Control Which Image Shown in a Note's Thumbnail/Snippet View

[marcelo 85]

I do like the new layout with larger thumbnails, except for one thing: Evernote seems to choose as thumbnail the largest image within a note. But it is rather annoying, for it seldom coincides with the image which would enable me to recognize a note at once. Can I somehow force Evernote to use a specific image as thumbail?

Marcelo

[J. Shoaf 1]

This seems like a big miss for Evernote and I always thought they'd address it soon but years have passed...and...no.  So I'm going to add to this discussion in an effort to convince them to do it.  You can change the title, the category, but not the thumbnail?

Here is why this would be useful to me.  I take photos of plants for my gardening project.  I'd like a photo of the plant in the thumbnail.  However, usually, when I plant something, I take a picture of the tag that describes the plant and how to take care of it.  Later, I crop them to only the information I need.  Evernote saves an uncropped version of a seemingly random photo I take of the plant tag.  Often this is the instructions on how to take care of the plant which look the same from plant to plant. So if I have 5 different camellias I've planted, I have to look closely at the title to differentiate them.  I'd rather see a thumbnail of the flower color which would be more visually helpful.

Not allowing control of the thumbnail really takes away from the benefit of taking photo based notes.

[Angry 45]

haven't read everything, it would help a lot if it is THE FIRST PICTURE I ADDED. 

But using the biggest picture is such a brainfart m(

[kevin.szmir 0]

I've used Evernote since 2010 and it has always been my most wanted feature.

At this point, I just think it's never going to happen. It would make my life so much easier though.

Please Evernote, what's going on ?

[PinkElephant 8,103]

Maybe we are in a giant experiment - which long running feature request will collect the most votes before dying of old age 🙂

Can’t vote it up again, have done so long ago.

[leamandita 0]

i'm so disapointed with this

[Eduardo Estefano 89]

I have a Suppliers notebook. It would be great if the thumbnail could be the supplier logo. But this is impossible. 

 

Some notes show no thumbnail. If you copy from a previous note, it will keep the old thumbnail.  It is basically a mess. You have to be luck that a good thumbnail will be picked.

 

[Eduardo Estefano 89]

Em 30/06/2011 at 22:51, marcelo disse:

I do like the new layout with larger thumbnails, except for one thing: Evernote seems to choose as thumbnail the largest image within a note. But it is rather annoying, for it seldom coincides with the image which would enable me to recognize a note at once. Can I somehow force Evernote to use a specific image as thumbail?

Marcelo

Perhaps in another 10 years?

[PinkElephant 8,103]

Perhaps, but I would not count on it.

There was a recipe buried somewhere in the forum about how EN picks the picture for the thumbnail. It has to do with the dimensions of the picture. It is probably not for the day to day use, but in cases when this seems important it is possible to modify the pictures to decide which picture will show.

[HeBoIz 241]

4 hours ago, PinkElephant said:

There was a recipe buried somewhere in the forum about how EN picks the picture for the thumbnail. It has to do with the dimensions of the picture. It is probably not for the day to day use, but in cases when this seems important it is possible to modify the pictures to decide which picture will show.

AFAIK this is history and has changed to v10.

Control via hidden algorithms depending on size and modified pictures was an option with pre v10 legacy versions.

since/for  EN v10 this is no longer possible. Here thumbnails which are accidentally chosen by algorithm can‘t be changed.

This is why we need an easy accessible option for control with V10…

[PinkElephant 8,103]

Thanks for the update.

In fact we wanted thumbnail source selection already pre v10 - seems the only available option now is to put exactly the one picture / pdf file into the note on creation, then sync it, then wait for the picture to be chosen as thumbnail. AFAIK the thumbnail will stick, even when later other pictures are added.

No, this is no proposal, not even a weak workaround, since doing so is a permanent PITA. But it seems the only way to influence thumbnail creation.

[EvrTom 1]

35 minutes ago, HeBoIz said:

AFAIK this is history and has changed to v10.

Control via hidden algorithms depending on size and modified pictures was an option with pre v10 legacy versions.

since/for  EN v10 this is no longer possible. Here thumbnails which are accidentally chosen by algorithm can‘t be changed.

This is why we need an easy accessible option for control with V10…

... yeah, what He(Bolz) said!
There's no control whatsoever anymore as far as I can tell.

[EvrTom 1]

3 minutes ago, PinkElephant said:

Thanks for the update.

In fact we wanted thumbnail source selection already pre v10 - seems the only available option now is to put exactly the one picture / pdf file into the note on creation, then sync it, then wait for the picture to be chosen as thumbnail. AFAIK the thumbnail will stick, even when later other pictures are added.

No, this is no proposal, not even a weak workaround, since doing so is a permanent PITA. But it seems the only way to influence thumbnail creation.

Alas, it doesn't always "stick"...
I've seen mine change to something unwanted. 
The logic of changing it back eludes me thus far.

[PinkElephant 8,103]

And in some cases the thumbnail sticks, even when the source was removed from the note.

As I said, I did not propose this as a real workaround.

[Eduardo Estefano 89]

Something I learned yesterday. I was duplicating a note that had a small logo on it.

On the new note (the duplicate) I was removing the logo and replacing it with a different image. But the thumbnail will not refresh. It will continue with the old thumbnail no matter what you do.

In order to get the image to show, you need to create a new note from scratch OR remove any pictures from a note that you will duplicate.

The first picture you add apparently will be the thumbnail.

[TK0047 422]

43 minutes ago, Eduardo Estefano said:

But the thumbnail will not refresh

I have some notes that show a thumbnail but there is no pictures in the note. It is generally clipped from an email with photo attachments. But the note does not show the image but the thumbnail shows it. Weird bug.

[johnortt 26]

On 3/2/2021 at 9:27 PM, ihatedisplaynames said:

 

I also looked for ian small’s email address. From his YouTube videos he seems like an approachable guy, and I wonder if he’s just not aware people desperately want this. 

No email address but @iansmall is his Twitter username.

 

[benee-fanboy 1]

It's 2021 already, we all know that's not something so hard to code, just delete this hard to understand algorithm and let users select in a drop-down menu, a option like "show as thumbnail", that would be so useful... 

Or something like "Edit note card" so we could customize the card freely as we want...

[PinkElephant 8,103]

On 6/4/2021 at 3:34 PM, TK0047 said:

I have some notes that show a thumbnail but there is no pictures in the note. It is generally clipped from an email with photo attachments. But the note does not show the image but the thumbnail shows it. Weird bug.

Just as an idea: Pictures in e-mails are often not really there. They are embedded as a link to a web server, loaded from the source on opening. By this it reduces the traffic of the mail server (outgoing) and moves the load to the receiving device. Plus it adds the ability to tell an e-mail was opened, by just tracking the picture downloads. This is why I have disabled "automatically load pictures" in my mail client.

Maybe EN follows the embedded link and loads the picture in the background.

[HeBoIz 241]

On 12/11/2020 at 8:56 AM, HeBoIz said:

+ 1

This feature-gap is even more annoying with the new / 10.# EN web version:

If You delete the image which is automatically chosen and shown in the note's thumbnail/snippet view or even delete all pictures in the note and add a new proper one the new picture won't show up in the note's thumbnail/snippet view of the EN web version.

Instead of this the unwanted old thumbnail sticks with my note in the thumbnail/snippet view ...

seem's like meanwhile, at least with V. 10.15.6 web 253, it is possible to remove a stored thumbnail and to successfully add a new picture which can be "automatically" chosen as new thumbnail.

Still it is a decision of the EN-System, which image will be chosen, depending on a rather hidden algorithm or size and dimension logic.

As mentioned: Would be better, if this could be a user-decision...
(but anyway: at least one step better... 😉)

[TK0047 422]

16 hours ago, PinkElephant said:

Just as an idea: Pictures in e-mails are often not really there. They are embedded as a link to a web server, loaded from the source on opening. By this it reduces the traffic of the mail server (outgoing) and moves the load to the receiving device. Plus it adds the ability to tell an e-mail was opened, by just tracking the picture downloads. This is why I have disabled "automatically load pictures" in my mail client.

Maybe EN follows the embedded link and loads the picture in the background.

Possibly, good point, but would be nice to have the same link or whatever so I can see those pictures. But in that case, that email had attachments as photos so when I clipped it I wanted it to clip with the photos otherwise the email was really useless.

[PinkElephant 8,103]

No idea what may have happened.

There are services that send a preview and a link, to reduce the load on mail servers. Or whatever …

Maybe have a closer look, and get support involved.

[RealGuardingEstates 1]

This is definitely a big one on my list: to select which image to show in the sidebar thumbnail. Visually scanning is very helpful, and when the relevant image is not the one selected by the algorithm, that's frustrating.

Can someone describe a good workaround? Like manually changing the image description or using an image editor to make a small image recognized as bigger by the algorithm?

[PinkElephant 8,103]

The workaround that used to exist sees to have stopped working in v10. AFAIK no more proven workaround to place a preselected image as preview.

[rflang 1]

Wow.  I am not sure I have ever seen an issue griped about on a forum by so many customers for so long without the company resolving it.  It's 2021. This is basic. Sort of a shocker.  I have been premium for years, but this one is getting so frustrating it would be worth moving on.

[Amystoneus 21]

So wait... I just scrolled a mile through this topic that started TEN YEARS AGO, and there's still NO SOLUTION??? OMG, dinosaurs evolved from sea to land in less time! Somewhere along the way I saw something having to do with size and algorithms, but totally n/a based on the visuals I've got in a single note. Despite there being a number of images that I imported from Photos, all hi-res, all positive, colorful, funny or interesting (to me), Evernote has decided to select a screenshot of a very private text that I don't particularly like being reminded of, and which is easily viewable on the home page where anyone can see it if EN is open on my Mac. I thought it was selected as the thumbnail because it's the first image in the note, but no, adding more images above it didn't have any effect. WTF! 

I continue to think that the EN dev team is solely motivated by the tears and screams of its subscribers, who began as relatively sane people with a need to boost their productivity and express themselves creatively. I don't know why I keep updating this product when every "fix" is really just a setback in disguise. 

[PinkElephant 8,103]

A lot of words to tell the world that no, this feature is still missing.

[Br4msley 4]

I've not been using Evernote very long but for my needs so far it is absolutley perfect! Except for one thing - the inability to select which thumbnail I want to see in the snippets list.

Please Evernote - take note of the fact that from newbies like me to long time users - if they haven't given up on you because of this - are all crying out for the ability to select which image to use as the thumbnail. 

I was about to recommendt the product to friends of mine who have similar logging needs for their pottery, but if I do, I will have to qualify that receommendation with this, very importnat, failing. 

 

[Ryan Vinedale 1]

Please add the ability to control the Evernote thumbnail.  I have been waiting for this feature for years and now its becoming an issue which I may have to switch software because of it.  Please fix.

[Roberta831 0]

Here’s what Evernote support said today:

“At the moment, I'm afraid that thumbnails are chosen randomly and there's no option yet to select which attachment will be shown on preview.”

[kmgflavin 0]

I Just changed the thumbnail by duplicating the post, deleting the old one, and the new post has the first image as the thumbnail. If there is a rule that has been mentioned in the 671 posts, it would be nice to have it 'pinned' near the top of the comments somehow. 

Background on my solution: I saved a post from a website, simplified the formatting, removed a bunch of images and the thumbnail was an image that I had deleted. I wanted a diff thumbnail, so I duplicated the post after removing all the unwanted content. The duplicate post used one of the images (the first one) remaining in the new post.

[highchairdrama 14]

Well, I'm ready to jump ship.

It's worth it to me to manually migrate my thousands of notes to another app if it'll give me this one feature - or even just not implement it so horribly. I'm not aware of alternative apps out there with the same tagging/notebook/thumbnail view functionality.

Anyone know of an Evernote alternative? Happy to pay for it. I'd like to be done giving Evernote my money when they've spit in our faces like this - except that I'm trapped without an alternative.

[Boot17 1,449]

On 8/10/2021 at 1:02 PM, highchairdrama said:

It's worth it to me to manually migrate my thousands of notes to another app if it'll give me this one feature - or even just not implement it so horribly. I'm not aware of alternative apps out there with the same tagging/notebook/thumbnail view functionality.

Well — kind of crazy to jump ship for one feature that is implemented a little better or at least not so horribly, but… https://getupnote.com. Whatever image appears first in the note in UpNote is the one that shows in the thumbnail.

I guess this means goodbye! 😃

(And fwiw, I agree that we should be able to have some control over which image shows in the thumbnail.)

[PinkElephant 8,103]

If it serves your use cases, why not. Wish you luck !

[aburtch 3]

Just here to bump this thread and hope that Evernotes institutes the ability to select which image is shown as the thumbnail. 

Also, my notes still show a thumbnail that has been deleted in the note but won't go away on the notes / thumbnail view. 

Here's hoping! 

[blackcoffeeandpie 1]

Duplicating the post works as a semi-workaround, in that a deleted image can no longer be the snippet's thumbnail. But having the option to actually select the thumbnail for a note would be soooo much more useful. Maybe the technical requirements to achieve this are insurmountable, lol. A picture says a thousand words, so being able to select the optimal thumbnail for a note would be fantastic. Please & thank you...

[Amystoneus 21]

7 hours ago, blackcoffeeandpie said:

Duplicating the post works as a semi-workaround, in that a deleted image can no longer be the snippet's thumbnail. But having the option to actually select the thumbnail for a note would be soooo much more useful. Maybe the technical requirements to achieve this are insurmountable, lol. A picture says a thousand words, so being able to select the optimal thumbnail for a note would be fantastic. Please & thank you...

Yes! I discovered that inadvertently when EN duplicated a note and it selected a different image. 

Funny thing, though... it selected the THIRD image within the note, which led me to my theory of "natural selection" where EN's thumbnail is concerned: It selects the image with the most neutral overall tonality. I'm concluding this, because when I look at my sidebar of notes, all the auto-selected thumbnails have a similar look. It doesn't seem to matter where the image falls in the note, or even its size, as I import many images straight from my phone. Most of my images are vibrant, contrasty and colorful, but those are never selected. Ever. It's the ones that are golden, cream or tan in their overall appearance, and usually have burgundy or crimson accents. I really think THAT's the algorithm behind EN's thumbnail selection process. Here's but a snippet in support of my hypothesis:

[Mr_Neffets 1]

Just adding another voice that this is a simple feature that needs to be added. Right click > us as thumbnail image is all we need.

 

Looking at their development blog posts, it looks like a lot of these problems were ignored because they were working with 5 different software products, one on each platform, but have now unified them all. With them all unified, please work on issues like this that power users particularly care about.

[capncrockett 1]

Why not just "thumbnail = first image encountered in note"? How hard is that? That can't be hard.

Edited September 7, 2021 by capncrockett
clarity

[PinkElephant 8,103]

None of what we can imagine is hard. Take the First, let us select, even use the largest or jpg goes before pdf.

Except nothing of it was implemented yet, which is a PITA, especially for people with a visual orientation.

[Tanja012 9]

I'm all in for this!!! I just discovered something even worse.. no matter how big I make an image in the note, if there are an PDF file attatched then it shows the PDF.. and PDF's are rarely better looking or more informative on the front page than an image

[PinkElephant 8,103]

Interesting observation.

Does this mean if I have a pictures note, and I want one of them to show, I simply convert it to a pdf, and I will get it as my preview ?!

Could save the original picture plus the pdf, to avoid a loss of quality.

[johnortt 26]

21 minutes ago, PinkElephant said:

Does this mean if I have a pictures note, and I want one of them to show, I simply convert it to a pdf, and I will get it as my preview ?!

It is insane we have to consider these lengths just to determine the picture that shows in the thumbnail!

Come on Evernote, please sort this out...

At-least add it to your roadmap!

Evernote is still the best note taking program out there but I am seriously debating jumping ship just because you refuse to listen to your customers.

It would mean a lot of work for me but I am seriously considering it.

I don't like giving my money to people who don't seem to appreciate it.

[PinkElephant 8,103]

I am pretty sure your money is appreciated …

[HeBoIz 241]

My observation is that PDF documents are treated as a possible image source. Which image is chosen initially is a question of special and rather hidden algorithms, discussed here several times. 

To have an impact about the displayed image in the snipped view you have to add only the wanted picture first. Look's like you can add more images when EN-server has added or build a thumbnail for this image. 

With web client it seems possible to remove all images (and PDF) to force EN-server for deleting a server based thumbnail picture. Then you can add all images and PDF in proper order to get the thumbnail you want. 

Thus this seems to have no influence for example on a mobile (OS) Client ore local databases. Look's like the small initial thumbnail is saved locally and will not be removed after deleting all pics. It will be (re-) displayed as soon as you add the first possible image source, including PDF, even of the image which has been source for the thumbnail isn't there any longer. 

[Tanja012 9]

It seems you are right! I just tried to create an new note, pasting the image in first.. then waiting patiently for the thumbnail to appear about a minute or so... then adding my pdf file... so far the thumbnail has stayed as the image..

conclusion..

every time you make a new note.. make sure to put in your wanted thumbnail in the note first and then wait till it shows before adding any other image sources.. while waiting you could fill out any text that you were going to... or use the time finding the pdf, image and so forth...

you would "simply" need to make it a habit to think what thumbnail as the very first thing when making the note..

the biggest problem would then be if you change your mind or forget.. you would have to make a new note, put in the thumbnail.. then copy paste the rest of the note.. and delete the old note.. what a hassle for a thumbnail..

Edit: To make it even faster I found that if you add the Title after the image then it updates immediately!

[HeBoIz 241]

Yes this works and is fine as long as you start writing your notes from scratch - but what if you just use the clipper and e.g. clip a full article for a recipe - including some advertisement.

This in my case in average leeds to a full bunch of images from wich a software based selected will be used as source to build and add an image preview. To get rid of a wrong or non wanted image preview you have to remove all images, wait and add the images in right order - including a break for letting EN-server build a new image preview for snippet view.

But this only works with web client. Any locally saved (wrong) image preview will remain.

My conclusion: These workarounds won't help and aren't sufficient. Best will be EN implements a functionality to select any existing image to be tranformed and displayed as preview image. (Just like you can do for example in in Trello). Shouldn't be to hard to develop...

[Tanja012 9]

I totally agree that they should implement it!! ASAP

as long as I see regular updates I'm thinking that they are working hard to make everyone happy.. I imagine that there are loads of wishes from loads of loyal users.. so I'm trying to make it work while I look forward to every update and keep telling them which issues we meet. It's like they are starting from scratch but with all the long developed demand.

I'm thinking IF your note "only" contain text and images... can't you then make a new note paste the thumbnail first, paste the title second(then you don't need to wait), then paste the whole note including images(ctrl+a) above the image.. then perhaps resize the thumbnail image so much that it almost disappears..

this is far from optimal, but it might work?

..also I know nothing of the web client.. I only use the pc program(editing) and the android app(viewing).

[ebenzer 0]

Now that we can resize how images appear, at least use the displayed size instead of the real dimensions. Thank you☺️

Convert PDF to JPG • Decimal to Binary 
https://convertertogenerator.com/

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https://howtodiscuss.com/
Through these sites you can share your thoughts with everyone and ask if you want to know about. These two sites will further enhance your general knowledge. you can also connected with others for free

[PaulaO 3]

I agree that this feature would be extremely welcome to put it mildly.  

I just wanted to point out that you can take advantage of the image getting "stuck" to the note even if removed.  When I get a note that doesn't use my preferred image (usually because I added it later), I use the following steps to "fix" it.

1. Create a new note.  
2. Copy and paste the image that I want for the snippet into the new note.
3. After a few moments, the snippet image loads.
4. Then I just copy the rest of the original note and delete the old one.

Sure, it's more work than simply clicking an image and selecting it but I found found it to be worth the effort to get the snippet image that I want.

[dayoan 0]

Same request here, especially as the thumbnail that shows up seems to be cast in stone. I remove the image from the note with another image, and the snippet continues to show the old thumbnail. There is no way for the thumbnail to be refreshed.

[Eduardo Estefano 89]

 Now that they have re-implemented the encryption edition, I have a feeling that this long lasting feature will be implemented soon. 

[Paul A. 620]

5 minutes ago, Eduardo Estefano said:

 Now that they have re-implemented the encryption edition, I have a feeling that this long lasting feature will be implemented soon. 

I admire your optimism.  I do hope you're right, because I think this is a nice quality-of-life feature.

[PinkElephant 8,103]

Could be the better solution, instead of turning ones face blue and purple.

My only (weak) explanation is that thumbnailing is a server function, and they don’t want users to mess with what the server does.

Not a good decision, especially for visually oriented users a good thumbnail is a real efficiency driver.

[Eduardo Estefano 89]

There are endless use cases. 
 

In my small office we use the Business edition. We have a note for each employee with info and related documents. How about having the person photo as the selected image? No, EN chooses whatever. 
 

other use cases: suppliers, events, products, etc.

[PinkElephant 8,103]

If it boggles your mind, you better get some antistress tea. 'cause I could be wrong, but I don't see it around the corner yet.

It was not done until now, for whatever reason. Most long running requests fall into the category of "never explained why not". If you want to comment on this to EN, use the feedback function build into the clients.

[gazumped 11,664]

On 7/1/2011 at 2:51 AM, marcelo said:

Can I somehow force Evernote to use a specific image as thumbail?

Actually,  the answer to the OP's question is actually 'yes'.  Just hide or delete other images from a note and the one remaining image will be shown.  Or play around with image sizes until the preferred image has the largest short edge.  Or put your preferred thumbnail in a separate note and add a link to the rest of the content in another notebook.  

The realities are that Evernote is what it is:  unless you're incredibly lucky and request a feature they're already working on,  you won't see this one added (if it ever is) for several months at the earliest.  If you can't live without it - go find some software that does what you need.  If you can live without it for the time being,  the request has been made in some style here with 450+ votes.  Constant reminders won't make it happen any sooner - please be patient!

[Carrie C 0]

Yo, Evernote! Please give us the ability to change thumbnail pictures. My health history has an embarrassing thumbnail of a rash that I would prefer to be hidden.

[gazumped 11,664]

On 11/20/2021 at 5:08 AM, Carrie C said:

Yo, Evernote! Please give us the ability to change thumbnail pictures. My health history has an embarrassing thumbnail of a rash that I would prefer to be hidden.

Save it as a zip file (with or without a password) and it's hidden...

[PinkElephant 8,103]

Or place it on a drive, and put a link to it into the note.

I like the zip-file better, because if you forget about the file and the link, you may loose the information one day.

If the thumbnail is already there, it is sometimes sticky and hard to remove. Better to create the note from scratch, copy all content but the incriminating picture, zip up the picture and add it separately to the note.

[emonterog 2]

In many scenarios this function is really REALLY! helpful... As a user and customer of evernote for several years, please give some attention to this request, should not be that hard to accomplish, Give user the option to chose which image will shown on each note. 

[gazumped 11,664]

8 hours ago, Theodor With said:

And give it yet another day to write a simple if/then clause to select either the automatically created thumbnail or the manually added one for display. So, in less than a week this could be fixed. It's not even complicated, it's simply another field in the metadata!

If that were the only thing they were doing,  I agree Evernote could probably change the necessary code more or less overnight.  However Evernote is a machine with lots of moving parts serving enough users worldwide to populate a medium size country.  I assume they have their own priorities and agenda.  Why should this be at the top of the heap?

[highchairdrama 14]

1 minute ago, gazumped said:

Why should this be at the top of the heap?

Must be quite the heap. If there's another app out there who's ignored user requests for a simple feature for over a decade, I'm unaware of it.

[gazumped 11,664]

1 minute ago, highchairdrama said:

If there's another app out there who's ignored user requests for a simple feature for over a decade, I'm unaware of it.

Evernote recently completed a multi-year project to completely rewrite the app to allow them to meet previous user requests and continue to develop new features.  Despite the number of requests here,  it's not a democratic process - it's Evernote's business,  and while they'll listen to requests,  they're not obliged (or may be financially or technically unable) to deliver.  Realistic alternatives are:  enjoy what they provide,  or find an alternative.

[gazumped 11,664]

19 minutes ago, highchairdrama said:

They're not technically unable to make this happen.

I'll have to defer to your superior knowledge of Electron and Evernote's code base on that.

[johnortt 26]

On 12/3/2021 at 10:48 PM, PinkElephant said:

No dev team will ever fulfill „all“ wishes of users, subscribers, wanna-bes and other stakeholders. If they did, the software would simply become unusable

That is not what is being asked for here and you are being disingenuous to suggest it.

We are asking for one feature (and have been for over ten years, and hundreds of posts).

Evernote keep implementing dozens of 'new features' which we don't want or need.  

This is the ONLY feature that matters to most Evernote users as is evident from the number of posts on this topic and the length of time this topic has been going.

I am extremely disappointed with Evernote's complete lack of customer support on this.

[PinkElephant 8,103]

@johnortt Oh boy, go look through the forum before posting.

There are hundreds (if not thousands) of feature requests, ranging from obviously very personal stuff like "I want an interface with this app (name your favorite, never heard of)", to threads like this with a broad reach. If each feature request would be implemented, the software would be unusable for sure. Even a fraction of them would kill any consistency.

About this thread: I have voted it up a long time ago, and I have always promoted it. I share with most users here the feeling it should be pretty easy to implement, and - opposite to many other requests - this one would only need resources once, when the thumbnail gets created or replaced.

[johnortt 26]

Okay, I might have exaggerated when I said "the only feature that matters to 'most' users". 

I do however feel it is the only feature that matters to a sizeable portion of Evernote's userbase (me included).
Looking at the feature requests, it is item 7 on the list and one of three that have been around since before 2012.

The software doesn't have to be perfect but customers do need to get the feeling that the developers are listening to them.  I am really fed up of this limitation now and every time I get a notification on this post (which leads to conversations like this) I start the hunt again for a viable alternative to Evernote.

Long story short - there are loads. and the only reason I am not jumping ship already is the learning curve and time it would take to migrate.

I just think this topic is long overdue a bit of love from the dev team.

On the subject of features:

The most recent version is 10.26.5. Released December 2, 2021.

NEW
...
Your default notebook will now have its own unique icon, so it's easy to spot while you're scrolling through your list. It's the little things.

Wouldn't it be great if ALL our important workbooks could have their own unique icon too (and one of our choice).

[highchairdrama 14]

On 12/3/2021 at 3:29 PM, gazumped said:

I'll have to defer to your superior knowledge of Electron and Evernote's code base on that.

In most contexts, a moderator facilitates a conversation and, when necessary, de-escalates tense exchanges. No one in this thread appreciates this kind of (consistent) hostility, much less from a moderator.

[gazumped 11,664]

45 minutes ago, highchairdrama said:

In most contexts, a moderator facilitates a conversation and, when necessary, de-escalates tense exchanges. No one in this thread appreciates this kind of (consistent) hostility, much less from a moderator.

Tempers always run hot in this sort of exchange,  which seemed to be running pretty much true to form up to this point.  If at any stage you feel that the comments made by a contributor (or moderator) are counter-productive,  you'll find a 'Report' option behind the three-dots menu on each post.  That message will get to the Evernote admins of the Forum who will consider your remarks and take any appropriate action. 

[hgdar 9]

I am a Premium subscriber. And I don't understand why I still can't choose my thumbnail. Most of the time, the chosen thumbnail is not the right one. It is really painful and annoying. I don't understand why such a small thing like being able to choose your thumbnail if the default one isn't suitable is still not possible. It is incomprehensible.
 

[PinkElephant 8,103]

On 12/6/2021 at 2:11 PM, johnortt said:.

…. Wouldn't it be great if ALL our important workbooks could have their own unique icon too (and one of our choice).

You mean, like this ? DIY …

[gazumped 11,664]

3 hours ago, hgdar said:

I am a Premium subscriber. And I don't understand why I still can't choose my thumbnail.

I'm not an employee,  so can't confirm a reason but Evernote:

• manages the largest repository of personal information on the planet - multiple petabytes of data.  None of that existing information has any code to allow a choice of image to be made.
• has 250M (approx) installed apps around the world.  All of them would need to be replaced with the 'choice' variant.
• already has an algorithm which selects a preferred image for best 'thumbnailability'.
• would have to rewrite their editor code,  test and release it - all of which costs considerable amounts of money - to resolve this for the 450+ users (.02% of 250M) who find this an issue.  

- a bit like trying to change the battery on a Tesla while it's on a racetrack.

[PinkElephant 8,103]

Don‘t know either. But the thumbnail is generated once, and then stored. And the thumbnail already exists, plus a process that generates it „in all cases“.

This probably makes it easier to implement than features that need to run every time the app is used. If there is no picture selected, do as always. Else: Right click on image, select as thumbnail, and the thumbnailing grabs that image, makes the thumb and nails it to the note.

Doesn’t sound like 🚀 science to me.

[johnortt 26]

4 hours ago, gazumped said:

I'm not an employee,  so can't confirm a reason but Evernote: ...

• would have to rewrite their editor code,  test and release it - all of which costs considerable amounts of money - to resolve this for the 450+ users (.02% of 250M) who find this an issue.  

Not entirely true - 450+ users, who know about this forum and are frustrated enough to complain about this (lack of a) feature.

I would be amazed if less than 25% of the user base found this feature useful (if implemented).

Also, as PinkElephant says, the thumbnail is generated only once normally. 
Shouldn't be a big deal at all to regenerate it based on the users preference.

More like reaching over to change the radio station in the Tesla while it's on a racetrack.

[johnortt 26]

4 hours ago, gazumped said:

I'm not an employee,  so can't confirm a reason but Evernote: ...

• would have to rewrite their editor code,  test and release it - all of which costs considerable amounts of money - to resolve this for the 450+ users (.02% of 250M) who find this an issue.  

This brings up an interesting consideration. 

I wonder how many of the 250M customers have bothered to register an account on this forum?

I would be surprised if it is 1% of the userbase..  With that in mind, how many people are represented by the people in this thread?

[gazumped 11,664]

59 minutes ago, johnortt said:

I wonder how many of the 250M customers have bothered to register an account on this forum?

The ones who're commenting on Twitter / Facebook / Reddit / Evernote's blog pages,  plus those in any surveys / focus groups probably are not.  However Evernote is well aware of the opinions being raised there.

I don't think requests here are necessarily any indication of how important an issue is.  That being said,  Evernote are a commercial operation - if they have any sense at all they'll concentrate on developing crown-pleaser features before niche items. 

Being commercial they also have to schedule things and manage workflows for most efficient use of resources - so "simple" updates affecting key processes might get left until that process comes up for its bi-annual (or whatever) review.  

Since no-one here is in possession of all the facts or the hands-on background it's pointless to claim one feature is more important than, or easier to implement than another.  Evernote will do what it thinks is likely to generate the most long-term income,  when it is most convenient for them to do so.

[CalS 5,280]

15 minutes ago, gazumped said:

if they have any sense at all they'll concentrate on developing crown-pleaser features before niche items.

The queen uses EN?  🤣

[gazumped 11,664]

1 hour ago, johnortt said:

Shouldn't be a big deal at all to regenerate it based on the users preference.

Sorry - missed that before:  I get that there are existing thumbnails. That have been created by code that's an integral part of the 250M-ish Legacy and EN10 apps out there.  I don't know what effect offering the user-base the chance to select a different thumbnail would have - presumably there would be a flurry of interest in 1) trying it out and 2) changing 'some' notes.  Bearing in mind that Evernote has a humungous existing storage I shudder to guess what sort of additional traffic would be generated by existing users over a period of weeks or months during its introduction.  I KNOW I don't even want to think about what happens if something goes wrong and users aren't able to get to their existing notes for any reason...

On this general argument I'm going to plead the 5th.  If adding this feature were possible and economic,  Evernote would have done it already.  The fact they haven't suggests that they have their reasons.  Users don't have a platform from which to apply any pressure - all we can do is vote with our cash.

[gazumped 11,664]

1 minute ago, CalS said:

The queen uses EN?  🤣

Oops - that would be crowd pleasing.  Dumb typos!  

[AlBabin 4]

Add me to the list of users that would like to select the thumbnail to be displayed in Snippets View.

 

[jrryj 0]

Seems like I'm not the only one experiencing this problem, Evernote sets some random old thumbnail as my note's thumbnail even though the picture isn't in the note, i have bypassed this by using bigger version of the picture but still this is dumb, we should have the ability to set thumbnails ourselves.

[brewhausmedia 1]

Just throwing in my vote. Would really love the option to set thumbnail image too. Used to use OneNote and tried a handful of other apps, but chose Evernote because it was more visual. 

[johnyboi 9]

No way, I can't believe that so basic and intuitive feature (right click -> make thumbnail) couldn't be implemented so far. It's not crucial for work, but it's one of these little obvious things, that make user experience ok.

[Steven Gauck 11]

The benefit of being able to select the thumbail picture seems self-evident, even as many users have provided examples.  I don't get why EN has not picked up on this.  I just created a Note capturing a product manual and purchase receipt for that product.  I would obviously like an image of the product (which is present in the note) to serve as the thumbnail photo.  What I got instead is a mockup image of a credit card from the purchase receipt.  Totally absurd and unhelpful.

[PinkElephant 8,103]

Maybe they do care, maybe they don’t.

If you want to promote any idea with EN PM, use the feedback function build into the clients. The place here is user2user.

[Amystoneus 21]

FWIW, I use the feedback function ad infinitum and ad nauseam. It’s as effective as this forum. Maybe someone in EN cares, but who cares if user requests and feedback are left to rot in plain view while new “updates” continue to roll out with staggering frequency and without any deference to user requests.

That said, I was able to change a note’s thumbnail instantly in Apple’s Notes app: https://www.cultofmac.com/524993/custom-thumbnails-make-apple-notes-easy-find/

Remarkably, this feature has been addressed, documented and implemented. Amazing! And it works across all devices! 

I was also able to import EN notes quickly and easily into Notes, with table structures and content preserved, as well as folder structure.

For those who are taking advantage of team collabs, task tracking, workflow streamlining, etc., there’s a strong competitor worth a serious look: https://www.notion.so/product
Here’s a comprehensive discussion of Notion’s many features pitted head-to-head with Evernote’s: https://medium.com/hackitus/evernote-is-dead-long-live-notion-2d953aec0a8c

It’s time we stop complaining and begging for EN’s attention when there are legitimate alternatives more worthy of our valuable time.

[PinkElephant 8,103]

Maybe EN outsourced reading the feedback to Siri ?

🤣

My assumption is that they follow their own timeline of still missing features, working down a long list, doing it as we experience it with the frequent updates in increments. So probably some feedback items will be integrated into stuff that‘s on the backlog anyhow, others will move to the „tbd“ section of the backlog, maybe burried there forever.

Ask Siri about it … ?

[naturale 17]

Me too request this feature to be able to choose which picture to show as note thumbnail.

[Crossstream 3]

Seriously. It amazes me how Evernote can be successful sometimes. 

This is such a simple feature that should have been executed 10 years ago! Of course you need to be able to chose what thumbnail you want the note to show. It has such great value for the USER (your paying customers), and still you don’t do it!!? What is the reasoning behind not executing on this? 

Also, is it right that the thumbnail changes based on size? If you create a note with only one image, I believe that image will remain the thumbnail no matter how many other pictures/formats you add afterwards, right? So a work-around is, if you know what thumbnail you want, to create a note with only that thumbnail and then add the rest of the content after saving it. But seriously, just fix it already! 

I have used Evernote since 2011 and paying customer most of the years. I would definitely recommend the product if you were just more customer-centric. At least explain why you haven’t/don’t want to make it possible to change thumbnail. 

[PinkElephant 8,103]

With legacy we think we had it sort of figured out. But controlling the thumbnail required some cutting to size, resizing etc. and was nothing to do for each note.

With v10 we are not sure any more. The safest way to get the thumbnail you want is a real PITA - if anybody knows a better one, please post it. And it is not completely reliable:

• Create a duplicate of the relevant note, but one without any attachments or pictures. Now place exactly the one item you want as thumbnail (preferably a picture) into it, and safe/close the note.
• Wait some time (a few hours, a day, …) until the picture shows as thumbnail. You can stick a „Tomorrow“ reminder to the note, to make following up easier.
• Once the thumbnail shows, you can enter more pictures and attachments - the thumbnail should stick.

Why is EN not changing this ? No idea - maybe because it is one of the magic functions running on the server, and maybe there it is old code, better to run untouched ? Just a theory, as good as any other.

[breensy 3]

I'm tired of looking at Emeril Lagasse's mug when I should be looking at Double Chocolate Chip Cookies!  Please let me change the picture.  Please.

 

[gazumped 11,664]

2 hours ago, breensy said:

I'm tired of looking at Emeril Lagasse's mug when I should be looking at Double Chocolate Chip Cookies!  Please let me change the picture.  Please.

 

If you can see his picture in the note,  convert it to a zip file;  if this is a web clip it may be just a link in the HTML code - in which event edit the note so it's mainly plain text and only includes the image(s) that you want.  While Evernote may some day include an option to choose the thumbnail,  it ain't going to happen until you've forgottem what chocolate chip cookies actually look like.  "Work arounds" may save your taste-buds...

[Boot17 1,449]

On 4/6/2022 at 4:09 AM, Crossstream said:

If you create a note with only one image, I believe that image will remain the thumbnail no matter how many other pictures/formats you add afterwards, right? So a work-around is, if you know what thumbnail you want, to create a note with only that thumbnail and then add the rest of the content after saving it.

I've found that this seems to work if you also get all your devices with Evernote to sync the note with just that one image first, otherwise the thumbnail for that note on the other device may be different!

One could say, "Come on! It has been 11 years already since this was first requested!" Which is true. But it's also true that v10 has been out for just over 1 year.

I get the impression from things that I have read and seen on this forum and elsewhere is that it was getting increasingly difficult to implement features consistently across all the platforms before version 10. In fact, we can see that a lot of things were not implemented consistently across the board on different platforms.

I really hope that this giving the user control over the thumbnail feature is one that can no be implemented soon due to the underlying infrastructure change. I would have rather features like this got pushed out before home widgets, task, and calendar integration, but ah well.

Here is hoping! Because this would really be a cool update to push out. (But if it doesn't ever happen, I'll probably be ok with that too because I've already started considering this as a lost cause and there are so many other features of Evernote that keep me here. The thumbnail is not a show-stopper for me.)

[naturale 17]

On 7/1/2011 at 8:51 AM, marcelo said:

I do like the new layout with larger thumbnails, except for one thing: Evernote seems to choose as thumbnail the largest image within a note. But it is rather annoying, for it seldom coincides with the image which would enable me to recognize a note at once. Can I somehow force Evernote to use a specific image as thumbail?

Marcelo

I hope Evernote add this feature too to be able to set which image to used as the thumbnail

[Muusmueli 0]

My top request. Please add to the road map. Preview of captured screenshots are almost useless now.
I like it as right click on any image in a note >>> "Take as Preview"-option and the ability to set it on a specific part (crop) of this image. The given ratio 1:1 shall be visible as a tiny border but the square must be sizeable. This in a overlay menu like the functionality of "Annotate this Image".

[Wheel of Time 0]

There is also a bug, it appears so that if you duplicate a note that has an image, replace the image with another (using copy/paste) after removing the original, then the snippet view still shows the old image even though it is not part of the note.  If you could choose, you could fix this that way.

[PinkElephant 8,103]

If it is a bug is open for discussion. Obviously the procedure to add a thumbnail runs only once, either when a note is created with a picture as content, or when the first picture file is added.

The main issue remains the inability to decide ourselves which thumbnail shows.

[Boot17 1,449]

On 5/8/2022 at 3:56 AM, Muusmueli said:

Preview of captured screenshots are almost useless now.

Yeah - what I think too. It's not my top hoped for feature update, but it's in the top 10.

[CatAllFather 0]

I've been a EN user for 8 years, premium user for 5 of them, asked this same request through feedback of the Beta version of the apps and desktop clients. Plus wrote emails and tried to find any possible workaround to get the thumbnail I want, but as you can see this is what ignoring your customers looks like. I been messing with Notion and I am really thinking of making the switch. I don't want to leave EN, but its frustration to the max level not being able to have simple aesthetic and organizational ques like a thumbnail, or getting ones I don't want popup and not be able to get rid of them cause it won't update. Notion looks like the way forward, idk, would love to hear anyone's feedback on that action. Damn it EN just figure it out! 

[gazumped 11,664]

3 hours ago, CatAllFather said:

as you can see this is what ignoring your customers looks like.

Or possibly costs too much / not technically feasible / planned for 2025 / not possible in all OS's...  there are many reasons why things may not happen - and this isn't a request show,  or even a pretend democracy.  Evernote do stuff to earn money.  Their choice which stuff.