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Bug: Document annotation with Apple Pencil laggy and unusable


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Anyone having an issue with handwriting - some letters, numbers, and marks disappear, leading to write and rewrite and rewrite.

The issue for me is in the letters M and S and A. Number 5. And some others, but these are the ones that I have noticed the most.

Specifically using iPad Pro and Apple Pencil.

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I'm experiencing the same issue. Specifically my cursive "o" and "a" when combined with a follow-on character, like "n" or "m". It is as if writing an o quickly in cursive equates to an undo gesture or something. This is a big issue for me!

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I just got an iPad Pro and Apple Pencil, and I'm having the same problem, especially when I write the letter 'a'. It's as if the app interprets the motion as an attempt to erase. But Evernote doesn't support a motion for erasing, like some other apps do. In another app I had to disable the "erase recognition" because every time I wrote an 'e', it thought I was zig-zagging to erase. But Evernote doesn't do that. Strange why my 'a' disappears sometimes -- especially if I write it quickly.

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I submitted a ticket but forgot to attach this screenshot. Pardon my messy handwriting but everything highlighted in red had to be rewritten several times because of this problem in which writing these characters seems to activate some undo/erase functionality. Here's a link to the image that I've hosted on my Dropbox account: https://www.dropbox.com/s/47z3ck9t5uc10ne/IMG_0006.PNG?dl=0

 

 

Thanks for adding that link! Can you tell me what ticket number you were assigned so I can snag that?

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 2 months later...

I encountered that the document annotation tool (more specifically the drawing / handwriting tool) is unusable in combination with Apple Pencil on the iPad Pro. At the same time inking is quite decent in the simple drawing environment, i.e. when there is no picture / PDF in the background. 

The problem can simply be described as follows: There is a substantial delay before a line starts drawing. Once the drawing starts, inking then seems to be reasonable but is still too slow to catch direction changes (e.g. the small "s" in "test" is just a straight vertical line instead of a curve in the attached screenshot).

This can easily be seen in the attached screenshot.

  • In black you see my three times intended "This is a test".
  • In red I tried to verify the delay theory. All red lines are supposed to start at the blue line. You can see the delay in the distance from the blue line depending on the drawing speed. You can also see that inking is okay once the line started drawing, i.e. there are no further gaps afterwards. 

It seems that the refresh rate of the annotation tool has not been adjusted with the iPad Pro update last fall. 

image.png

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  • 2 weeks later...

Still the most annoying thing ever. Paste popping up after my an and on's self-erasing is adding insult to injury! FIX THIS PLEASE! I've submitted two separate support tickets and posted YouTube videos and seen nothing as a result. :-)

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  • 2 weeks later...

I fully support this post. I have experienced the same issue as you have. I do hope that someone has a solution for this as it makes annotating documents impossible which is incredibly disappointing. I have emailed the support team regarding this and all they could offer was to delete and reinstall the app. Which did not work.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I support this post too.  Annotation (the built-in Skitch functionality) in the Evernote App on my iPad Pro is too laggy to be usable with an Apple Pencil.  I know it's possible to do better than this:  In frustration, I installed a few other iOS apps, and found a responsive PDF-annotation app within five minutes.  Pretty much everything I have is stored in Evernote, so please consider adding Apple Pencil support in a future Evernote iOS App release.

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I ended up trying OneNote with their Evernote import tool.  Doesn't have a specific place for tags and the attachments are read-only, but otherwise works well and even has a few other benefits. 

Apple Pencil works pretty well, and you can write on the actual notes instead of above/below them. 

Maybe when Evernote fixes the lag and the flexibility around where notes can be written, I'll come back. 

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It has been a while now, can any Evernote team members comment on this?

It really is something that is very disappointing and damaging to my productivity given how much energy and time I have invested in making Evernote my primary source of pdf/note storage. The addition of the Apple Pencil and iPad Pro should be music to Evernote's ears given the potential it has to make users all that bit more productive and efficient. So far I am yet to see, beyond split view, any such advancements.

I am both pleased and sad to hear that it isn't just me experiencing these frustrating bugs regarding annotations. The odd thing is that the drawing feature within a note works well, just that the annotations do not at all.

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As a subscribed premium user, I really want to ask for refund as one of the main reason for spending the money is for annotate on PDF. However the experience is really bad because i just can't write at all. Perhaps someone from evernote can show up here and explain a little bit.

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I completely agree with this... Annotating anything with the apple pencil on the ipad pro is ridiculous.  There is a huge lag and the only way around it is to slowly very slowly use the pencil which is a pain in the a** to say the least.  I've bought other apps that have better PDF annotation but I'm very disappointed at evernote.  I have a premium account and I keep my life in evernote, that's how much I love them, but their competitors are racking up features that is starting to make evernote look incompetent.

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  • 3 weeks later...
On April 17, 2016 at 7:52 AM, wjpreston said:

It has been a while now, can any Evernote team members comment on this?

It really is something that is very disappointing and damaging to my productivity given how much energy and time I have invested in making Evernote my primary source of pdf/note storage. The addition of the Apple Pencil and iPad Pro should be music to Evernote's ears given the potential it has to make users all that bit more productive and efficient. So far I am yet to see, beyond split view, any such advancements.

I am both pleased and sad to hear that it isn't just me experiencing these frustrating bugs regarding annotations. The odd thing is that the drawing feature within a note works well, just that the annotations do not at all.

I completely agree with wjpreston. I am also asking for a response on when I will be able to annotate JPEGs and PDFs with Apple Pencil/iPad Pro on my Evernote App.

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Fully agree with all that has been said as another frustrated Premium user. The feature set in Notability is the best for annotating docs ' PDFs and switching between sketching, typing etc. This is what I would like to see in Evernote. Love the snap to features for shapes but why can that not be over the top, or along side an existing PDF instead of as a separate object?

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  • Ex Employees

Hi all, I wanted to drop in to let everyone know that we are definitely aware that there are issues with annotating PDFs using Apple Pencil. We're looking into improving this in future updates. Stay tuned!

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Could the solution be to hire someone from OneNote??

I would love to use Evernote but the lack of support for Apple Pencil, and no direct markup on documents, leaves me to use the otherwise inferior OneNote.

An expected fix date would be a benefit?

Peter H

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Has anyone from Evernote come back on this - as a premium member of evernote and an office 365 subscriber, I love evernote handsdown over onenote; however I am forced to use onenote due to this issue. 

 

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Agreed. This makes Everrnote unusable for all my usage. I will need to switch to OneNote, which I would have preferred not to do. I see that this has been a continuing problem for many months with no resolution despite screenshots, YouTube videos of the problem, etc. This is not a good sign for customer support and leads me to wonder if Evernote is in decline, which then leads me to wonder about its long-term viability as opposed to Microsoft which, despite certain negative aspects, isn't going to go away. Ticket is #1636783

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+1. I'm currently having to export PDFs to notability, edit, then reimport. Completely negates the convenience of Evernote. PLEASE FIX. The thing is, Apple Pencil works fantastically when you're just sketching a note. I'm confused as to why the same engine can't be applied to PDF annotation. 

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  • Ex Employees

Hi again - thanks for everyone's continued posts, it definitely makes us more aware of how many people are affected by this. Our PDF annotation tool is built separately, which is why the behavior is different when annotating a PDF vs. just sketching directly into a note. Our developers are actively looking into this and I will keep updating this thread as more progress is made. 

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  • 3 weeks later...
On June 9, 2016 at 2:23 PM, chaffinr05 said:

Evernote team. Any update on this? Please see notability for how pdf makeup is supposed to behave. I will be forced to abandon Evernote and my premium subscription if this is not addressed soon on the iPad Pro. 

Evernote team, is there any update? I purchased Premium couple of days back, now would like to get refund - it works awfully with PDF annotation. [im using IPad Pro and Ipencil]

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  • 4 weeks later...

Okay this is beyond a joke... considering annotating PDFs is a large part of going premium, in fact a lead selling point, you really are really letting the app down. I would go as far as to say misleading buyers. I am exhausted of Evernote rolling out slight new changes to pointless things on the App when they ignore the crucial issues - like this. It is so so frustrating. You now have increased your prices and yet fail to offer any more value to the customer which is the number one rule in business when increasing prices.

Secondly Evernote fail to support key apps such as Penultimate. The app has been plagued with usability flaws for well over a year regarding cut/paste lasso tool and the non-existence of shape tools or basic lines. Seriously Evernote, I love the concept, the theme and the way you have set your suite of apps up - but you lack in execution in key areas. Fix these things and then the increase you have recently brought about will be okay - just about.

Seriously if you can't fix the Apple Pencil pdf annotation bug - when every app in the App Store has managed to implement such a feature in their note app fine - you're letting yourself down. 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Please do so! I forgot to mention using Apple Pencil in my ticket with the Apple Pro. Extremely disappointing. The note taking feature even works better in the notes themselves. Just transfer that to the annotation section and you would have an improvement.

#1778903

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I just bought Evernote premium few days ago and was excited to try the annotation with my Apple Pencil...however it was really disappointed..as everyone described, it's not sensitive at all and at first I even thought there's something wrong with Apple Pencil. Another thing is when I want to add a dot to letter 'i', it won't allow me to do that instead giving me a delete or move function. Please help us to fix these issues ASAP! 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Adding my frustration here! I really wish we could get some visibility as to when this issue will be resolved. Before our patience runs out. I use iPad Pro with Apple Pencil and annotating PDFs is just a nightmare!

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  • Ex Employees

@Talsaleh @Ling340 @nick70 Hi folks, thanks again for your patience on this. Good news - 7.16 just went live, and we believe that the issue is addressed in this update! Once on this version, you should notice a significant improvement in annotating PDFs with the Apple Pencil. Please test this out and keep us posted!

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4 hours ago, annah said:

@Talsaleh @Ling340 @nick70 Hi folks, thanks again for your patience on this. Good news - 7.16 just went live, and we believe that the issue is addressed in this update! Once on this version, you should notice a significant improvement in annotating PDFs with the Apple Pencil. Please test this out and keep us posted!

Thank you Annah for the update. I can confirm that this update has now landed in the store and I am using it. I am delighted to say that there have been significant improvements to annotation which is sigh of relief to many.

I will say though, sadly, it still isn't great. In comparison to the sketch note tool (I know you have stated these are separate pieces of code) it still doesn't compare. There is still occasionally a delay in the first contact of the Apple Pencil. Also I am not a fan of the app straightening/smoothing the edges of my handwriting the way it does, it stops fluent writing such as seen in the sketch note part of the app. I'd also like to see a lasso feature to select and move annotations instead of the writing being grouped without my control over it. Think how Penultimate works (or should work as that app too isn't great for selecting writing  *cough* *cough*).

 

So yes, thank you for releasing this update it certainly is a respite from the previous shocking functionality. However, I am sure the rest of the community still have some more to desire when it comes to PDF annotations, particularly when other apps seem to have no issue with this. I hope work into improving this is continued. Thank you though for doing what you have already.

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thanks Annah 

update 7.16 goes into the right direction. but pdf annot. with apple pencil is still not as smooth and direct as in the sketch note tool. (sketch notes in my opinion work just great!!)

please improve pdf annotation further.

cheers nick

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  • 4 months later...

Thinking of buying an iPad and Apple Pencil specifically because I have so many PDFs in Evernote that I need to annotate as I begin studying for comps. Can I get an update from you all? On a grad student budget here--but it's worth it for me if all's working smoothly at last.

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On 11/26/2015 at 1:14 AM, pastorjamie said:

Anyone having an issue with handwriting - some letters, numbers, and marks disappear, leading to write and rewrite and rewrite.

The issue for me is in the letters M and S and A. Number 5. And some others, but these are the ones that I have noticed the most.

Specifically using iPad Pro and Apple Pencil.

Unfortunately still not functioning properly. It has improved but still inferior. 

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Yup.  Just bought a new iPad and Apple Pencil to lose my physical notepads in favor of electronic 'writing.'  Auditioning Evernote and OneNote. I was strongly favoring Evernote until it began to erase half of every other word I wrote. Going with OneNote. The handwriting function is flawless and it allows for a lined paper look which helps keep me straight. 

Glad I did not get too far before I discovered this flaw. Anyone wanting to e-handwrite needs to skip Evernote. Pass it on. 

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I tried both as well but OneNote requires syncing through the Microsoft server and it literally took 3-4 hours to upload 3 pdfs, which averaged about 40 pages each. I fought with their system for over a month really trying to like it but it if you're a busy person that needs to really utilize their time OneNote will only frustrate you and waste a TON of your time. 

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  • 1 year later...

[iPad + Apple Pencil] [Premium member]

Hola, Evernote. Granted -- my life is so engrained to Evernote that I'll use it  regardless of whether annotation works.

Having said that, the feature is unusable, and I need to annotate stuff every day. I've attached pictures of notes taken during class -- each one of them took at least 5 attempts, each of which consisted of redrawing at least one letter ("s", "o", "a", "g", "d," "p", "u," and "e" are particularly difficult).

I now annotate pdfs on GoodNotes and export them to Evernote.

Please, would you let us know when this will be fixed?

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