a much more positive view on Evernote

[tm87 54]

I've been a long-time Evernote user and recently came back to this forum. Originally I was looking for some inspiration on how people are currently using the task function, but I noticed that there seems to be a lot of negative vibes around the current situation of Evernote. This surprised me, so I decided to share a different view:

I'm back to using Evernote (and paying for Evernote), after a long time. 

At the moment, many people here seem to miss the old version, and obviously nobody wants to have workflows broken and abilities removed. And of course it's sad that a native client had a speed and ability for handling many notes at once, that the new framework is struggling. 

But at the same time, back before this whole Evernote 10 thing started, I left because there were so many problems: duplicate notes, different formatting of the same notes across devices, very different feature sets, and no real improvements at all. When Evernote 10 started, I was eager to try it out, but it wasn't usable at that point in time. Looking at all the Evernote-articles from the last couple of years, especially about the back-end-server-structure gave me the impression that a loooot of technical debt needed to be solved.

But let's jump to today: For my personal use case, the status of Evernote looks actually very good again!

I use an m1 MacBook Air and an iPhone SE. Both devices aren't cheap, but both are also a couple years old already and not exactly state-of-the-art anymore. On both devices the speed of Evernote is so good that I can just work with it, without problems. (And for example Notion isn't really faster at all, even though it has a very different approach and feature set to some aspects of a "notes / database app".)

I never get any duplicate notes and don't have to worry about when I'm opening which notes on which device. (This should be a no-brainer nowadays, and finally is.)

The task-feature is a great addition, and a huge improvement for me.

People complain about constant updates, but compared to years of no improvements (and long-term unfixed bugs!) I'm glad that Evernote is finally back to faster improvements, faster innovations and faster bug-fixes. They rolled out a bunch of new features and this makes me hopeful that these also could be improved further over the next month and years.

Looking at there newest video about the upcoming new interface for mobile (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1v_Cyby8g4c), I see a company that is back to look at use-case and test different designs to fit there product to the needs of users.

Limiting the fee plan was a harsh step, but I can very well imagine that it was a necessary and good step. I can image that a bunch of free users turned into paying customers, and in the end that is the only customer the company truly needs. 

The web-clipper was recently improved (don't know when exactly this was rolled out) with a selection-feature that I love! The Evernote-web-clipper still seems to be the benchmark for similar tools and is something I use all the time.

The one huge current problem I see after skimming the forums seems to be support. That's a big, big problem, if  too many people need support. But I see a likely end of this tunnel, once they finish the mountain of work they have at the moment: A notes-app shouldn't need so much individual support! It should just work. Payments are in advance, for a set amount of time and just repeat themselves until you quit the service. If this runs mostly bug-free (seems in progress), if you don't have too many grandfathered payment-plans of all kinds to entertain, and if you don't have to deal with the earthquake-effect of canceling your "old-but-still-really-loved-and-truly-useful" out-of-date client.

So I sense this is a big problem at the moment, which is likely to cost Evernote paying customers. People who are waiting for weeks for a reply, only to get a AI-answer that misses the point, are rightfully pissed off any may leave just for this reason. But at the same time, many people never needed support in the last few months and so this probably isn't a problem for many, many other people. It wasn't for me, so far.

Hopefully in the future fewer new requests come in due to improvements, so this problem hopefully won't persist. (Thumbs pressed here.)

All in all, to me Evernote finally got usable again, and some of the updates were real improvements. I switched through OneNote, Notion and AppleNotes in the meantime, and also have to use OneNote at work. And for me none of them work as well as Evernote.

At the core, I need a reliable Notes-App with a great web-clipper and especially a rock-solid tagging-system, which offers the same core-features across all my devices. And features like email-to-note, import folders or tasks are also very useful. Evernote finally offers all this again for my use case.

I'm sure many people here won't agree at all. That's fine. I don't want to convince anybody, or tell anybody that she or he is wrong with their disappointment or use-cases.

But all the frustration and anger prompted me to share this alternative point of view, because my perception is so different. I'm very happy with the development of the last year, and can finally use Evernote as my only notes-app. 

[tm87 54]

Just yesterday I wrote:

Quote

People complain about constant updates, but compared to years of no improvements (and long-term unfixed bugs!) I'm glad that Evernote is finally back to faster improvements, faster innovations and faster bug-fixes. They rolled out a bunch of new features and this makes me hopeful that these also could be improved further over the next month and years.

 

And today I got an notifcation in Evernote that Updates are now going to be downloaded in the background and I can choose when to restart the app to switch to the latest version.

One more example that pain-points are being heard and potentially addressed again 👍

(Of course you can't solve all potential improvements and problems in a week, but by now I'm very optimistic that Evernote is going to keep improving a lot over the next 12 months... Something I wasn't at all one or two years ago.)

[s2sailor 2,278]

3 hours ago, tm87 said:

And today I got an notifcation in Evernote that Updates are now going to be downloaded in the background and I can choose when to restart the app to switch to the latest version

If I’m understanding the comment, this has always been the case.  Evernote will download the new version and you can either click to upgrade now or wait until the next restart.  I think the behavior that others are looking for is they don’t want a new version to load on restart.

[tm87 54]

Mhhh... I don't really know how the app behaved so far: I'm using MacUpdater and usually installed new updates before they were offered to me by the Evernote-app itself. Sadly I didn't make a screenshot and the small information-box about the latest version has no details about this, but if I understood it correctly, the app is only going to update once you click something like "update now" in the future and not automatically anymore.

I may or may not have misunderstood it, but there was a short notification about some change in the update behavior. 

 

[Boot17 1,482]

Yes - it has been this way for at least a year or so. It will update when you click the 'update now' or the next time you restart the app -- whichever comes first.

[Lolinda 15]

On 4/29/2024 at 9:33 AM, tm87 said:

rock-solid tagging-system

I am happy if you experience a rock solid tagging system on your devices, which are apparently Apple gadgets. unfortunately, on Android, we do not get this central piece of Evernote function. Yes, there is the same tagging system, but it is anything else than rock solid. So, this is my central point, why I cannot fully agree to your message, not at all: I have all the time cases where I tap a tag and wish to see the list of notes that have this tag, and the list is filled up with notes long deleted, and/or lacking a lot of notes that I have added in recent days and assigned this tag.

Now, imagine the horror this sole bug means:

- you go into a meeting, and the various points you want to talk about are the notes that have a certain tag. Evernote does not show all the notes having the tag and I forget talking about them and cannot meet that person soon again.... Evernote is not only useless but produces a complete catastrophe. I had manifest business losses because of this Evernote bug. 

- I go to a supplier to buy things for my business or to a grocery shop where I buy things for myself. I have a tag with the name of each supplier or grocery shop or category of shops and this dumb Evernote shows me a ton of outdated notes that I have deleted long ago and does not show me the new notes about stuff that I need to buy. I had many cases where I needed to go again to that supplier or shop because crappy Evernote has this devastating bug. 

And guess what, I invested a lot of time to tell Evernote about this bug, showed them videos and screenshots. I only spent time and they did almost nothing. I even offered them that they can install a "debug version" of Evernote on my devices that monitors the development of this issue so they get the total information for their debugging process. At least they responded to this idea, but the response was negative they don't do it. They don't want to profit from it. I was ready to forgo my privacy in order to help Evernote finally debug. When trying another note taking app, I proposed the same idea for a difficult bug and they immediately did it and were very happy about my offer and fixed the bug using the precious information received via their debug version of their app.

in sum:

- this single bug renders Evernote almost useless and outright dangerous for affected Android users who intensively uses tags 

- Bending Spoons care a damp ***** about bugs that cause manifest business losses (But I am happy that at least they responded a very few times before not caring anymore)

 

[Kaspar 11]

On 4/30/2024 at 6:49 PM, Boot17 said:

Yes - it has been this way for at least a year or so. It will update when you click the 'update now' or the next time you restart the app -- whichever comes first.

Either I haven't gotten the "update now" or it has been well camouflaged, as I always get an unexpected surprise-update upon program startup (win11).
 

[anfang 37]

@Kaspar Are you perhaps using the Windows Store version of the app? Windows Store Apps will upgrade by themselves.

[s2sailor 2,278]

10 hours ago, Lolinda said:

am happy if you experience a rock solid tagging system on your devices, which are apparently Apple gadgets. unfortunately, on Android, we do not get this central piece of Evernote function.

Please do not hijack the thread or double post.

[bmcl26 506]

10 hours ago, Lolinda said:

on Android, we do not get this central piece of Evernote function.

I am using a four-year-old Samsung A70 Android, and tagging works fine on it. 

[Kaspar 11]

7 hours ago, anfang said:

@Kaspar Are you perhaps using the Windows Store version of the app? Windows Store Apps will upgrade by themselves.

No, the regular version. I'll look harder, maybe I'll see the notification in the future.

[Kaspar 11]

14 hours ago, Kaspar said:

No, the regular version. I'll look harder, maybe I'll see the notification in the future.

Nope, didn't see it, just got caught off guard by an update installing.

[Cristiano478 160]

@tm87 Thank you for this positive opinion. Seeing all the new things they've been launching in recent months and are still going to launch, I'm sure Evernote will be much better soon.

[Anna_IT 0]

Hello everyone, I do agree because I also started using Evernote again after being revamped.

I have a question, though: on Android, where the app v.10.86.1 (1221137) works fine and the interface is very intuitive and pleasing to view and use to me, I don't find any way to add an event to the Calendar section as in the desktop app. Same happens on my iPad.

Is the icon "add New Event" missing? Thanks to anyone willing to help.