How to make "My Widgets" the default screen when opening Evernote

[dmoor 10]

When starting Evernote on my iPhone I always have to hit the 3 lines in the lower left to get to My Widgets.

Is there a way to set this as the default view when opening the app?

 

[s2sailor 2,281]

48 minutes ago, dmoor said:

Is there a way to set this as the default view when opening the app?

Not that I’ve found, but it seems to stay that way as long as the app isn’t closed.  I’m hoping for a selectable option as well.

[tyoung77 40]

I would like the startup view to be selectable as well.

[Michael Ost 4]

I would also like My Widgets to be my default. I don’t find the new opening page very useful at all. 

Is there a place to formally make this request? Or vote on it? Or something other than reporting here?

[justAuser801 3]

I agree! I don't like the new default page. I've assembled the My Widgets Page to serve my needs. Please make this a choice!

[don Roberto 0]

Another voice for this request. I got used to opening at Widgets, and had all my most relevant items there. Now I need to go through an extra step (on my phone, anyway) to get there. It's frustrating. At least let us have the option of going back to that as the start window.

Ideally, we'd be able to choose where it opens when we start the app. I don't like to keep it open because my phone is aging, and I try to keep the power/processor usage down to a minimum.

[CLGH 0]

I would also like this request to be addressed. It is a pain to open the app on the iPhone and then select widgets from a menu to get the items I use most frequently to show up. 

[Purple Albie 1]

Yup, came here to ask how to change the new Home Screen as well. It is totally useless to me, and hard to access the 3-bar menu button when using the phone one-handed as well! Bummer there doesn’t seem to be a solution. I read in another post that the intent with this new design was to make it faster and more intuitive…but for me it is now slower and less intuitive. :-(

[laurence.glazier 110]

Is it still possible to access the three bar menu at all? How are you doing it? Mine seems to have gone.

[PinkElephant 8,244]

Once a note is selected, the 3 dot menu is available. Outside of a note it is used for other settings, like widgets, sorting order and the like.

iOS 10.86.0 on iPhone.

[laurence.glazier 110]

I see, you mean the three dots. I meant the hamburger - three horizontal lines. But the new navigation seems to work quite well, everything I had lost seems to have moved to the settings menu!

[Filemon 7]

Personnally, I would like the Notes list to be the starter screen. At least, in the Widgets page, we could click on the latest note edited. Why such a time-wasting change? Why don't we have the choice of which page to open the app in? Notes, Widgets, or that totally useless (to me) "Your Evernote" brand new page ☹️

[tyoung77 40]

I don't understand why they made the change to have EN open at the new item page. Most of the time I want to edit existing notes. I have been using EN for 14 years and most of the changes they make are improvements but some, like this one, unfortunately are not. 

[Purple Albie 1]

On 4/29/2024 at 10:54 PM, laurence.glazier said:

I see, you mean the three dots. I meant the hamburger - three horizontal lines. But the new navigation seems to work quite well, everything I had lost seems to have moved to the settings menu!

I see the hamburger at the very bottom left corner on the new landing page, do you not have it there?

[JerrySNB 6]

I agree with everyone else's complaint. This isn't an iOS issue. I'm using Android.

How ironic: they named the new screen, which you can't customize, "Your Evernote."

[PinkElephant 8,244]

14 hours ago, Purple Albie said:

I see the hamburger at the very bottom left corner on the new landing page, do you not have it there?

No. That's the bottom of the new landing page on my iPhone - no hamburgers.

[laurence.glazier 110]

Actually I did see the hamburger at the bottom left once, but not since!

[chicagojcb 1]

I have android devices and have the same issue. I had everything the way I wanted it. The new "home screen" does not support my use of the tool!

Evernote's price went WAY up in the recent cycle. Very upsetting that the functionality I count on to be taken away.

[s2sailor 2,281]

10 hours ago, chicagojcb said:

Very upsetting that the functionality I count on to be taken away.

It was moved.  In case you missed it, you can get back to the screen by tapping settings, upper left, and then my widgets.

[Thomas deHoop 0]

27 minutes ago, s2sailor said:

It was moved.  In case you missed it, you can get back to the screen by tapping settings, upper left, and then my widgets.

But that doesn’t make it the default opening screen. Still have to click away to get it

[s2sailor 2,281]

9 minutes ago, Thomas deHoop said:

But that doesn’t make it the default opening screen. Still have to click away to get it

Correct.  I was just informing that it wasn’t removed.  A setting to select which is preferred would be helpful.

[bobosnap 2]

Yeah new startup screen sucks.  How do we get My Widgets that I’ve been using forever back to the default?   Why would they change this and not have an option to set your own startup screen?   Not a good update

[PinkElephant 8,244]

Some like it, some don't. Actually the new mobile GUI is better adapted to the smaller, portrait pointing screens of a phone.

Probably whatever they do to improve, they will be met with "but I liked the old look better". That's ok, but leaving everything to be customizable is no solution either.

[s2sailor 2,281]

1 hour ago, bobosnap said:

Why would they change this and not have an option to set your own startup screen?

This video describes some of the reasons behind their change.  To suggest a startup option you should contact them at feedback@evernote.com

 

[ChristianJB 94]

[tintintintin 0]

I agree to the  posts above mentioning that evernote's strength was (and hopefully will be again) the widget startpage.

From a UI perspective the new UI is a fail - a lot of space is wasted - there are now 3 areas to do the same (create in the lower left corner, create in the middle of the screen, create above the middle of the screen) - what is missing is : "use" - so the widgets.
The current startpage makes the app pretty useless.

[dmoor 10]

There seems to be a difference between the Mac and iPad vs iPhone versions.  The Mac and iPad versions home page shows pinned notes.  The iPhone version home screen is useless as it just shows a list of notes, the most recent first.

[PinkElephant 8,244]

Yes, there is a difference. The much smaller, vertical screen of a phone can't hold enough information - that's why it shows only the short start screen on phones.

For me it holds the most used functions - search, create new, quick note. Everything else is just 1 tap away.

[dmoor 10]

22 hours ago, PinkElephant said:

Yes, there is a difference. The much smaller, vertical screen of a phone can't hold enough information - that's why it shows only the short start screen on phones.

For me it holds the most used functions - search, create new, quick note. Everything else is just 1 tap away.

Different workflows I guess.  To get to where I want to go I have to select shortcuts, the notebook, do a search for the note which is pinned on the other 2 platforms, and then select it.  When you have to do this multiple times a day it is very annoying.

[s2sailor 2,281]

6 minutes ago, dmoor said:

To get to where I want to go I have to select shortcuts, the notebook, do a search for the note which is pinned on the other 2 platforms, and then select it.  When you have to do this multiple times a day it is very annoying.

Can't you just create a shortcut to the note needed and then access it from the shortcut button?

That said, pinned notes are on their way, but not sure how this will be implemented yet.

[Thomas deHoop 0]

The look is different than when it was first released. There are buttons at the bottom that allow fast access to notes and shortcuts that weren’t there before. It would have been nice to have the ability to customize those buttons. Like a Widgets button. 

[JerrySNB 6]

I wonder how much of the previous code is still in there and could be made an alternative to the new interface.

I understand that there's a shortage of real estate on a phone screen. I've been down that road before, both as a designer and a programmer. What I personally would like to see is scrollable widgets. For example, I could add a filtered note widget that would only show one note at a time. That, however, could be a challenge. Tinkering with a screen layout can be a trip down the rabbit hole.

[tyoung77 40]

They changed the interface on Android. Assume on iPhone too. Love it!

[dbvirago 508]

This became a deal breaker for me. Still using Evernote for document storage and retrieval on Windows, I've gone to Notion. Mobile needs to be immediate access, which is what I had with Widgets. Before, what I needed on phone was on opening page or one click away. Now it's 2 clicks just to get to that point. What's worse, there is nothing on that page that is useful to me. People talk about how 'clean' it looks. So does a blank page, which is equally useless. 

Recreated my Widgets, including Scratch pad on Notion. 

Also, FWIW, recurring tasks got flaky again like they were in early days, so I've pulled those from Evernote. 

[PinkElephant 8,244]

Actually I have the same useful stuff as before, on the iOS Home Screen, as widgets.

From my own observation the new app Home Screen really contains what I use the most when I open the mobile app. Surprising to me, because I thought initially it’s a step backwards. Now I think it’s different, but quite OK for me.

[JerrySNB 6]

Obviously, we all have our own ways of working. Given that I use Evernote as a repository of information, I'm much more likely to open it to read something than to create a new note.

I had my most-used notes as shortcuts on my (Android) home screen, but that stopped working properly when I put an app lock on Evernote. It seems to work now, so that takes care of my issue.

[Derekh1976 1]

Member since 2010, but this is my first post, comment. Love the reliability improvements since the Bending Spoons takeover.  I have been happy to pay the increased fee because of these improvements and I want to see Evernote continue to exist in the world. I use it constantly.

Voting in favor of giving users the choice to make Widgets the default screen. Multiple times per day I need to access my scratchpad and pinned note (where I dictate thoughts, emails, anything that I need to get down quickly) and now it’s multiple clicks and a time delaying hassle that makes me think about switching to Apple Notes - or another quick access option - for mission critical, workflow dependent notes. 

No doubt most users don’t access or change their widgets, but many of us power users do/depend on quick access for the way we work. 

Also would be nice to modify the one-press icons at the bottom of the screen and make shortcuts more accessible. Or just give us the choice to choose what our default screen is and which icons we want on our screen.
 

This cannot be a hard thing to fix, unless the developer is trying to stubbornly impose their own view on how we’re supposed to do our work. That would be a shame, as the genius of Evernote has long been its customizability/flexibility.

Hoping this will be resolved promptly.

 

[tyoung77 40]

Like the new home screen now that I can get to my notes in one tap.

[tintintintin 0]

Probably different work flows - I strongly disagree with the post saying that the note a just one more click away - that is not true.

The widgets really have a great value on the mobile phones:

For example: My pinned note is most of the time my gym plan - all the machine with the weights and repeats => so come to the gym, start music, open evernote - train

With the new startpage I would have to open search (or notes and search there) and type a search word and then select in all the notes found the correct one...

Other example: I have to give a speech => then my pinned note becomes the note with the topics/ideas/keywords (or it is in my list of filtered notes - another cool widget). During the day I add ideas quickly as it is on the front , use it during the speech and then go back to fitness as pinned note 🙂

(BTW: Favorites does not work either as there is too much stuff)

 

[Justin H. 0]

22 hours ago, tintintintin said:

The widgets really have a great value on the mobile phones:

For example: My pinned note is most of the time my gym plan - all the machine with the weights and repeats => so come to the gym, start music, open evernote - train

With the new startpage I would have to open search (or notes and search there) and type a search word and then select in all the notes found the correct one...

I second this. If nothing else, could I at least get that pinned note back?

I have a note containing my daily list of things to do that I pin to the front page and refer to 10 to 20 times a day by simply opening Evernote.

Now each time I want to view it I need to open the app and do a manual search. 

I've already cut down most of my usage of Evernote to just this one primary function and it got taken away from me.

[s2sailor 2,281]

6 hours ago, Justin H. said:

I have a note containing my daily list of things to do that I pin to the front page and refer to 10 to 20 times a day by simply opening Evernote.

Now each time I want to view it I need to open the app and do a manual search.

Hopefully they will add a pinned note to the Home Screen, but until then you could create a shortcut to the note and get to it that way in a couple of clicks instead of searching.

[aburtch 3]

Posting simply to add my voice to those calling for the option to select / customize the default screen when opening the iOS app. Right now it defaults to “Create” but I would much prefer “Notes.” Seems like a no-brainer to offer the option in settings.  

[s2sailor 2,281]

2 hours ago, aburtch said:

Posting simply to add my voice to those calling for the option to select / customize the default screen when opening the iOS app. Right now it defaults to “Create” but I would much prefer “Notes.” Seems like a no-brainer to offer the option in settings.  

I agree that options are always good, but Notes is only one tap away.

[nurzerde 0]

I agree with the majority here the widgets should be left as a default screen or there should be an option

Currently I have to click on hamburger then my widgets and then to go to what I want instead of just starting to work as was before the update

 

[AnttiK 0]

On 5/8/2024 at 1:51 AM, PinkElephant said:

Some like it, some don't. Actually the new mobile GUI is better adapted to the smaller, portrait pointing screens of a phone.

Probably whatever they do to improve, they will be met with "but I liked the old look better". That's ok, but leaving everything to be customizable is no solution either.

Exactly why would leaving everything to be customizable not be any solution?