Evernote for Mac v6.0 and v6.0.1

SoftwareMarcus · November 20, 2014

Today we released version 6.0 for the Mac App Store and 6.0.1 for direct download customers.

First off, Mac App Store customers are going to get all of the really cool benefits and features that direct download customers have had for a month. This means faster sync, improved note editing with resizable tables and images, work chat, presence, context where one can see content related to their notes, and great new presentation mode features.

The other huge update is a sleek new Yosemite look for Evernote. We previewed some of this at the Evernote Conference last month. This means we’ve taken out the black side bar and changed it to the cool translucent Yosemite look and feel, took out all of the textures and big icons and switched them to clean and simple designs and in addition everything has higher contrast and is easier to read. Overall the word “clean” comes to mind when you see the new design. I really like it and we hope you do to.

We also continue to fix issues and improve existing features.

Work Chat Improvements

We now have pop-ups and some visuals to educate customers about work chat.
Fixed a number of bugs with the chat window and continue to polish the look.
Added support for sharing notebooks via work chat.

Bug Fixes

Improved handling of really long URLs which used to make the note extend off the screen.
Lots of other miscellaneous bug fixes

Why is the Mac App Store version different?

We had to submit the Mac App Store version of Evernote to Apple some time ago for their review and approval so we could release it today.
The direct download version includes the changes we've made in the last week.
We'll submit 6.0.2 to Apple today for release next week.

As always, please post feedback to this new release on this thread to make it easier for me to spot issues. Also state whether you’re using the Mac App Store version or the Direct Download Version since they are different.

You can also download the software at: http://bit.ly/14SxwPz

SoftwareMarcus · November 20, 2014

The UI in 6.0.1 is dog-slow. Window dragging, window resizing… scrolling through the contents of a note is even slow!

We haven't noticed any slowness here. Is anyone else seeing any slow down with the new app? Could Evernote still be migrating and syncing your data in the background? If not, zwaldowski could you try rebooting your Mac to see if that fixes things? It really shouldn't be running slower.

adev · November 21, 2014

Let me know how can I install an older version and I will NEVER update again.
No more such unpleasant surprises, please.

See these instructions by Evernote employee Jackolicious to go back to Ver 5.5.2 (which is what I'm still running):
https://discussion.evernote.com/topic/67533-evernote-for-mac-56/?p=304615

Thank you:)

goldfilm · November 21, 2014

Let's not forget this is a free software . . .

Well, to set the record straight, it's not really free.

Your use of the product is paid for by us Premium account owners, who do pay.

Allowing you to use the product for free is just a sales gimmick to get you to upgrade to Premium.

That's true! But free or paid, sometimes people complain like Evernote is a human right (and I'm a first class complainer... but here, just thank you and suggestions...)

groovebak · November 22, 2014

Also, work chat is of no use to me. Can we have the choice of removing it from the top bar next to the search field? The one thing I really loved using was the one-click emailing of notes. Of course, you had to remove that and make me work harder now. The more I think about it, the more I'm realizing how much of a step back this version is in terms of usability.

Mike B. · November 25, 2014

Got 6.0 from the Mac AppStore. All my notes don't display. The app is not responsive and I pretty much stopped using it in favor of the web.

System Mac OS X 10.9

Stuhrer · November 21, 2014

Thank you for the new version.
You're welcome!

I agree with the remarks that the flat and low contrast look seems to be modern but is not necessarily friendly to the eyes. Just to let you know, in Germany such a user interface is actually illegal to be used for work although not many companies care. There are regulations how big the smallest font has to be on the screen and how the contrast needs to be. I am member of the works council in my company and I would strongly vote against such an interface.

I prepared a picture that shows the problems and that it would be easy to change. It is not a space problem.

Font size - if we're in trouble, Apple should be too http://note.io/1HrGthx

As I mentioned above, if you see something, say something. We're listening!

Well, you are right, the text 'Favorites' in the finder is small but this is just a column label and doesn't carry information. In Evernote the smallest texts are the notebook, tags, 'date created', 'date modified' and the URL, quite important information. The label 'Favorites' in Evernote in the side bar is actually bigger:

bounce · November 21, 2014

The snippet view text is unreadable in the new Mac desktop client. The colors delineating sections are so weak it makes me feel cross-eyed, and I'm not that old.

I've been using Evernote since weeks after it's initial release, and have been a paying member under multiple accounts. Recently, I let my last account revert to non-paying and above is exactly one of the reasons I'm glad I did. I don't mind paying so long as the product actually improves; I heard the long-term promises of being an external brain and trusted in that, then it pivots into some business type software like the now defunct backpack. No thanks.

NightStalker · November 20, 2014

The bands have a very slight transparency so you see the background bleed through a little.

By the way, I'm older, have bifocals and the text looks sharp and easy to read to me but I think this kind of thing is very subjective.

OK - I know I sound like a reactionary who just doesn't like anything new (not true, the opposite actually). But just WHY would anyone actually WANT to see the background bleed through a little? Just because someone on the Yosemite team thought it would look "cool"? If I have a stack of real paper notes, I sure don't want the paper to be translucent so I can see the note underneath, or the table top! I just want to see what I'm focused on. And Evernote (and all other apps) should be the same. There is absolutely no point in introducing translucency just because it may look "cool".

And your point about legibility - you say that "this kind of thing is very subjectivce": but surely, legibility should NOT be subjective, should it? I mean - it needs to be legible to everyone who isn't actually blind. Those with 20-year old eye resolution should be able to dial up smaller fonts if they wish, while those of us who are more "mature" (ahem) should be able to see everything with no hint of subjectivity - it should be black and white - literally!

niq · November 23, 2014

I upgraded to 6.0 via the Mac App Store and all my notes have been trashed. The notes show as blank when I attempt to display them, and the titles of any ones I touched have turned to "Untitled". And it sync'd, so I assume the server version is corrupted too. I reported a support ticket but I would REALLY appreciate any advice for recovering my notes. Right now it seems like a total catastrophe.

I'm very much on the same boat as you. I just wish there was a way to revert back to the previous version but that's not an option with this data migration to the new schema. It's just sad that a company like Evernote would ever allow such defects hit their paying customers. Unlike most people in this thread, I'm not complaining about the new washed out look (even though a MAJOR step back). I'm complaining about the fact I CAN NO LONGER ACCESS MY NOTES.

Stuhrer · November 25, 2014

Got 6.0 from the Mac AppStore. All my notes don't display. The app is not responsive and I pretty much stopped using it in favor of the web.

System Mac OS X 10.9

Please read SoftwareMarcus’s response here: https://discussion.evernote.com/topic/76662-evernote-for-mac-v60-and-v601/page-10#entry325989 and possibly upgrade to V6.0.1 from the Evernote site!

And for a secure removal and re-installation from 6.0 to 6.0.1 read this: https://discussion.evernote.com/topic/77444-how-to-completely-remove-and-reinstall-en-mac/

And before you do this: create a backup especially of your local notebooks!!!!!

Sean77london · November 21, 2014

The new color scheme is harder to read. It's like reading a paper that's faded and been through the washer. Everything blends. Did you even wait to see what the feedback was on yosemite's color scheme before copying it? Or were you just sucking up to apple?

NWPR · November 25, 2014

Earlier shared Notebooks are not shared as seen in Evernote Mac App, but in the online Evernote.com my notebooks are still sharing.

Can I fix this?

I am having the same problem. Any ideas how to fix this?

JMichaelTX · November 24, 2014

I found the below statement from another thread to be particularly well put.

How 'bout it Evernote, do you not have any accessibility standards that you should (must?) meet?

. . .
As a designer, if I submitted this interface as a "design", I'd be laughed out of the conference room. There is a point at which un-design goes too far. You found that point. If I designed this for higher-ed on the web, it would likewise be rejected because it does not pass accessibility standards for contrast, for the visually impaired.
. . .

AR21 · November 24, 2014

Hi, the text in all my notes aren't visible. I just upgraded to Evernote 6.0 (not running on Yosemite), and this is what I see: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B194GEcfmQXJWHRyN3VWYWNCTEU/view?usp=sharing

It's all empty on the right-side. I'm not sure how to view the content.

frankc23 · November 25, 2014

First off, I love Evernote. AND this version is my first BIG disappointment. Here's why...

The white-on-white design is VERY hard to read. Please see feedback from the Mac App Store.

Please bring back shaded columns, or an option to shade columns, to provide contrast.

Thanks,

Frank

chirmer · November 24, 2014

In general, I like the new design. I like the spirit of it, and where it's going. That said, I do have some qualms and issues, which I'll mention below. I have something I do want to say, though.

As is CLEARLY evident in this thread and others here on the forums, the Evernote staff DO LISTEN. It's RIGHT HERE. I think the condescension coming from users, and flippant comments like "Will this make Evernote actually listen to its users? Doubt it." do a rude disservice to the staff of a great company who work really hard to bring to you what they think is great software. They're obviously passionate about it, and are making what they think is the best product they can and bringing it to their users. I don't think it helps when the users come into a thread like this one and say flippant, rude, assumptive, and harsh comments about the design, usability, whatever the problem is. I think we can all do a bit better, be a bit nicer, and try to solve the problem instead of just whine. Personally, I tend to find it the case that when "Not to be harsh," needs to be said in addition to comments, there's usually another way to say it where that's not required. It's kind of like when people say, "Not to be rude, but -".

I'm incredibly thankful for what Evernote does, as I practically live inside the software. I acknowledge I'm not going to love everything they do, and features will come along that make me groan or even mentally scream into a pillow (Context replacing Related Notes being my personal example of this), etc. And I also recognize that not everyone uses the software like me. We all have different needs, and in general, I feel like Evernote does a fantastic job at letting people create a workflow that works for each person while still being complex and capable software. I love logging in to these forums because it's a large group of users who LOVE this software - how else could we get so upset when something seems to be a step backward, if we don't love the software to begin with? So, I think maybe dropping the assumptive comments like "How hard can *actually-pretty-difficult-feature* be?" and its kin would be good, and instead we keep our comments focused on how things can get better from here. We're lucky we get to talk to EN staff at all - most software, especially at the size of EN, don't offer this.

/endrant

Moving on...

In general, I like the new design a lot. Overall. There are specific instances of usability that can be improved upon that I think, in my not-a-UI-designer/not-an-accessibility-professional way, will help make the redesign shine, and a lot have already been mentioned.
I would appreciate a bigger font, especially in the sidebar/note details. My personal opinion is that Apple's Helvetica decision was a poor one (I love Helvetica, but it has its own usability issues as well, like its lowercase L capital I issue ( I, l - which is which??)), but you guys can't help that, except to maybe make the type a tad bigger. I'm 26, only very slightly nearsighted, and have the 15" Retina MBP, and I find the text a bit tough to read.
I do not have the contrast issues JMichael pointed out - I have no idea how the text in his Top List View is so pale. Mine is literally BLACK on WHITE (or light grey). Contrast is immensely improved in this version (with the exception of the snippet/card text issue). Remember, contrast in regards to applications is text visibility against the background. Having darker bands or colored backgrounds will, factually, DECREASE contrast, by definition of the word regarding applications. It would definitely add variety and potentially make it easier to read, but contrast, technically, will go down. One of my gripes about the v5 Windows version is how white it is, so I totally understand everyone's view on this. I don't think Mac v6 is as bad as Windows v5 with this, due to - gasp - transparency! The transparency is added because as applications get flatter, shadows disappear, etc. it adds a bit of depth. We see in 3D, and even subtly indicating dept in this way has been shown to make flatter designs easier to understand and use for most people. There was a big hubbub about this when iOS7 came out, so Google is your friend if you want to learn more about it. I've attached a screenshot of EN on a BLACK (#000000) background, and it's still definitely legible. The faint blue dot is a folder on the desktop, and it clearly doesn't impact legibility despite staring at it against the black background is jarring on its own.
I am starting to use Work Chat and think it's great. I just gave a talk about Evernote to a bunch of librarians in a talk discussing using technology to improve daily workflows (the library industry, not surprisingly, tends to still be very much paper-based), and faces lit up when Work Chat was mentioned. Currently at my workplace we use Slack, because not everyone uses Evernote (yet), but we users are looking forward to having conversations around specific notes and not needing to go to a 3rd party to have that talk. For business, this is a FANTASTIC feature and seeing as Evernote has a Business version, I think they've got a few users in this field.
The Notebook view is not so hot, IMHO. The warm grey of the notebook cover looks a bit... odd... with the cool grey of the application background. There's not enough contrast between their lightness/darkness, so it looks a bit muddy.
The Trash icon in Notebook view isn't centered on the notebook. (screenshot attached)
I think the background behind the note could maybe be a tad darker? It doesn't look all that bad by itself, but if you look at the Share button (in screenshot), the top of the button almost blends in with the background. I think a bit of contrast here would be nice.
Really need a border below the note title. I am definitely struggling with this, even after telling myself verbally (embarrassingly as well, because others were in the room) that "The big text is the note title, the little text the body." I still keep trying to highlight it.
One of my biggest "blahs" with Windows v5 is how the title/text overlays image previews on the Card View with regards to blending in with the image preview. Mac v6 is a major improvement on this IMHO (ignoring the pale grey text color which has been brought up).
I like the distance under the Note Title in Snippet View and its preview content. It makes it incredibly easy to scan the titles down the list. White space can be our friend, and in this instance, I really, REALLY like it.
I do miss some green.
I think the alternating background color in the Top List View works really well, but I personally feel... weird... about how the background is always white on selected notes. It could very well just be me, but having it throw off the pattern of the selected note's title background was formerly grey just gives me an itch. (example in the screenshot below)
Is there a reason the Notes text in the sidebar is always blue, regardless of whether or not I'm in that view or viewing a Notebook? Seems a bit odd - to me it makes sense to just have it be blue when I'm literally viewing the Notes view.
THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU for making the instant syncing faster. I was pulling hair out over the jerky dragging of notes around my notebooks while the app was trying to sync. This is smooth as butter now.

I found v5 too busy and hard to scan efficiently, as so much was going on in just the app design. I personally am benefitting immensely from this redesign, even with its kinks. Congrats to the Evernote team for keeping the app current, progressing, and yet also being so accepting of community feedback. I doubt even those who are livid about these changes aren't grateful for the fact that we have a way to talk to the staff and get our concerns heard. That's just cool.

Trash icon:

General screenshot on black #000000 desktop with folder icon, shown as blue fuzz:

zebras_in_mo · November 25, 2014

Let me add one more thought to my previous comments: the new look of 6.0 has nothing to do with my no longer using it and reverting to 5.5. I don't mind the way it looks in terms of "ooh, pretty....." that kind of look. The issue for myself and many who have commented is the new look is impossible to use. It literally HURTS my eyes and is very, very difficult to focus upon. I even have prescription "computer glasses" which work MARVELOUSLY with most everything else. But white on off white on light gray with tiny text and no color or contrast is HELL on my eyes. Really.

diosanagroup · November 26, 2014

Use to be able to send an email from EN. I use this for auditing purposes so I knew that the recipient received the attachments INSTEAD of a link! HELP!

JMichaelTX · November 20, 2014

The bands have a very slight transparency so you see the background bleed through a little.

By the way, I'm older, have bifocals and the text looks sharp and easy to read to me but I think this kind of thing is very subjective.

What is the point of transparency????

If it reduces the readability by any amount, then it should NOT be used.

Do you really want to argue that being cool is better than being able to clearly read???

And remember, a one-time static viewing of the screen is NOT sufficient.

Surely you realize that if you're working in Evernote all day (as you guys want us to) then, this becomes VERY TIRING on the eyes, no matter how good your vision.

Also, remember that you now have over 100M users. If you are making it harder for even a few of them to view and use your app, then don't you think you are doing a great disservice? Would you build a very cool building that has lots of steps with no ramps just because it is cool, and most people can walk up the steps?

Finally, several others have made the point, but let me reinforce: If you think you are following Apple guidelines or design, then you are misreading Apple. The transparency "feature" was intended only for the EDGES of the window, NOT the main body. The Finder is a great example.

I just don't understand why you guys fight so hard on this. Are the UI designer's ego's really that fragile?

Stuhrer · November 22, 2014

Well the simple answer is that it's entirely different code so what is available in Windows is unrelated to what is in Mac and vice-a-versa but I think your more important point is why doesn't the Mac team make it a priority to add a customizable toolbar. Quite honestly I don't know the specific answer for Evernote because I just joined but I do have some experience with this at Microsoft. For Word, Excel and PowerPoint we had crazy levels of customization with every single menu item as part of the toolbox to add and customize on a toolbar. As a software developer it's extremely difficult and time consuming to maintain and test. If you add a new feature then you have to add a new customizable button and then you have to test it. If you change a feature you have to go back and fix all of the buttons related to this feature. If you change the look of your icons, you have to change all of the millions of icons in all of these custom toolbars. At Office even with all of the resources we had, we couldn't test all of these custom buttons for every release. This wouldn't be bad if people used them but the vast majority of people don't. Most don't even know the feature exists. It's a lot of work for a really really small percentage of people.

For Evernote I think we should have a discussion about what level of customization customers want and I think the answers will vary? For some they just want a Print button or they want to remove the Work Chat button or they want to add Strikethrough. For others they want a way to prioritize features that we de-prioritize. For example, you may want the All Notes button but for others it might be Email Note. It's kind of a slippery slope. My guess is we would all like to say we are talking about a handful of features but I think in the end we would quickly end up realizing that everyone's needs are different and that people end up wanting every feature. And if we are indeed talking about strikethrough and Work Chat then we might also be talking about 2 different toolbars. Supporting every single menu item and multiple customizable toolbars gives me nightmares. It's also a trade off thing. Do we spend our limited resources on features like speeding up sync that everyone will benefit from or on building a customizable toolbar for a select group of customers. Now you could argue and I would agree that the people who customize a toolbar are hard core Evernote users and we should support them but there are also high costs that come with the feature.

In any case, I'm open to a discussion but I wanted to provide some perspective from my experience.

Marcus,

In my company just three developers have created highly configurably HMIs. The users can change the look and feel by providing different themes (e.g. for different lighting conditions). They can change fonts and colors, doc and undock parts of the application (e.g when using two monitors), freely configure menus and toolbars.

I agree it can be difficult but we use the Netbeans platform for this and it's all there. We don't have to concentrate on all of this any more we can concentrate on the real functionality of the application. And we can use almost identical code on all platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux) because it is based on Java. And even if Java might not be suitable for all of your needs because for some features it might be too slow or you want to re-use exitings code e.g. in C++ that is also possible and we have done this as well. Our decision to use the Netbeans platform was the best we could make and we are so much more productive. The risk of bugs has also been reduced dramatically and our customers are really happy about the features and stability of our programs.

Maybe it could help Evernote as well to re-think the strategy to develop a different application for each platform.

Rebecca123 · November 28, 2014

6.02 seems to have fixed some of my biggest problems so thanks for that, I'm going to unfollow the thread now. Good luck everyone.

Roger Worden · November 28, 2014

The 6.0.2 version looks like it should help out those of us who are still on Mavericks (and I think there are more of us than Evernote does). In the image here I compare 5.7.0 on Mavericks, 6.0.1 on Mavericks and Yosemite, and 6.0.2 on both as well (taken from VM's running under Parallels). I think the shock I experienced when upgrading to 6.0.1 on Mavericks was due to three factors:

1. 6.x imposes the Yosemite motif, which I had not seen before. The UI elements in Y are much simpler than those in M, to the point of being crude. They are smaller, no longer three-dimensional (no outline shadows), etc. For example, the previous and next icons now look like thin less-than and greater-than signs instead of filled-in arrows. And so on. The net effect is that everything is a little harder to spot quickly.

2. 6.0.1's choice of colors was just too narrow.

3. My external monitor on my work computer was not calibrated well, making everything brighter and washed-out. Now that I see it on the internal Retina display of my work MBP, and compared it to my home external and home internal non-Retina MBP, I see that one monitor needs to be tweaked.

Combined, those three factors made 6.0.1 on Mavericks on my work external display nearly intolerable. Thanks to the 6.0.2 upgrade, and learning more about monitor calibration, I'm hoping I can make 6.0.2 work well when I get back to the office on Monday. It seems that Evernote was already working on 6.0.2 a few days ago when this storm erupted, so I thank them for getting it to us so quickly.

Unfortunately it has given me a glimpse of how Yosemite will look when I finally upgrade my real machines. There are lots of reasons to upgrade to it, but I think the user interface is a definite step backward. Up through Mavericks, OS X has had an increasingly sophisticated-looking UI. Now both IOS and OS X have dumbed-down interfaces which may have helped performance, but IMHO did not help the users.

** Updated to point to a tinypic here instead of uploaded document... hope this works... unable to upload a big enough file to be legible. Green arrows indicate sophisticated / textured / easy-to-read UI elements. Yellow arrows indicate less-easy-to-use UI elements or those starting to look flat and simple like Yosemite. Red arrows indicate UI elements that are small, thin strokes, or too little contrast.

theholc · November 21, 2014

Using newly auto updated v. 6.0 from app store -- cannot see the content of my notes that I am adding. Readily visible on iOS app and web app.

GrumpyMonkey · November 20, 2014

I've got no vision issues, a 15" retina display, and the brightness cranked up. I think the contrast is insufficient. It took me a while to realize there were even alternating rows of light and dark bands in the side list view. It's difficult to believe this qualifies as a recommended level of contrast. Overall, the text is a little easier to read, so I think that is a plus! But, why not just offer a bit of customizability and be done with it?

There are other things to talk about here besides contrast, but I think we really would have been better off discussing it quite early in an Alpha version. Maybe even a Beta version. But, not in the public one. My recommendation would be to bring users into the design process earlier. And, if you are already doing that, then I'd recommend trying other users. I know a few on these forums who have been volunteering for years

Anyhow, congratulations on updating the app and keep up the good work!

Sander97 · November 21, 2014

Earlier shared Notebooks are not shared as seen in Evernote Mac App, but in the online Evernote.com my notebooks are still sharing.

Can I fix this?

JMichaelTX · November 28, 2014

@Roger: Thanks for the comparison, but it is too small to really see anything. Can you please make it larger, like 2X larger?

Dan Wilson · November 22, 2014

Odd bug with lists: line breaks are removed if I place the cursor at the start of a list item with a line break in it and press Return.

http://youtu.be/TOkGgbQaXrE

I like the new UI so far. Though I agree that some text could do with being higher contrast to its background – such as the grey text in the notes list.

mwlodarski · November 23, 2014

"I personally don't find it any brighter than, say, Mail.app, which I use regularly, and it's refreshing."

Mail has a header that has contrast and dark grey space between columns.

Evernote has none of these.

JMichaelTX · November 20, 2014

More complaints about the Ver 6 UI:

6.0.1 color theme on mac

Metrodon · November 26, 2014

Look in the Note menu or right click on the note - under More Sharing

rbianchi · November 21, 2014

Same bug that in 5.7.2 version: PDF Attachment can't be renamed in 6.0.1 version (in Mac OSX 10.8.5 ).

It is difficult to fix?

Rob Parker · November 24, 2014

Thank you JMichael and Nightstalker for advocating on behalf of us users that have difficulty with the new UI - Specifically the readability, legibility, harsh grey on white problems ...

Respectfully, I think a lot of trust for paying customers could be restored with more options for customisation of zone colour, or at least, an accessibility theme for clearer text legibility and zone differentiation.

I understand that this is particularly a problem if using a pre-yosemite system, so my experience may be exaggerated. I welcome changes that would increase that contrast, because at the moment, white on white was just too distracting that we have had to downgrade, and are reluctant to go any further ....

<sigh> It looks like this trend to make the application look fashionable at the expense of legibility has been happening for a while.

I specifically found my way here to post my concerns when I updated, and I am saddened to hear that we are being taken for a ride (whether we like it or not) to a new design standard, where it seems that if some of us have concerns about the new modernist look, this is gently discounted because it is, to be frankly, blasphemous as it is 'not according to the new Apple Design Rules'.

Rules, which some may argue are being selectively and arbitrarily applied regardless of actual practicality.

The latest iteration of En is hard to read. Non-stop. I used to use EN because it was my virtual office. I could scan (Scansnap) my files, and there would be a clearly drawn rectangle of virtual paper that I could see. I could tag. I could deal with in the virtual world. Here is your piece of paper. Right there. Its form has changed. But essentially, it's still there, and it is as easy to read as a piece of paper. In my work, if I drafted an affidavit for a client and decided at the last minute to change the font type to size 6 or 8 and change the color of the text to LIGHT grey (on white paper) ... you think a client, or a judge, or opposing counsel would be happy reading this? Ah yes, and I removed the clips and staples and lines on the tables so everything could just float on glorious sexy white ... hmmm....The reason this does not happen in the real world is obvious and if I need to explain it, I'm staggered ...

As for the nice comments implying a rude backlash that is not warranted, what do you expect? A lot of us are not using Evernote as a sort of Pinterest style app for a homemade muffin company, we're using it for business or professional use (which is clearly a direction En seems to want to cater for). We are paying good money and desire a direct way to express our views on this great software. Evernote is not an indy or family company, it is a professional player and can take criticism (I hope), as just another form of feedback to help them to make a better product. To paint those who criticise as rude and therefore irrelevant does a disservice to those who have specifically found their way to this board to communicate their views on these changes, and hopefully, provide specific and civil feedback to help Evernote make a better product.

I liked Evernote because the previous interface (En 5 and before) had all the necessary design cues that facilitated an experience where the piece of paper in my hand, a receipt, or a copy of a contract, or an affidavit, or a piece of internet research snipped off the Internet, or a doodle on a napkin, could be scanned, and that piece of paper, or information, could be gently handled and formatted by my distinctive green colored buddy, into the necessary category, and I could see it at a glance where it stood in the hierarchy of things. There were clear borders. The background pane on the left was a firm grounding point for my main categories. The visual cues and size of the fonts provided a legible grounding for my eyes to quickly locate, categorise, and deal with information.

This design was good enough to cultivate a trust that my information was just as solid in the Evernote software as it was in my hand. Quite a worthy achievement for something that encourages to throw away paper and trust it to live in the cloud.

Now. It seems like all the text in the world is just floating there on one big white canvass... without any clear visual cues, or delineation of borders, and the text is so small and grey on white ... again, there is a reason why professionals do not print grey text on white paper (why would someone uphold such an impractical design decision?). This new design just puts everything on one big white board ... It's ... more ... work ... I cannot even find the customary Evernote green amongst my various windows which is a bit sad. It was distinctive. The new Evernote UI seems to evoke the worst aspects of "the cloud" in that it looks like a cloud. It does not look like I have organised my information, it looks like my real paper documents and snippets have been washed, artificially processed and bleached. It looks like the information has been projected on an actual cloud mass of abstract white and grey that is harsh in its intensity and unforgiving in legibility and readability.

Sometimes you just have to call a spade a spade.

The latest interface has as much substance as a cloud.

Dan Wilson · November 22, 2014

JM I want to know the content of a couple of your notes now!

How to expand storage with Micro SD
Hard boiled eggs in an oven
The meaning of OS X logging downloads

Carolyn V · November 24, 2014

I was auto updated via AppStore to 6.0 and could not see the contents of any of my notes.

On the advice of an Evernote forum, I uninstalled and got 6.0.1 from direct download. Now I can see my notes but a lot of the formatting has been lost.

Line breaks have been removed, so my nicely formatted notes are now a series of giant unformatted paragraphs.

Is there any way to get the former formatting back? This is a real problem and gives me pause before entering anything else into Evernote. Too bad because I've really come to love it and was about to spring for Premium. What happened to your QA team?

Thanks,

Carolyn V

Tcellguy · November 22, 2014

I don't really mind the progression of apps towards a flat design interface, but I do note that it can make it difficult to differentiate borders or app buttons at times. I really do miss the green color that I've associated with Evernote for so long. I agree with others that a greater degree of customization would be nice such as toggles for opacity/transparency. I would like there to be three themes: the current one, a green (classic) theme, and a new dark theme would be nice and would fit in with the Yosemite Dark theme aesthetic. Otherwise I'm generally very happy with the software currently.

J Carswell · November 21, 2014

I'm in agreement with those who do not like the drab colors and small fonts used in the new UI. Evernote had a distinctive look and feel that was part of the software experience. The new UI is not inspiring and is hard to read and hard to distinguish from other apps. I'm not sure why the developer that commented on here thinks that following rules or following Apple replaces good old user testing. Plus, people like choices which Evernote used to provide. Seems like in terms of the UI, users got less with this upgrade.

SoftwareMarcus · November 24, 2014

This thread has become really long. Let me try to summarize the top 5 issues I'm reading and talk about if the issues are bugs or not and if there are any workarounds. And as usual there will be a dash of commentary (That's a joke since I'm typically long winded) . Let me know if I'm missing anything.

1) People migrating from 5.5 to 6.0 (mostly Mac App Store customers) may run into slowness because of background indexing which may cause notes to appear slowly or the app to feel sluggish and generally unresponsive. The indexing process can go very quickly for most but for some it can take days but once this is finished Evernote will run as fast or faster than before. We heard similar feedback from direct download customers when they upgraded from 5.5 to 5.6 and 5.7 but these issues seem to have gone away once the indexing was complete. If this doesn't go away, please try rebooting your machine. If this doesn't work then please let us know in this thread because possibly there is a different issue in the Mac App Store build that we have to hunt down.

2) The Mac App Store version has a bug where in some select situations titles become Untitled. If you think your note has been deleted please search for the contents of the note and most likely only the title was deleted. This is fixed in 6.0.1 (on the direct download version) and we've submitted this release to the Mac App Store and are awaiting approval from Apple so we can release this to everyone hopefully in the next couple of days. Most people won't run into this issue but I think the above slowness is contributing to this bug appearing more often.

3) Some people don't like the new design. The bottom line is if you don't like Yosemite you are not going to like the new Evernote Mac design. Apple sets the design direction and all apps must follow. As an example, some suggested we use green as a UI highlight to support our own branding and to add a little more color. I get this and I believe it's a perfectly reasonable proposal. I think the one thing that might not be fully understood is that Apple has decided that blue is the UI highlight color for Yosemite. Take a look at selected checkboxes and the down arrow for drop down menus. It's true that we don't necessarily have to follow Apple blindly but I think it's a losing battle to try to be too different than Apple's defined UX language. Apple sets the standards and in fact if we use standard UX controls we get their look and feel whether we want it or not and Apple wants all apps to comply so that this UX language becomes well understood. This is NOT fashion or trying to be hip. Apple defines the Mac world our apps lives in and we can either join or be relegated to Siberia. This is how all Mac apps are going to look within the next year. Now you could argue we didn't do a good job of matching Apple's design aesthetic but it's not fair to litigate Yosemite's look and feel in an Evernote forum. There are definitely tweaks we can and are making to improve readability but this is a major OS design change and we have to and want to follow Apple's lead.

4) On Mavericks the app looks washed out. I think we could have done better here and we'll be making changes to the app to support this. Unfortunately we're caught in a transition phase. The new Mac App is designed and optimized for Yosemite so it looks somewhat foreign on Mavericks and below. And because it’s running on an old OS, it also can't take advantage of some of Yosemite's design elements to add in color like translucency. In any case, the majority of Evernote users are now using Yosemite. It's interesting because the number wasn't that high a couple of weeks ago. I wonder if our less than stellar design on Mavericks spurred people to upgrade.

5) Because of the UI changes and some other recent tweaks we made because of work chat, there's a lot of discussion about customization. I get this. I'm a power user too. Earlier in this thread I discussed my concerns at length but we should continue to discuss it.

Of course there are other issues people are bringing up but I think these are the top 5 things I’ve seen in this thread. I just wanted to summarize things so people didn't have to read through the entire thread. Let me know if I missed anything.

Sally0407 · November 21, 2014

When I create a new note, Evernote [latest update for Mac Yosemite] takes me to a new screen that only contains the new note. When I try to bring back the sidebar, there is no response when I click on Sidebar Option no options appear. The only way back to the main Evernote screen is to put my note into the Rubbish Bin. PRETTY USELESS REALLY!!!. I've spent the last hour trying to figure out how to get around this.

When I go back to main screen and click on View, Sidebar Options, the "Notes" option is greyed out? How do I fix this?

Socialwill · November 21, 2014

I'm in agreement with those who do not like the drab colors and small fonts used in the new UI. Evernote had a distinctive look and feel that was part of the software experience. The new UI is not inspiring and is hard to read and hard to distinguish from other apps. I'm not sure why the developer that commented on here thinks that following rules or following Apple replaces good old user testing. Plus, people like choices which Evernote used to provide. Seems like in terms of the UI, users got less with this upgrade.

Agree with this. Between this and the recent Penultimate upgrade for iOS Evernote needs to fire the design/review team and start over. This is just bad UI for a modern OS.

osric · November 24, 2014

I'm really not liking the interface changes in version 6. I already have Reduce Transparency and Increase Contrast enabled, and working in Evernote is pretty hard on my eyes. The interface is incredibly stark and the type sizes are tiny and way too grey.

I also have no use for the new "chat" feature and wish there were a way to get rid of the "New chat" buttons across all of the Evernote apps (Mac, iPad, iPhone). I was happy to discover that I could right-click in the sidebar and remove the Work Chat entry.

Anyway, the point of this post is just to add another plea to rework the interface to make it more legible and give users more options to customize the font sizes.

Some green would be nice, too, so I can tell I'm working in Evernote!

rsworden2 · November 26, 2014

Based on the varying comments in this and another thread, I'm starting to think that the washed-out color scheme is experienced differently on different monitors. On my MBP's internal screen, the lines between panels in the UI are a bit more visible. On my external monitor, even after calibrating, the UI elements are much more faded. What's odd is that the UI elements are there, they are just made very faint. In the attached image, see how a dialog box overlaid onto EN causes the line shading and the panel lines to be revealed. They are there, but they are really being washed out. The Mac OS contrast settings don't help. Maybe some other settings available in some other tool such as TweakUI could help.

SoftwareMarcus · November 24, 2014

On the advice of an Evernote forum, I uninstalled and got 6.0.1 from direct download. Now I can see my notes but a lot of the formatting has been lost.

Line breaks have been removed, so my nicely formatted notes are now a series of giant unformatted paragraphs.

Carolyn, we completely rewrote our note editor from scratch so that we could support resizable tables and images and a host of stuff we have planned for the future. However, any big change like this has some translation issues from the old to the new. A couple of things have come up.

1) We took out a line break in front and after bullets. We felt this was more aesthetically pleasing and some people didn't like that they were forced to have it. Because of this, there will be some differences in line spacing.

2) Some third party apps that people use create line breaks and spacing that we no longer recognize.

Can you tell me how you created the line breaks? Were you using Evernote or another app? Did you use a standard Return or something else? Are you seeing the issue in all your notes or just a few? Can you tell me more about what is unique about those notes that have the issue? Standard line breaks using return should work flawlessly so if they aren't for you then there's another issue that we'll need to figure out.

rimi · November 25, 2014

Who on earth has such a bad judgment to come up with this horrible UI?

The look is boring and eye irritant. How will I be able to use this 8hrs a day?

Just because apple did the mistake of ***** up the look of iOS and OS X, you did not have to follow them!

I wish I could have the old version back. But for now I will look for a replacement. The pain of migrating all my notes is worth it.

gbarry · November 21, 2014

Marcus - when you say that the transparent (I assume you mean translucent) sidebar is not negotiable - does that mean it is translucent under Mavericks as well? Or is it only translucent running under Yosemite? I haven't upgraded to Yosemite (well, I did on one machine, but quickly reverted via Time Machine once I discovered all the problems), and I haven't upgraded to Evernote v6.

NS: I'm running 6.0.1 on Mavericks and do not see any transparency--I believe that's Yosemite only treatment.

NightStalker · November 21, 2014

Once again, I'm gobsmacked by just how many first-time posters have been motivated to find this forum, sign up, and post. And every one of them pointing out the problems with this "upgrade".

Surely that should cause concern at Evernote HQ, that they have taken a wrong turn, and are not listening to what their users actually WANT?

Somebody at said HQ really needs to accept that they have royally screwed up - they stuffed Penultimate (which I used to use, but no longer do), and now they've continued to stuff up Evernote itself.

Jack, Marcus, everbody - please listen! Take a step back, accept that you've got it wrong, that Evernote is NOT a collaborative work or business tool exclusively, for probably the majority of users, and that this new interface is total cr@p.

Fire your interface design team, fire all those who think that blindly following the trend to being "cool" with translucency etc, just because Apple said so, is a good idea. It would be interesting to find out how many of those who have upgraded to Yosemite actually have translucency turned off. Personally, I completely fail to see why anyone would want to see THROUGH something that you're working on.

But the problem seems to be that we are given no choice - this fits with Phil Libin's view that we shouldn't be given choices. And that is a BAD, REALLY bad idea. People LIKE to have choices, we like to be able to create our personalized way of working and the appearance of software. Why do you think "skins" are so popular for so many apps? And who's bright idea was it to do away with Evernote's green, which has become a symbolic recognition factor for the brand? Brilliant..! That's like Cadbury's Chocolate suddenly deciding to do away with the colour purple!

To all those who have taken the trouble to come on here and post your thoughts, keep it up. The "apology" from Evernote about the stuff-up of Penultimate was the result of massive user blowback. The core Evernote app now needs the same treatment!

Mark923 · November 21, 2014

Where did all the color go???

Zebo Stoneleigh · November 25, 2014

Oh the irony - that all the complaints here are about contrast and color. How about - invisible notes, renaming notes, and other completely ruinous results in functionality with the new release. It's a completely dead application how. I haven't uninstalled it, but I've removed it from my dock to keep me from accidentally launching it. The app is so buggy it's unusable and as such, if anyone tries to join the Mac Evernote community right now - they're wonder if/why/how it's possible that anyone actually uses this program to do anything. I've submitted support tickets, with no reply. And I've tried to sugar coat the situation to my sister who is using Evernote for the first time this week (talk about bad timing) after months of me suggesting she give it a go.

I hope the only thing holding up a fix is the Apple approval process. 'cuz if you all haven't actually figured out a fix yet, we've got some serious problems (more serious than one back version - serious, like, Evernote as a company is not up to the task of ensuring data integrity and application functionality to the 10 year mark, let alone 100).

ScottLougheed · November 21, 2014

Not sure if this has been posted in this topic yet, I took a quick look to check and didn't see it being discussed:

The column headers in Side or Top List View are transparent and unreadable if the list scrolls underneath the column header:

https://www.evernote.com/l/ABnXo9tOEDVDQqh7iC_c5ljinx4JuFinG8c

JMichaelTX · November 25, 2014

Marcus, again I want to thank you very much for engaging in a dialog with us, and sharing the Evernote perspective and rationale for making some of your design decisions.

Having said that, I’d like to respond to your issue #3: Some people don't like the new design

To sum it up, you come across as blaming Apple for everything. The impression I get is that you believe that Apple has some very strict UI guidelines (almost rules) that if you deviate from them in any way Apple will impose some type of hardship on you. If I have misunderstood, please correct me.

Frankly, I find this extremely hard to believe. Can you please provide some Apple references to support your understanding?

While I’m not an Apple developer, I have been a developer of Mac apps in the past, and I have done considerable research in the last few days to try to better understand the Apple Yosemite thinking and guidelines. I have been unable to find anything that substantially supports the extreme UI design Evernote has CHOSEN for Ver 6.

I did find this from Apple, and believe that it is very relevant and useful:

OS X Human Interface Guidelines: Designing for Yosemite
WWDC 2014 Session Videos - Apple Developer
(must use Safari to view videos)
1. Adapting Your App to the New UI of OS X Yosemite
2. Designing Intuitive User Experiences
3. (there are many more, I just selected these 2)

In particular I found 2.1 Adapting Your App to the New UI of OS X Yosemite to be very helpful in understanding the Apple Yosemite design intent. I strongly urge you to view this video.

I have seen nothing from Apple that suggests that ALL Yosemite developers must use exactly the same UI design and color scheme.

Finally, I have to say this. Even IF (and that’s a big IF) Apple did try to impose a UI design that really prevented the app from being effectively, easily, and intuitively used by the end user, would you really blindly follow Apple? If Apple goes off a cliff, would you just follow them? Remember the Apple Superbowl commercial showing IBM robots? This is NOT what Apple is all about.

IMO, Apple strongly encourages creativity, but wants to provide for some commonality in UI elements so that users will find the same common functions (like cut, copy, paste) work the same across all apps. They want common UI graphical elements (like window controls) to appear and work the same. But, I don’t believe for a minute that they want to impose one, simple color scheme that greatly reduces readability (and therefore functionality) across ALL apps.

Apple has designed Yosemite to ENHANCE the user experience, as shown by the videos above. They do NOT want to make it worse, as you have done with Evernote Mac 6.

Please bring in some fresh, but experienced, Mac UI designers to help you take a clean look at the UI design. I’m not suggesting going backwards to the Ver 5 UI design. Rather, I’m suggesting that you guys really go to work and come up with a Yosemite UI design that is BOTH cool, and enhances readability and the user experience.

Thanks for your involvement, and consideration of our requests.

Best Regards,

JMichael

This thread has become really long. Let me try to summarize the top 5 issues I'm reading and talk about if the issues are bugs or not and if there are any workarounds. And as usual there will be a dash of commentary (That's a joke since I'm typically long winded) . Let me know if I'm missing anything.
. . .

3) Some people don't like the new design. The bottom line is if you don't like Yosemite you are not going to like the new Evernote Mac design. Apple sets the design direction and all apps must follow. As an example, some suggested we use green as a UI highlight to support our own branding and to add a little more color. I get this and I believe it's a perfectly reasonable proposal. I think the one thing that might not be fully understood is that Apple has decided that blue is the UI highlight color for Yosemite. Take a look at selected checkboxes and the down arrow for drop down menus. It's true that we don't necessarily have to follow Apple blindly but I think it's a losing battle to try to be too different than Apple's defined UX language. Apple sets the standards and in fact if we use standard UX controls we get their look and feel whether we want it or not and Apple wants all apps to comply so that this UX language becomes well understood. This is NOT fashion or trying to be hip. Apple defines the Mac world our apps lives in and we can either join or be relegated to Siberia. This is how all Mac apps are going to look within the next year. Now you could argue we didn't do a good job of matching Apple's design aesthetic but it's not fair to litigate Yosemite's look and feel in an Evernote forum. There are definitely tweaks we can and are making to improve readability but this is a major OS design change and we have to and want to follow Apple's lead..

E-NoteForum · November 22, 2014

For those of you that would like to see higher contrast or more legibility can you tell me specifically in what parts of the app? It doesn't help me if you say the entire app.

1) Are we in agreement that the actual note has enough contrast since it's on a white background?

2) List View? I'm hearing a lot of discussion about list view. It sounds like it's difficult to read the text on the banding (and I'm guessing a lot of this depends on one's desktop background). I personally don't have an issue here but I understand the point.

3) What about snippet view?

Anyway, it would be helpful and more constructive to provide specific areas of the product you think we should continue to refine vs having larger arguments over transparency. The sidebar of Evernote will be transparent. This is not negotiable because this is by definition a part of the Yosemite design aesthetic.

The bottom line is I agree with the sentiment that we should build a product that works for all of our users so help me provide our design team with specific details to work with. I'm not sure we're going to satisfy everyone but I think we may be able to make things better for some.

P.S. It's kind of funny because on Twitter the new design is getting generally great reviews maybe because one can't write too much .

Thanks for taking the time to listen and clarify what feedback you're looking for, Marcus. Here's my take (using 10.9.5):

1. Yep, notes are crystal clear. Black text on bright white background is very readable.

2. I don't use list view, so can't comment.

3. I do use Snippet view, though, and find it to be a big step back in readability and usability from 5.x. The easiest bit of low-contrast feedback is that the actual snippets of note content are very hard to read because the font is small(er than in 5.x) and the text is light gray on a lighter gray background. There is simply very little contrast between the color of the text and the color of the background. The note titles in Snippet view are easy to read, because they use stark black text in a good font size.

One other area of low contrast is the contrast between sections of the app. I have a sidebar with Shortcuts and Notebooks in it, with Snippet view to the right of that. The background color of the sidebar and Snippet view are the same, and other than a thin, light gray line there is no separation between them, which just feels ... mushy to me. Also, the lack of contrast in the side bar between sequential items (i.e. the notebook list or the shortcut list) also makes those things a little hard to parse.

In many UI scenarios (iTunes list views, Evernote 6's own Side List view), the list background alternates between white and medium gray to help break up the list. This helps people scan quickly and keep track of where they are, and I think both the sidebar and Snippet view would benefit from the same alternation. Just doing that would add a lot of usability-enhancing contrast to those two areas, so additional contrast work may not even be needed. But I definitely think the design would benefit from alternating background colors in the sidebar and Snippet view.

That's what I have for now, thanks for reading.

SoftwareMarcus · November 22, 2014

BUG REPORT: Search Box Disappears on Small Window

The Search Box disappears when the main EN window becomes too narrow, like one might have on a laptop.

This is definitely an issue. This only occurs when one shrinks their window to be very narrow and they have a long note name. To work around this just make your window wider. In full disclosure, I don't think many people run into this issue and there is an easy work around so I've prioritized it low. I think there are a number of other issues people have brought up in these forums that I would prefer we focus on.

Is it me, or did the "All Notes" button disappear from the note list? This makes me sad. I know I could just click "notes" at the bottom of the sidebar, but that was always more accessible for me.

"All Notes" is in the Note List drop down after Recent Notes.

Classic note links are gone!

As another poster reported, just click the Option button before right clicking on the note in the note list and Copy Classic Note will appear. We're fixing this to work when clicking the Option button while the menu is up.

Bug: attachment (can't) rename bug from 5.7.1 still present in 6.0.1

We thought we fixed this in 6.0.1 but it looks like you can still get into a state where the menu becomes disabled. On one of my machines it works fine. On another it's grayed out and I can't make it enabled. Not sure why it's different so this is going to take more investigation.

I´d like to have the option to have a shortcut to share notes via good old email and not some social networks.

You can right click on a note in the note list and select More Sharing -> Email Note to send a note via email.

E-NoteForum · November 22, 2014

Can you please add an option to hide the "New Chat" button in the top bar? I don't plan to ever use the work chat "feature" and that button is just huge and annoying.

I wouldn't hold your breath waiting for that, Patrick. Many of us have been asking for the return of a configurable toolbar since it disappeared over 2 years ago, to no avail.

The ability to get rid of buttons that we don't want, to insert buttons that we do want (eg Email note, Print, etc) and to place them at different points on the toolbar is something that was removed for no apparent reason, and with no explanation as to why.

Add my voice to the choir on this stuff. No explanation was given, customizable toolbars are a totally standard feature for almost any app I can think of, and now my Evernote toolbar has more buttons that I don't care about and actively wish to get rid of (especially the shared note button, which annoys me to no end and is utterly useless to me).

macfixer · November 24, 2014

Please fix the UI by allowing us to revert to the old theme or allow customization.

Also several of my coworkers are reporting errors (in performance and capabilities).

BTW Is there a better (official) place to submit complains?

Thank you.

These forums are being monitored, and therefore represent the best way to complain.

lpuerto · November 27, 2014

Who is the responsible of this new look!!?? Really it is very horrible in general speaking and also very difficult to read... I really do not understand!!!! guys, do you not experiment these things in different computers and with people not involve in the design before to roll it out?

It is pretty awful to read this on it now...

Please!!!! We need a darker skin!!!

Limegreen · November 21, 2014

Gorgeous new app.

The only thing is that scrolling through notes is no longer smooth (on the mid-2013 Macbook Air). It's not terrible but it's noticeable. I know the Air is not a workhorse machine, but the way it's slightly 'choppy' even in smaller notebooks with few notes suggest that it might be fixable.

I'm running OS X Yosemite

E-NoteForum · November 22, 2014

.
Is it me, or did the "All Notes" button disappear from the note list? This makes me sad. I know I could just click "notes" at the bottom of the sidebar, but that was always more accessible for me.

"All Notes" is in the Note List drop down after Recent Notes.

I used that button all the time. Now it's hidden in a menu. Way less convenient. One quick click has become a menu dropdown and a small entry in a non-obvious place where you would never even find it if no one told you where it was.

What was wrong with the old button? How is the new functionality, which is harder to find and requires extra menu actions, better?

ScottLougheed · November 21, 2014

Adjusted my screenshot. Sorry, it was from retina. http://note.io/1HrGthx

Thanks, but it obvious that the Finder has much better contrast than Evernote.

It's not that obvious to my eyes....

E-NoteForum · November 22, 2014

Thanks again for the discussion regarding the new look. I just got out of a meeting with Jackoliscious, our designer and developer to discuss some tweaks that we would like to implement in the short term to help with Pre-Yosemite OSs and legibility issues. I'm not sure we're going to go as far as many of you would like but I think these changes will help. I want to provide all of you a preview of what we discussed. I do want to caution that our developer still has to get in there and code this up so we'll see what is doable and what isn't.

1) Mavericks and Earlier OSs - I think there is a big difference between the experience a Yosemite user has and a Maverick's user (NOTE: When I say Mavericks I really mean Mavericks, Mountain Lion and Lion but it's too darn hard to write that every time so I'm just going to write Mavericks). The Yosemite translucency adds some color and differentiation to the different panes in the product which I really like. On earlier OSs there is no translucency so there isn't a large differentiation between the panes. On Pre-Yosemite OSs we're going to change the sidebar and the divider lines to be darker gray to provide this differentiation. I think this will help with separating the sections of the app and the "brightness" concern.

2) Light Gray Text - The light gray text in the snippet and card view is too light and I agree it's difficult to see. This includes the date and other header text. We're going to darken this text. Also the line spacing in snippet view for this same text is too tight and we're going to try to expand it a bit. Technically card view is tougher to work with so we don't have as many line spacing options in this view.

3) Icons - On Mavericks some icons appear disabled because they are too light. We're going to go through and investigate and fix icon coloring. For some reason they are different colors for different icons. Overall we will subtly increase the darkness of the icons through out the product and make them more consistent.

Thanks again for this open discussion. We are listening but keep in mind that we may not always agree. Just because we don't change something it doesn't mean we aren't listening. In addition, some things are easier to change than others. The bottom line is we're passionate about Evernote and we're working hard to make it a better product for all of us.

Oops, posted my contrast feedback before seeing this post. Thanks for the update, Marcus, very glad to hear these changes are coming.

NightStalker · November 24, 2014

@Marcus: once again, we really do appreciate you coming on here and interacting with us.

But I'd like to take issue with a couple of your points:

1. You state that "In any case, the majority of Evernote users are now using Yosemite.". How do you know this? According to the IT department at the University I work for (I'm a medico and also teach at the Medical School), which is a large uni that has over 40,000 students, and thousands of staff, most of those using Macs are staying on Mavericks. And even though the initial uptake of Yosemite was higher than on Mavericks, there have been a lot of users who have "Time Machined" back to Mavericks due to intense dislike of Yosemite. Also, the Yosemite Mail app is seriously broken, especially when trying to work with Exchange servers, which also caused a lot to revert to Mavericks. So I don't think you can assume that "In any case, the majority of Evernote users are now using Yosemite." I think that may be a false assumption.

2. Yes, the new version DOES look terrible running on Mavericks or earlier. Especially when you consider that it DID look great before. And your following of the Apple dictates does NOT need to be so selective - if you WERE following them, then where has the configurable toolbar gone? That's a MAC OS X standard too. You say that "Apple sets the design direction and all apps must follow." But you DON'T have to follow into obscurity. See the next point:

3. For an example of how an interface can be beautiful, extremely legible, totally customizable, and an absolute delight to work in, check out Curio, from Zengobi (www.zengobi.com). It is fully compatible with Yosemite, but has maintained its own unique "flavour" and is a joy to work in. And their toolbar is also customizable. Evernote could choose to go this route and maintain a brand identity, instead of being just another grey/white anonymous nothing utility.

As has already been stated many times (yeah, yeah, I know we're a bunch of whingers) - if you had many or most of the UI elements customizable under Preferences and Toolbar Configuration, then all these complaints would go away. And more serious matters such as the "Untitled" notes, the line break issues, slow syncs, etc could be concentrated on.

But seriously, your interaction is really appreciated, and yes, I take it as a privilege that you and Jack do take the time and trouble to listen to us.

magnuson · November 24, 2014

I upgraded on my laptop. There have been two problems: the missing tags noted above by another user, and none of the notes have data in them, even though all the notes appear to be there. A worry is that when I log in to the web browser version, the tags appear to be missing as well. I'm hoping this doesn't turn out to be a disaster.

Cheers.

marmotton · November 21, 2014

In the new 6.0.1 version, to which I just upgraded, the Search feature does not work: I do a Search on a very simple acronym (which I can see in my note right in front of me) and the Search feature find nothing at all.

Considering this and other users comments above, this is a majorly broken version

ammulder · November 23, 2014

I'm very much on the same boat as you. I just wish there was a way to revert back to the previous version but that's not an option with this data migration to the new schema. It's just sad that a company like Evernote would ever allow such defects hit their paying customers. Unlike most people in this thread, I'm not complaining about the new washed out look (even though a MAJOR step back). I'm complaining about the fact I CAN NO LONGER ACCESS MY NOTES.

If you look back through this thread, there's a post on how to downgrade to 5.5.2. Some of the paths were wrong for me -- I found my old data at "~/Library/Containers/com.evernote.Evernote/Data/Library/Application Support/com.evernote.Evernote/old/to-migrate/Evernote" instead of what that post said. I heard a rumor you could also just remove all your local data and start the old version and let it sync back down from the cloud, but that's not how I did it.

When I did all that, I had to replace the titles of all my notes (I think the old version immediately sync'd the bad notes down from the cloud), but I could get back in again.

laaurora · November 24, 2014

I found the below Evernote (ver 3 I think) screen shot while reading another thread.

I love this UI design. What was so wrong about it?
And if you want/need a "cleaner, less distracting" view, then just open the Note in it's own window!

REF: http://arstechnica.com/apple/2008/06/evernote-talks-to-ars-about-public-beta-announcement/

That was version 1, I believe. 3 looked a bit more refined and lively. I felt at home in that one. Also I actually quite liked the deep grey and green of version 5, despite all the ruined functionality. But we have to be fair here, that version 1-3 IU unchanged would look really dated in modern versions of OS. Even version 5 would feel a tad off. But they could have made cosmetic changes while keeping the color, the brand and usability where they were before. I think version 2 vs 2.5 for another app I use and love is a decent example of that. They have added that Yosemite sidebar, cleaned up the icons and went easier on some gradients, but since they kept the colors and good contrast, there is no loss of familiarity or usability. It's still the same app that I could use even if the language was suddenly set to Chinese. They'll probably ruin it trying to look cool for version 3, but at the moment it's a nice example of not looking completely out of place in a modern OS and not going bland at the same time. There are plenty of examples in the app store and on the web of the interfaces that look modern and yet welcoming and highly usable.

Talking about fair, my App Store version of Evernote updated without any issues on Yosemite. All the notes and their titles are in place as far as I can tell, the responsiveness of the application is really good too. Other than frustration with the new UI and new functionality not being much of a use for me, this update was a nice smooth experience.

@MarcusSotware

Siberia isn't that bad of a place actually. I don't think it's fair to put all the responsibility for your design team's decisions on Apple. They are not supposed to design the app for you. Using controls that look native to the system is a natural way to go, but is it all that Evernote is made of? Is it going to be some kind of faceless utility from now on? Are you sure you are reading the Apple's guidelines right? Do they really say "have no face, have no color, make sure not to excite your user in any way, make their eyes hurt, make their experience as miserable as possible, make sure they feel like they are locked in a white room with nowhere to go and a job they absolutely hate'?

All apps looking the same soon is a horrifying prediction. That would be utterly depressing and very hard to use. I've been a loyal fan of Apple for quite few years now, yet I'd definitely be switching platforms were that to happen. Thankfully I don't think this is the way things will end.

pinkponysenior · November 25, 2014

My notes were there, I clicked one of them, and now they're gone

http://imgur.com/VFu5b24

eric w · November 25, 2014

I agree that EN6 on mac has problems:

1. It's definitely got some delayed reactions to keypresses, especially scrolling with the arrows.

2. What happened to the easy access to "ALL NOTES" when you're currently only looking at one notebook's contents?

3. How do I see that notebooks are shared? I used to see a little shared symbol next to the notebook if I used the pulldown. Now, nothing anywhere I can find.

maslakovic · November 22, 2014

I think that you'll find that most people complaining here are on Yosemite - not Mavericks. The above pretty much says that you will not change anything. Very disappointing.

Socialwill · November 24, 2014

On the advice of an Evernote forum, I uninstalled and got 6.0.1 from direct download. Now I can see my notes but a lot of the formatting has been lost.

Line breaks have been removed, so my nicely formatted notes are now a series of giant unformatted paragraphs.

Carolyn, we completely rewrote our note editor from scratch so that we could support resizable tables and images and a host of stuff we have planned for the future. However, any big change like this has some translation issues from the old to the new. A couple of things have come up.

1) We took out a line break in front and after bullets. We felt this was more aesthetically pleasing and some people didn't like that they were forced to have it. Because of this, there will be some differences in line spacing.

2) Some third party apps that people use create line breaks and spacing that we no longer recognize.

Can you tell me how you created the line breaks? Were you using Evernote or another app? Did you use a standard Return or something else? Are you seeing the issue in all your notes or just a few? Can you tell me more about what is unique about those notes that have the issue? Standard line breaks using return should work flawlessly so if they aren't for you then there's another issue that we'll need to figure out.

SoftwareMarcus -

The editor that you talk about has been a source of frustration with me personally. Specifically around the tables that you mention:

1) When creating a table on the Mac it is not possible to adjust the height of the cells from what I can see

2) Table formatting on mobile devices including iPhone and iPad is setup as a default "fit to page" view. This does not work well with tables with lots of data. Everything is squeezed together. Why not reduce the font size or allow me to scroll to the left and right so the table keeps the ratio.

3) Along with the "fit to page" item, if you change the width of the columns in the table it makes the table even worse on the mobile device. Everything is squeezed even worse.

4) There is not an easy/quick way to add cell colors for things such as column headers.

5) Adjustments of the table are difficult on the mobile device (i know this is new so I am sure that will improve)

Just some issues I have been having.

Compare this to Onenote and the table formatting stays the same on all devices and does not "fit to page"

macfixer · November 21, 2014

The UI in 6.0.1 is dog-slow. Window dragging, window resizing… scrolling through the contents of a note is even slow! What possessed you to make the background behind the notes behind-window transparent? My notes should be my notes! Spend a minute in Mail, Finder… is there anywhere else in the OS where the thing that you're doing your primary work on is just transparent for no reason?

Well… we have the Finder:

…and Mail.app:

…and both seem to show transparency "for no reason" as far as I can tell. Maybe Evernote is wrong, but they're following Apple's lead on Apple's platform.

chirmer · November 24, 2014

As for the nice comments implying a rude backlash that is not warranted, what do you expect? A lot of us are not using Evernote as a sort of Pinterest style app for a homemade muffin company, we're using it for business or professional use (which is clearly a direction En seems to want to cater for). We are paying good money and desire a direct way to express our views on this great software. Evernote is not an indy or family company, it is a professional player and can take criticism (I hope), as just another form of feedback to help them to make a better product. To paint those who criticise as rude and therefore irrelevant does a disservice to those who have specifically found their way to this board to communicate their views on these changes, and hopefully, provide specific and civil feedback to help Evernote make a better product.

Not to keep harping on, because it's not the topic of the thread -- but I didn't call all criticism rude. I was pretty clear about that. Just the, well, rude/snarky comments about firing Evernote's designers, derogatory comments about the accessibility professionals, etc. We are all adults here. Some people making comments in this tone are respected members of this forum and it was just a bit disappointing to read, that's all. Everyone should feel free to make CONSTRUCTIVE criticism, IMHO. Emphasis on CONSTRUCTIVE. The last half of the last sentence of this paragraph shows we're on the same page, but I think you misread my post and I just wanted to clarify.

1) We took out a line break in front and after bullets. We felt this was more aesthetically pleasing and some people didn't like that they were forced to have it. Because of this, there will be some differences in line spacing.

AWESOME NEWS! These line-breaks were always a bit of a nag for me - glad to see them gone!

ybakos · November 24, 2014

The EN 6.0 interface seems to be based on:

a forced choice in software interface design established by a major manufacturer (Apple)
"usability science," which is critical, but has made the interface something from a machine, rather than a strong designer's intuition.

I want to like it, and I understand that the UI is based on hard data, but this is a great example of how this approach to the interface design can be a failure. It's cold, truly less readable and usable, somewhat clunky and erratic, and doesn't make me love Evernote.

Lastly, version 6.0 (451092 App Store) Yosemite 10.10.1 is a total nightmare do not upgrade - it's unusable due to bugs.

Mel Matsuoka · November 29, 2014

Nightstalker has made the point, I think, that towing the corporate line that the UI change to version 6 is because of Apple Yosemite, and 'we are not going back' (to paraphrase) is trying to shift the criticism towards Yosemite, and Apple (correct me if I misread that). I found it interesting that he, and others, have made the point that they are not averse to Yosemite necessarily, but that other apps like Curio seem to have managed to shift to Yosemite, retain their visual identity, update their UI, allow customisation, and still keep users happy.

It is not Yosemite, or Apple's fault if you make your UI the way it is, and people react adversely.

+1 on this.

There is obviously something to be said for "rolling with" the UI standards and conventions set by the underlying base OS. However, just because Apple unilaterally sets a UI convention, does not automatically make it a good or correct convention that developers should implement unquestioningly as if it were the infallible word of God.

Case in point: The monochome Finder sidebar, introduced in OS X Lion.

When they first introduced this "feature", I actually thought it looked "nice", "clean" and "tasteful". But the more I used Lion in real-world, it became painfully clear to me that––aesthetics nowisthstanding–Apple made a horrible mistake in draining the color out of the sidebar. I found myself having a difficult time quickly scanning and targeting sidebar items, because where before I subconsciously associated sidebar items by both shape AND color, losing the color from the icons forced my eyes to work harder to find the item that I needed to click on.

40 months later, and nearly 20,000+ hours of living with the monochrome Finder sidebar, I STILL have great difficulty finding sidebar targets without having to actually think about it. I have to resort to using unstable Finder tweaks like "SideEffects" or Finder replacements like Path Finder, just to restore an important usability feature that shouldn't have been removed to begin with.

Things like this aren't simply a matter of aesthetic taste, or resistance to change. When I switched to the Mac full-time, 12 years ago, I hated a lot of Mac conventions, such as sorting folder-names alphabetically with file-names. 12 years of being a Windows user will do that to you. But after using OS X on a daily basis, I quickly came around to the wisdom of sorting folders the Mac way. So I'm totally open to new and different ways of doing things.

But the fact that even after 3 years of daily "monochrome-sidebar" Finder usage, I still have problems scanning and targeting it's sidebar items indicates to me that Apple was--and continues to be--totally wrong about this UI change, despite what the HIG may say in its defense. Even CocoaTech relented on Path Finder 6's strict adherence to Lion's monochrome sidebar when they released Path Finder 7, no doubt due to many usability complaints from its user base (it's now an Appearance option in the preferences, so they at least give you a choice, in case you happen to like the monochrome sidebar).

New UI ideas are great, but to blindly (no pun intended) overturn the UI and usability of a tool that countless people use every day for important workflows just because "that's the way Apple does it", is to miss the point that the "G" in HIG stands for "guidelines", and not "gospel". Evernote's continual deflection of the 6.0 criticism back onto Apple is disingenuous, because Apple is not forcing them to have 100% pixel-perfect adherence to Yosemite's UI conventions.

Evernote, you need to do the right thing for the app and the way your users want to use your app, even if the best way to meet those goals is to "violate" portions of the Yosemite HIG.

NightStalker · November 22, 2014

I really hope the design team does not reverse course because of this feedback.
I think the team did a great job and it's one of the best looking apps out there. Design by committee is not the answer, so stick with your vision and don't compromise it just to please people who have no business designing apps and don't know good design when they see it.

How can it "one of the best looking apps out there" if it actually doesn't HAVE a "look" of its own? It used to - the green and dark grey look was distinctively Evernote. Now it looks completely anonymous, hard on the eyes going by numerous screenshots, has translucency (give me strength - why would I want to see THROUGH what I'm working on?) etc etc.

And your comment about people having no business designing apps and don't know good design when they see it has to be the height of patronising arrogance! If the users - you know, those who actually USE the program - find the design to be lacking, then it is bad design. Period. You cannot tell somebody that a two-and a half wheeled bicycle that is 12" tall is good design, just because you say it is and it conforms to the design code for 12" bicycles! It may look OK to some people, but it's completely unusable. If you see the analogy...

GrumpyMonkey · November 24, 2014

3) Some people don't like the new design. The bottom line is if you don't like Yosemite you are not going to like the new Evernote Mac design. Apple sets the design direction and all apps must follow. As an example, some suggested we use green as a UI highlight to support our own branding and to add a little more color. I get this and I believe it's a perfectly reasonable proposal. I think the one thing that might not be fully understood is that Apple has decided that blue is the UI highlight color for Yosemite. Take a look at selected checkboxes and the down arrow for drop down menus. It's true that we don't necessarily have to follow Apple blindly but I think it's a losing battle to try to be too different than Apple's defined UX language. Apple sets the standards and in fact if we use standard UX controls we get their look and feel whether we want it or not and Apple wants all apps to comply so that this UX language becomes well understood. This is NOT fashion or trying to be hip. Apple defines the Mac world our apps lives in and we can either join or be relegated to Siberia. This is how all Mac apps are going to look within the next year. Now you could argue we didn't do a good job of matching Apple's design aesthetic but it's not fair to litigate Yosemite's look and feel in an Evernote forum. There are definitely tweaks we can and are making to improve readability but this is a major OS design change and we have to and want to follow Apple's lead.

5) Because of the UI changes and some other recent tweaks we made because of work chat, there's a lot of discussion about customization. I get this. I'm a power user too. Earlier in this thread I discussed my concerns at length but we should continue to discuss it.

Hi Marcus. As always, thank you for the responses, and I appreciate the candor.

(3) Probably true about Yosemite. I'm not a big fan myself, but it has the functionality I want, so I can't complain too much. And, most importantly, Yosemite is customizable. I don't have to suffer through an interface I don't like.

I can only think of one or two apps I have without customizable menus. That seems a departure from the norm. And, it is a departure from the guidelines Apple provides. I'd recommend you make it customizable, but, frankly speaking, it doesn't really matter to me personally as long as we have keyboard shortcuts.

Green? I honestly don't care. Pink, fuchsia, or any other color is fine. Contrast does matter, though, and there is not enough. Pages isn't my favorite app by any means, but it is Apple's, so judging by that there are clearer demarcations between areas such as the right-hand "document," "section," and the main text body. It's got lots of colors in the menu. It's menu is customizable. I don't see any gray on gray text at the moment. I don't see it as any less white than Evernote or my browser, so I don't really get the blindness complaints. This contrast thing is an old story, though, so I am not interested in spending another two years hashing out the precise level of gray we want to see. As I always say, if you give users customizability you solve a lot of problems.

(5) It'd be nice to see some movement on the requests I made earlier in the thread. It's difficult to get excited about Work Chat when I have no one to chat with -- I am not terribly keen on using Evernote as a pensieve to share my memories with others. Presentation? I'll use professional-grade software for that, so no thank you. Surfacing? Only if it is customizable to my needs. These are great innovations, don't get me wrong, but they don't really add to my experience of Evernote as an external brain or something I can put everything into. I don't see them as "awesome." Encrypted notebooks? Well, with that you would immediately differentiate yourself from much of the competition, especially considering Evernote's presence on every platform, and every user could immediately benefit from having their passwords, health records, tax records, and just about everything else secure on the cloud. This kind of fundamental change excites me far more than the UI tweaks.

Just my thoughts. I think users don't give you guys enough credit for the hard work you do, so I'll say thank you here, with the caveat that I hope you will apply your limited time and resources to making truly "awesome" changes.

Roger Worden · November 26, 2014

I may have found some relief.

Goto System Preferences > Accessibility

On Mavericks, only the first two options are available. The transparency option is not present.

On Mavericks, the Enhance Contrast slider actually makes things worse. After just a few notches, the smaller text disappears entirely.

E-NoteForum · November 22, 2014

More on the All Notes button: if you do a search, a "Clear" button will pop up next to "X notes found" at the top of the note result list (at least in Snippet view, which is what I use). This is where the "All Notes" button used to be, correct?

Given that the UI already has support for a conditional button in that location, why not move "All Notes" back there? There's already room and support for a button in that spot. Would love to have "All Notes" resurrected from the no-one-will-find it menu location it's at now.

mrgoerend · November 22, 2014

Hide-able Context! I feel vindicated!

JonnyBoy · November 21, 2014

Overall I like the new look. I personally didn't like the light green. The snippets view which I am presently using is better than the list view when it comes to legibility. At the same time, I changed the contrast universally on my Mac which helps my old eyes differentiate the colors better.

I agree with everyone that more choices in the visual aspect would really go a long way. One thing that bothers me is the light green color of note links. They are barely legible. This has bothered me for years and I wish we could determine the color of links. A stark dark blue or green or red would be sooo much better.

At the same time, I don't think the Evernote team should focus so much on design but rather on function. Work on ironing out bugs and bringing on the various enhancements asked for by consumers for many years.

Stuhrer · November 21, 2014

For those of you that would like to see higher contrast or more legibility can you tell me specifically in what parts of the app? It doesn't help me if you say the entire app.

1) Are we in agreement that the actual note has enough contrast since it's on a white background?

Yes, that's the highest possible contrast but some might complain about it as well. I can live with it and can adjust monitor brightness if necessary.

In another post I suggested that the information above the note - like notebook, tags, date created, date modified and URL - is using a font that is too small although there is enough space for a bigger one.

2) List View? I'm hearing a lot of discussion about list view. It sounds like it's difficult to read the text on the banding (and I'm guessing a lot of this depends on one's desktop background). I personally don't have an issue here but I understand the point.

I like the alternating background. Font size is small but just OK, a bigger one would reduce the number of visible rows. However, the title on top of the list (with "Created, Title, Modified, ...") is transparent and when you scroll and a row of the list moves under it you can not read the title as well as the list row.

3) What about snippet view?

OK for me. The title has a good size and contrast. The rest is small but not as important. One can argue about the necessity to show a picture if there is one in the note. In most cases it is not the one that provides good information about the content and we cannot choose the picture that is shown.

Anyway, it would be helpful and more constructive to provide specific areas of the product you think we should continue to refine vs having larger arguments over transparency. The sidebar of Evernote will be transparent. This is not negotiable because this is by definition a part of the Yosemite design aesthetic.

Well, I have a different view on that but I have reduced transparency in the system settings anyway so I don't see it.

The bottom line is I agree with the sentiment that we should build a product that works for all of our users so help me provide our design team with specific details to work with. I'm not sure we're going to satisfy everyone but I think we may be able to make things better for some.

That is the right attitude. Continue with such conversations. Thank you very much!

JMichaelTX · November 22, 2014

Is it me, or did the "All Notes" button disappear from the note list? This makes me sad. I know I could just click "notes" at the bottom of the sidebar, but that was always more accessible for me.

"All Notes" is in the Note List drop down after Recent Notes.

Marcus,

First of all, my thanks to you for your usual candid response. We may not always agree, but your upfront candor and receptive attitude is greatly appreciated.

My main concern is the hiding of "All Notes". Just a few versions back, this was an (optional) button on the toolbar.

IMO, it should be on the toolbar and always prominent. Otherwise it is too easy to get confused about what Notebook, tag filter, and/or search is active. The "All Notes" button allow us to quickly make sure that, well, all notes are being shown.

While I'm talking about toolbars, can you explain why EN Win has a user-configurable toolbar, but EN Mac does not? Configuring toolbars has been a long-standing feature of the Mac -- almost all apps support this.

dryeyes · November 22, 2014

I tried to read as much as I could in this forum but I just want to know if I can revert back to the old version. I really really wish I would've investigated before agreeing to update, now even if I re-install the old dmg on my mac, it still does not let me use it? WHy wouldn't it let me use the old version - it says that the version is too old and being managed by a newer version. So basically only people who didn't upgrade still have the nice version of this software. I posted a thread but no helpful input so far and I guess this is where all the talk is.

The new version is very washed out, hard to read, hard on the eyes and difficult to see. It doesn't look great either overall, there's hardly any obvious separation between cards/words and the background. If I wanted to be surrounded by white I can go to the mall and into the Apple store Fromthe post on the top of this thread page I see someone quoted some upcoming changes. When will we know when the new version is available with the changes? And is there any way we can get the darker color back for the side bar part? I can also barely see the lines separating each section - navigation, cards, preview. The outline of the cards is way too light and I can barely see that too. For the lines separating sections, if I didn't notice my curser changing I wouldn't even know I was looking at separate panels.

adamdwright · November 24, 2014

I dig the new design and feel a lot of the noted criticisms re: contrast will serve to make it better. After reading this, I feel lucky to have an appreciation for new design and for innovation in general. I would be so frustrated if I hated Yosemite / the new evernote design, and preferred to stick in Mavericks land. So I'm sorry your sensibilities have you hating the 'direction' so to speak. I will say, however, that not appreciating constant innovation / design renovation places you in what I call the 'microsoft' category, where you simply want things to stay the way they were forever and aren't welcome to any change whatsoever. This causes me to discredit said opinions b/c it makes me feel that your tastes don't relate to mine, and mine, luckily for me, happen to align w/ the tech companies / evernote.

That ramble said, it pleases me when these redesigns are released. I, like @CHIRMER, practically live within the app and felt the previous version had a great contract but looked outdated. So thanks to all the evernote employees - I notice your ass-kicking efforts and it inspires me to concentrate the same effort toward my own craft.

preisarrais · November 25, 2014

I really like the new Evernote version for Mac. I like the new design and everything else, but the most important isnt working guys: TYPING!! Its too slow to type! Some kind of a lag... Im already using 6.0.1 version and getting a really bad experience on typing.

mhedstrom · November 21, 2014

For those of you that would like to see higher contrast or more legibility can you tell me specifically in what parts of the app? It doesn't help me if you say the entire app.

I hate the new look. There's a lack of contrast in the backgrounds between the notebook list, the notes list, and then the actual note you have selected. The light beige (very very light) in the notebook list is not providing enough contrast at all. All I see in my Evernote window is a sea of white in slightly different shades, but ultimately they're pretty much the same. The older version was perfect, imo. Also the light gray in the notes list where you can read part of the note is WAY too light. The notes window itself is fine, it's the other 2 columns I'm having problems with.

SoftwareMarcus · November 22, 2014

Thanks again for the discussion regarding the new look. I just got out of a meeting with Jackoliscious, our designer and developer to discuss some tweaks that we would like to implement in the short term to help with Pre-Yosemite OSs and legibility issues. I'm not sure we're going to go as far as many of you would like but I think these changes will help. I want to provide all of you a preview of what we discussed. I do want to caution that our developer still has to get in there and code this up so we'll see what is doable and what isn't.

1) Mavericks and Earlier OSs - I think there is a big difference between the experience a Yosemite user has and a Maverick's user (NOTE: When I say Mavericks I really mean Mavericks, Mountain Lion and Lion but it's too darn hard to write that every time so I'm just going to write Mavericks). The Yosemite translucency adds some color and differentiation to the different panes in the product which I really like. On earlier OSs there is no translucency so there isn't a large differentiation between the panes. On Pre-Yosemite OSs we're going to change the sidebar and the divider lines to be darker gray to provide this differentiation. I think this will help with separating the sections of the app and the "brightness" concern.

2) Light Gray Text - The light gray text in the snippet and card view is too light and I agree it's difficult to see. This includes the date and other header text. We're going to darken this text. Also the line spacing in snippet view for this same text is too tight and we're going to try to expand it a bit. Technically card view is tougher to work with so we don't have as many line spacing options in this view.

3) Icons - On Mavericks some icons appear disabled because they are too light. We're going to go through and investigate and fix icon coloring. For some reason they are different colors for different icons. Overall we will subtly increase the darkness of the icons through out the product and make them more consistent.

Thanks again for this open discussion. We are listening but keep in mind that we may not always agree. Just because we don't change something it doesn't mean we aren't listening. In addition, some things are easier to change than others. The bottom line is we're passionate about Evernote and we're working hard to make it a better product for all of us.

grownupboy · November 23, 2014

I'm running Evernote 6.0 on Yosemite and it's virtually unsuable!

Navigation is unbearably slow. Click up or down arrow and the program waits nearly 2 seconds before the key click is registered on screen. Typing is the same - Start typing and it's nearly 2 SECONDS until the characters start appearing in your note. The longer the pogram is open the worse it is but the issue is present even after a complete system restart.

Using 2010 Mac Pro with 12 Gigs of RAM. Previous versions of evernote worked without issue.

Any ideas? Is something else conflicting with the new version of Evernote? Known issue?

karl

Roger Worden · November 26, 2014

I agree with the posters complaining about the brightness and blandness. I understand that may be due to conflict between changes designed to move forward with Yosemite, not playing well with Mavericks. Maybe the testing was insufficient on Mavericks... maybe the test results were ignored. For whatever reason, the resulting display is terrible. Very hard on the eyes. Little contrast to help distinguish the different panels of data. As another poster stated: this is the first time I've tried calibrating my monitor to accommodate an app... unfortunately it did not help. I really hope EN will admit this was an error and roll back the interface changes as much as possible. I'm strongly considering reverting, though I see that is a multi-step process due to the database conversion.

RicD · November 30, 2014

In version 6.x Tables have peculiar behavior. Create a table, say four columns three rows. Adjust the columns the width desired. Now, pull in the far right column right boarder, notice that the other columns are adjusting as well; not a good thing.

When I pull in the far right boarder I want the other columns widths to remain as I set them, not adjust. Pulling in the far right boarder should only adjust that column not the others. Though these new tables are better than the previous table, this new one is frustrating as well.

GrumpyMonkey · November 22, 2014

JM I want to know the content of a couple of your notes now!

How to expand storage with Micro SD

Hard boiled eggs in an oven

The meaning of OS X logging downloads

A terminal command will clear your download log. Helpful if you don't want anyone to know what you are downloading. Not a huge concern if you are on your own machine, have it locked down wit file vault, and you use a strong password. I think the micros sd thing is more for macbook air folks, right? i forget. as for hard boiled eggs, that's out of this vegetarian's range of interest. maybe jm can share his notes

grownupboy · November 25, 2014

I'm running Evernote 6.0 on Yosemite and it's virtually unsuable!

Navigation is unbearably slow. Click up or down arrow and the program waits nearly 2 seconds before the key click is registered on screen. Typing is the same - Start typing and it's nearly 2 SECONDS until the characters start appearing in your note. The longer the pogram is open the worse it is but the issue is present even after a complete system restart.

We suspect that for some people the indexing takes a really long time. This occurs in the background and is very computer intensive and could lead to slowness. Please try leaving your computer on overnight to allow Evernote to finish indexing. For some it might take a full day to fully finish. After this Evernote will work faster than before. Also there was a customer who rebooted his system after the indexing and that seemed to help. Please keep in mind that most people are not running into this issue because they don't have the specific data that you have or there could be some sort of issue in your data that is causing the indexing to take longer than normal. The forums make it sound like everyone is having the same issues and this is not true because the millions of people who have upgraded with no issues don't have a reason to come to the forums so you don't hear of an alternative view. Please write back to this forum after a few days of indexing to let us know if this did or didn't fix the issue. If it's not the indexing issue then we want to figure out a solution.

Actually, the program has been running non stop for nearly 4 days at this point. I have restarted the computer 3 times during that period. Evernote is still impossibly slow.

Previous version worked without issue - this is definitely somethign to do with the upgrade.

In a word. It's unusable.

Limegreen · November 22, 2014

Gorgeous new app.
The only thing is that scrolling through notes is no longer smooth (on the mid-2013 Macbook Air). It's not terrible but it's noticeable. I know the Air is not a workhorse machine, but the way it's slightly 'choppy' even in smaller notebooks with few notes suggest that it might be fixable.

I'm running OS X Yosemite

Shamelessly quoting myself here. Doesn't anyone else have the same slightly chuggy scroll through the notecards now, compared to the previous version?

JMichaelTX · November 21, 2014

…and both seem to show transparency "for no reason" as far as I can tell. Maybe Evernote is wrong, but they're following Apple's lead on Apple's platform.

Are you sure? The Finder does NOT use transparency in the main body where files are displayed.

Whereas Evernote DOES use transparency in the main body of the display.

NightStalker · November 22, 2014

Hi Marcus

Like JMichael, I really appreciate you interacting on here, even though we may disagree on various things. I'm also aware that you have to represent the company line, so even if you agree with some of our complaints, you may not be able to say so.

The idea of presenting us with a list of proposed changes is excellent - why not do it before each major upgrade, and get feedback on them BEFORE you push out the upgrade and then cop a heap of complaints?

Are you going to bring back your signature colour scheme of green and grey? Or are you going to stick with the completely bland, no-brand version with grey, grey, and more grey? 50 Shades of Grey, anyone? (Somebody had to say it!)

What about coloured icons, you know, like they used to be?

And as JMichael pointed out, and as I keep banging on about - what about that configurable toolbar? If the Windows version can have one, why not the Mac version, especially when toolbar configurability is virtually a Mac standard?

Good to see some response to the points made on here. But more please... (yeah, yeah - I know I'm never satisfied)

JMichaelTX · November 21, 2014

It's not that obvious to my eyes....

And how old are you, Scott?

I have no doubt that different people will view this differently.

The question is: Why do ANYTHING that reduces readability for a significant number of your users?

NWPR · November 22, 2014

To the Evernote Team:

Thanks for releasing Evernote 6 on Mac App Store at the same time as the download version.

Stuhrer · November 22, 2014

I tried to read as much as I could in this forum but I just want to know if I can revert back to the old version. I really really wish I would've investigated before agreeing to update, now even if I re-install the old dmg on my mac, it still does not let me use it? WHy wouldn't it let me use the old version - it says that the version is too old and being managed by a newer version. So basically only people who didn't upgrade still have the nice version of this software. I posted a thread but no helpful input so far and I guess this is where all the talk is.

The new version is very washed out, hard to read, hard on the eyes and difficult to see. It doesn't look great either overall, there's hardly any obvious separation between cards/words and the background. If I wanted to be surrounded by white I can go to the mall and into the Apple store Fromthe post on the top of this thread page I see someone quoted some upcoming changes. When will we know when the new version is available with the changes? And is there any way we can get the darker color back for the side bar part?

https://discussion.evernote.com/topic/77171-how-do-i-revert-back-to-previous-version-of-everynote/#entry325481

taguntumi · November 21, 2014

Agree with the whiteness and the other comments made by Nightstalker. I would add the ability to choose different highlight pens to the list of things that they seem to continuois fail to add despite it being basic for an app of this kind. The sidebar in 5.x needed more work it looked/looks like a list of notebooks in the system font.

Instead we get things that most users don't want like context, related notes, chat (?!).

I would get the basics right before fannying around with other stuff. So much for the focus that was promised earlier in the year. One thing that did surprise me was that with a version 5 product you found 200+ bugs.....

Ian

Oh sheesh! Going by that screenshot of JMichaels' above, there is no way I'm going to upgrade. "Text accessibility experts"??? Surely you're kidding? Is it April already?

And what IS it with all this translucency/transparency nonsense? That alone is one of the reasons that I am not upgrading from Mavericks to Yosemite - the other (and main one) being that they have badly broken the Mail app. I won't go off-piste and discuss that here.

If I have a window at the front, I want to read it. I don't want to see the ghost of the wallpaper behind it, and I most certainly don't want to see another app's window full of text ghosted behind what I'm trying to read.

Does this upgrade bring back "Email Note" as an easy to use, one-click option? I didn't think so.

Does it give us options, to turn off Context, Chat, and Translucency? Ones that actually, really, turn them right OFF - as in "GONE"? Don't think so.

Does it give us back a configurable toolbar? Nope - didn't think so.

So give me one reason WHY I should even think about upgrading to v6? It seems to be just adding more things I don't want and don't like, while not fixing or bringing back the things that I do want.

This is getting very depressing - I checked out OneNote yesterday. It's still not up to what Evernote used to be, but it's getting closer....

NightStalker · November 24, 2014

I will say, however, that not appreciating constant innovation / design renovation places you in what I call the 'microsoft' category, where you simply want things to stay the way they were forever and aren't welcome to any change whatsoever. This causes me to discredit said opinions b/c it makes me feel that your tastes don't relate to mine, and mine, luckily for me, happen to align w/ the tech companies / evernote.

That comment quoted, is a bit arrogant, don't you think? I really don't want to start a flaming war here, but with SO many people complaining about the interface and UI, you're basically saying that everyone else is wrong, but you're right, because you're following the trend and are "cool"?

I get that you like the change. I don't have a problem with that. But no, I am NOT resistant to change - I am resistant to change for the worse. I LOVE change for the better - but EN6 ain't it. At least, not in the opinions of a lot of people, it would seem. This blind following of Apple is a problem, even though they're not really following Apple - check out Pages - complete with much better readability, coloured icons, and configurable toolbar.

So you can feel free to discredit the opinions of those who happen not to agree with you, even though you concede that it is a matter of personal taste. I'm quite happy to have different tastes from others', including yours, but I don't discredit your opinions.

OK - I'm going to take a break from posting on here for a while (do I hear cheers all around?). I'm getting somewhat frustrated by the lack of concession that perhaps the new interface and UI are NOT right for many people. There has never been any explanation as to WHY features get removed or hidden when they used to work perfectly, or how the elimination of all individuality from the app's UI is going to help Evernote in any way at all.

Sticking with Evernote v5 running on Mavericks here. And trying to find a way of stopping auto-update on my iOS devices so I don't suddenly find any nasty surprises. Would be good to be able to turn off auto-update on a per-app basis, rather than globally.

ScottLougheed · November 24, 2014

.
Is it me, or did the "All Notes" button disappear from the note list? This makes me sad. I know I could just click "notes" at the bottom of the sidebar, but that was always more accessible for me.

"All Notes" is in the Note List drop down after Recent Notes.

I used that button all the time. Now it's hidden in a menu. Way less convenient. One quick click has become a menu dropdown and a small entry in a non-obvious place where you would never even find it if no one told you where it was.

What was wrong with the old button? How is the new functionality, which is harder to find and requires extra menu actions, better?

I used that button, until I learned that the key commend (cmd-shift-a) is considerably faster yet!

Brian Handscomb · November 25, 2014

Interesting link to the UI guidelines from JMichael - interesting I note their link to some "System-Provided Images" for preferences, a couple of which EN 5 is closer than EN 6

"Color and Typography" also interesting, even though I personally dislike the translucency (and think it confusing) and for that matter don't like the change from Lucida Grande to Helvetica Neue, but even so it shows MUCH more contrast, and in testing I didn't see EN 6 use translucency on my work Yosemite(!?)

"Controls and Views" - lot of differences between both EN 5 and EN 6 if you read it a certain way.

Makes me think the "Apple Guidelines" is more attempted excuse than reason.... IMHO...

Anyway... for now at least... Work desktop was briefly direct 6.0.1 now reverted to direct 5.7.2... Work laptop remains at 5.7.2... Home laptop was App Store 5.5.1, now direct 5.6.2 (I disable most of the "Context" feature anyway as I don't like it, so little difference, I only want "my stuff")... All update checking disabled... See you at version 7 perhaps...

adamdwright · November 24, 2014

@NightStalker - You're right, my post was arrogant. Sorry about that. Just afraid the EN6 shiny new toy will be taken away and posted out of fear. Happy thanksgiving mate!

Evernote for Mac v6.0 and v6.0.1

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