, and can't be assumed to be global. I use the Android app all day, and find it very usable. I use the Web client less (on Edge), but when I do it works fine--I've never had it crash. As for AI search, no one is forced to use it. They definitely borked the regular search interface when it first came out, but in current versions, at least the autosuggest is restored. I simply ignore the AI button.

On 10/12/2023 at 8:57 AM, LucaBen said:

Let's say that I want to use keyboard shortcuts instead, it's a non-standard one, difficult to type (why add the option key, and not just have cmfd + F, instead, which seems to have no functionality associated to it right now?), and still the existing query does not get selected, so I have to use the mouse or a keyboard shortcut.

On this particular point, this has nothing to do with AI search. In Windows the keyboard shortcut is Shift+Win+F, and this is a global shortcut, taking you to the Evernote search field from any other program you may be using. I assume it's the same with cmd+opt+F on Macs. I can see that it would make sense to have a simpler command from within Evernote itself, but you'd still need to distinguish it from Ctrl+F (= cmd+F?), which searches within a note. Anyway, this has been around since long before AI search.

[LucaBen 23]

52 minutes ago, Dave-in-Decatur said:

Just to point it out, you're replying to a thread started by the product head. Your experience is your experience, and can't be assumed to be global. I use the Android app all day, and find it very usable. I use the Web client less (on Edge), but when I do it works fine--I've never had it crash. As for AI search, no one is forced to use it. They definitely borked the regular search interface when it first came out, but in current versions, at least the autosuggest is restored. I simply ignore the AI button.

Well of course it's my opinion, that should obvious to everyone reading my contribution, but yes the Android app is riddled with bugs, as the many negative reviews on the Android play store testify. Good for you if you find it usable, even though as a UX expert I can objectively say it's not a user friendly app, because it breaks some basic paradigms on how things are expected to work, and is extremely unstable, at least on my device. Hopefully it's got better in the last few weeks, I just use it for the bare minimum now because using it it's been so frustrating, up to 3 weeks ago. 

Cmd+opt+F is not a commonly used shortcut on the Mac, and I think it would make sense for them to use the standard one, Cmd + F, to activate search within the app. As you say it's also used for in-note search, but that only happens if you click on the note first. I don't know what was the rationale behind their choice, I can certainly say that adding the option key makes it pretty useless to me because it's such a difficult fingering, it's easier to use the mouse.

And yes some of the topics I've mentioned have nothing to do with IA search and do not have to be. I am taking the time to provide professional feedback for free and doing a favour to everybody, so I hope you don't mind being slightly off topic. Cheers.

[s2sailor 2,273]

1 hour ago, LucaBen said:

as a UX expert I can objectively say …

This brought a smile to my face.  I’ve worked with numerous UX designers in the past and the word objective doesn’t come to mind.  You could put 5 of them in a room and each and every one of them would fight to the death defending their own uniquely objective opinion 😀.

[LucaBen 23]

3 hours ago, s2sailor said:

This brought a smile to my face.  I’ve worked with numerous UX designers in the past and the word objective doesn’t come to mind.  You could put 5 of them in a room and each and every one of them would fight to the death defending their own uniquely objective opinion 😀.

Yes you probably never heard about usability engineering did you? Most UX designers nowadays are former graphic designers who just added the word "UX" to their CVs, and most of them, in my experience, are mediocre at best at doing their job. Usability is indeed an objective science and patterns are based on extensive studies and testing that have been carried out over time. We know how people think, and besides that, there's established conventions that is best practice not to break. On Evernote for Android, editing text is such a pain in the neck because everything you'd expect from a WYSIWYG editor just doesn't work, and then there's guys like you who think that it's outrageous to say that the software is objectively unusable. The mindset that you are showing is such a cliché.  

[PinkElephant 8,211]

Not on Android, so I can’t objectively say much about it. Since there is a very close twin by the iOS client, I can say that using the current mobile client is a joy, compared with everything that existed before, and as well compared to other apps. The UI is well designed, lean and allows fast interaction with a wealth of functions.

There are a few things missing, especially on the iPad. But these have nothing to do with the clients feel & touch.

BTW we get quite far OT here. The thread was started with „AI search FOR DESKTOP“.

[LucaBen 23]

7 hours ago, PinkElephant said:

Not on Android, so I can’t objectively say much about it. Since there is a very close twin by the iOS client, I can say that using the current mobile client is a joy, compared with everything that existed before, and as well compared to other apps. The UI is well designed, lean and allows fast interaction with a wealth of functions.

There are a few things missing, especially on the iPad. But these have nothing to do with the clients feel & touch.

BTW we get quite far OT here. The thread was started with „AI search FOR DESKTOP“.

I won't even enter into the details of design, because the app has many bugs that make it hardly functional, same for the web version of EN, where it's utterly impossible to add any content at all. You can't call user friendly an app that has so many technical issues, it's a pain to use one time out of two. I've just checked the latest reviews that they've got on the Android Play store in the last few days, and they are almost all 1-star and 2-star reviews. Some report the use of dark patterns, others have problems logging in so they can't even use the app and they don't know why because  feedback is not provided in context, some others report data loss. You call it a "joy, compared with everything that existed before", I call it a disaster app that has been dysfunctional for such a long time: they had syncing issues, issues with duplicated content, and the app kept crashing. Now they've added dark patterns on the app, that's such a clever move isn't it?!

There's been lots of discussions here and elsewhere on the topic, many have left EN, other like me have decided to stop paying for a subscription until they see some signs that the management is finally starting to engage with their user base instead of ignoring them; lots has been written on what happened at a management level, and the mistakes that those who run this company have done over the years. And yes we are off-topic, and that is perfectly fine. The only problem I see, is there's people like you and the other few people above you, who keep adding pointless comments when someone (not just me) tries to highlight usability issues in the hope of making things better.

I've taken the time to make a comment where I thought it was appropriate, and it's fine even if it's slightly off-topic, because unlike you, I am not constantly on the evernote forum as I've got better things to spend my time with, and what I've done is more than enough. If their product owners are good at doing their job, they will read, and pass on some honest professional feedback to the designers and other stakeholders, and make the product better. If not, I will stop using EN and create my own note-taking app. Comments like yours are just some extra off-topic noise that add little value. I won't reply to further comments on this threat unless I read some valid contributions that are worth replying to.

[Babis1215 8]

AI Search on Windows app (latest version) is not working at all

You cannot select it - it greyed out

So far (up until a couple of days ago) it was working

I have a paid subscription (Professional)

Anyone else experience this issue?

[Jon/t 1,346]

12 minutes ago, Babis1215 said:

AI Search on Windows app (latest version) is not working at all

You cannot select it - it greyed out

So far (up until a couple of days ago) it was working

I have a paid subscription (Professional)

Anyone else experience this issue?

No. Been OK here and I'be used it a fair bit over the last couple of days.

Try a log out and log back in as that sometimes resets things.

[Dave-in-Decatur 3,980]

16 hours ago, LucaBen said:

Usability is indeed an objective science and patterns are based on extensive studies and testing that have been carried out over time. We know how people think, and besides that, there's established conventions that is best practice not to break. On Evernote for Android, editing text is such a pain in the neck because everything you'd expect from a WYSIWYG editor just doesn't work, and then there's guys like you who think that it's outrageous to say that the software is objectively unusable.

Regrettably, human beings are neither objective nor all that scientific in their behavior--but you know that, since you know how people think, right? I can agree that it's best not to break established conventions. And yet ... why don't we all write right-to-left, as the Phoenicians, who invented the alphabet, established it?

6 hours ago, LucaBen said:

I won't even enter into the details of design, because the app has many bugs that make it hardly functional, same for the web version of EN, where it's utterly impossible to add any content at all.

Again, you state your own limited experience as if it were universal fact -- and no, it's not obvious that it's only your opinion, because you say "the software is objectively unusable," the Android app is hardly functional, and in the Web version it is utterly impossible to add content, all of which is untrue in my experience. Please do not expect everyone to bow down to your expertise or rejoice at your free advice when it is not congruent with the actual experience of others. If you want to offer your free expert advice directly to Evernote, email feedback@evernote.com. Here you're just in dialog with other users, who have our own ideas, expertise, and experiences, and will state them.

[Federico Simionato 1,027]

Quick one to let you know that we started the rollout for AI-Powered Search on mobile too!

Make sure you update to mobile 10.57.0, as the previous version contains a performance bug on AI-Powered Search.

[philrodo 60]

On 10/23/2023 at 3:36 AM, Federico Simionato said:

Quick one to let you know that we started the rollout for AI-Powered Search on mobile too!

Make sure you update to mobile 10.57.0, as the previous version contains a performance bug on AI-Powered Search.

When running an AI search, it seems to lock up Evernote on my 2022 iPad Pro 11” running iPadOS 16.6.1. The buttons on the left become unresponsive and the only way to get back to normal is to close EN and re-open it. The  AppStore says that I’m running the latest EN version. 

[WilliamL 654]

Mines doesn’t lock up but ai search never loads text it just keeps those flashing search lines until I leave, left it a good while, no results ever come. 

[agsteele 2,963]

There has been a problem with the mobile apps and AI Powered Search. The locking up does seem to be common. I'm told 10.57.2 resolved it but had introduced a separate and unrelated issue with sketching.

I'm waiting for 10.58 and meanwhile avoiding AIPS on mobile.

[idoc 400]

Federico.  I'm a bit confused by what AI is doing.  I conducted a search along the lines of "all notes regarding Godotsky" and it returned 96 notes.  I then asked for "all notes regarding Godotsky but not containing the term John" and it returned 100 notes.  I was hoping to use normal language to filter our search items ie: I have two Godotskys in my notes and only wanted notes on one of them.  Clearly AI was not understanding what I wanted even though this is probably the simplest type of use case I could think of.

Also, just noticed that it used "regarding" as a search term.  So it was bringing up all results that had "regarding" in it.  I thought that the whole point of these AI searches was that we could use conversational terms to conduct searches.  

 

[PinkElephant 8,211]

We learned that AI search is not really strong in this sort of searches. You would do better for these to use the advanced search syntax or the Boolean search (Professional and Teams).

The first one is a one word search Godotsky , because obviously you want to find notes. The second one is a short search term Godotsky not:John as well.

This is not what AI is build for.

[idoc 400]

On 10/29/2023 at 11:25 AM, agsteele said:

There has been a problem with the mobile apps and AI Powered Search. The locking up does seem to be common. I'm told 10.57.2 resolved it but had introduced a separate and unrelated issue with sketching.

I'm waiting for 10.58 and meanwhile avoiding AIPS on mobile.

I'm using  10.65.3 on windows desktop.  I have not found AI to be helpful there.  

[idoc 400]

3 minutes ago, PinkElephant said:

We learned that AI search is not really strong in this sort of searches. You would do better for these to use the advanced search syntax or the Boolean search (Professional and Teams).

The first one is a one word search Godotsky , because obviously you want to find notes. The second one is a short search term Godotsky not:John as well.

This is not what AI is build for.

I was hoping that I could eventually  use conversational search terms eg: "Find the notes referencing John Godotsky, not his brother Eric, and only from the last two months.. "  This would be the holy grail for most of us who don't remember or want to remember complex search terms.

[eric99 995]

5 hours ago, idoc said:

Also, just noticed that it used "regarding" as a search term.  So it was bringing up all results that had "regarding" in it. 

 

Unfortunately, it appears that there is no AI involved during the initial selection of the interesting notes. Instead they use a primitive 'OR' query which obviously returns a huge set of irrelevant notes because it doesn't understand the semantics of the query. They probably do this to prevent all your notes from being exposed to the AI. They have promised that only a small number of notes will be sent to the AI...

[VincentC 274]

@Jon/t I  believe has a decent handle on the current strength and limitations of AI search.  You might look at some of his posts on the topic.  I would suggest that you remember that the tool is in beta. I expect we will see significant improvements over the coming months, and that improvements are likely to come faster if we use it more and pass on our comments as you have.

I recently had a trip to New York City on the Amtrak train.  On Wednesday before the trip, I asked Evernote, "what time is my train on Sunday?" and it successfully returned the correct time.   On the other hand, the previous week, I had a plane trip on Southwest Airlines to Las Vegas.  A few days before, I asked Evernote, "What time is my flight to Las Vegas?"  It responded that it couldn't find a note with the relevant information. The flight confirmation was a note in my notebook for the trip but the word "flight" was not in the confirmation and apparently the AI search engine wasn't smart enough to understand that Southwest Airlines provides flights.  Not knowing that, the search failed.  So, my experience is that success with AI search depends on exactly what words we use.  It's not smart enough to make the connection between "airline" and "flight", as we humans easily do.   On the other hand, the Amtrak confirmation included the word "train."  AI search couldn't infer "flight" from Southwest, but it could find "train" in the Amtrak confirmation and understand that that's what I was looking for - and even more wanted the time the train would leave on my trip to New York on Sunday, and not the return leg from New York on Tuesday.  Dumb in one way; smart in another.

Vinnie

[Jon/t 1,346]

@VincentC Those are great examples and thanks.

I'm creating slightly different note titles now when I store documents. My breakdown cover renewal came yesterday and I would usually title the note "Breakdown Cover" this time I wrote it as "Car Breakdown Cover Green Flag Nov 2023". In the future If I want Ai to look something up like a policy number its going to have a better chance understanding what I'm after.

[VincentC 274]

John, that sounds like a good approach to me.  I read somewhere (your blog, perhaps?) that Evernote sends only the four notes it thinks are most relevant to the AI engine for analysis and response.  Presumably Evernote has some secret sauce that helps to identify those four notes, but we can likely help it out with a little forethought and intentionality in the words we use in the note title and body.  Like you, I don't use tags much, instead relying on conventions in note titles.  I wonder how much impact tags have on Evernote's selection of those four notes.  But for me, being able to benefit more from AI search is yet another reason to be disciplined about note titles. 

I kind of expect this to become less important with time as Evernote further develops the AI search technology.

(And if you think you might look for "policy number" in the future, maybe include "policy" in the title?)

Vinnie