Brian Handscomb

One "platform specific enhancement" I was thinking about was AppleScript... I've seen a bunch of people mourn the loss with v10... Not something I personally used though... I thank the author of YARLE, which let me see Obsidian/Joplin with "my data", and though I'd say neither quite matches original Evernote in doing what it did well each has their good points and I have seen about 8 months "life after Evernote". It was a good 12 years of subscribing, plus 8 months or so knowing I could always look back on Evernote to see what the original note looked like. I think my fave version of Evernote was Mac v5 - even simple things like the dividing line between the note title and note content but a lot of other little bits of UI just seemed better..... But a couple of macOS updates ago put the end to that... Had to jump to v7... Crud, wasn't going to post any more ;)

Looks like they are applying "bans" for the Evernote equivalent of browser user agents - sad days. Always thought the Ian Small (?) led plunge into turning EN into effectively a "web app" was wrong. Some may think EN chose the correct path and I would say you are entitled to think that... I would've liked a move to Qt if they just wanted to unify codebases as that would've provided the ability to preserve some platform specific enhancements but I guess JavaScript developers are more numerous?? After a brief "OMG this is horrible" introduction to v10 on one machine, quickly going back to the old app on Mac I watched as v10 launch farce unfolded, and later the mess made with "real time editing", the opposite of what a lot of people wanted, a manual sync button. I started to jump ship moving my "daily diary" notes to Obsidian barely days before EN told their staff they were moving operations to a different country, almost as if there was something in the air. After a few weeks my more complicated notes ended up in Joplin and I've barely looked back... Couple of months later I cancelled my 12 year subscription leaving myself with free account "just in case"... Both work with local data even though they are Electron too, but they work well and both have sync, so I'm actually paying more but I know my data remains mine, constantly available... Going to remember to unfollow this topic now... So long and thanks for all the elephants...

I didn't even know about this change until reading the discussion board which I only visit every couple of months... Reminds me of the 10.x rollout which was released WAY before it was ready and Evernote only ever addressed the issue on desktop with "Legacy", never mobile.

The "Legacy" apps are high performance native apps with access to local resources e.g. you can have local notebooks if you want or you have notebooks synced with the Evernote online system. Third party apps can use published APIs to sync, so I used that to use Evernote on Linux. The Electron apps in comparision feels like you are only "borrowing" your data, and no option for local only notebooks, naming just one missing feature. I can't at this point imagine the @agsteele doom and gloom legacy sync turning off scenario, as I mentioned there are publicly documented APIs. What will happen is OS changes will gradually impair the applications to run. I loved Evernote 5 on Mac and I clung to that as long as I was able. Version 6 was a mess IMHO so I pretty much jumped from 5 to 7 (pre legacy) when OS changes meant Evernote 5 would no longer launch without crashing. The green elephant 7.14 just about still works on Sonoma (just launched to try) but enhibits the same windowing quirks of running on Ventura. I don't agree with the way Evernote is targetting/nagging users to go from "legacy" and pre-legacy clients to version 10.x and reportedly removing the old application. What if a user has local notebooks? The upgrade nag does not mention the lack of this feature and users could/will lose access. This is IMHO a MAJOR error and omission from Evernote especially with the removal of the download links to the grey elephant legacy apps. I would guess these days not only are the developers of the native apps no longer with Evernote I suspect most of the original developers of the Electron apps have gone too so I think sadly would be even harder to pull the code out of mothballs to make updates. I just really wish Evernote had gone for using Qt to developi the apps a few years back which should have allowed them to create common code for the various app as well as some platform specific code if they wanted to provide native OS functionality. Today I have cancelled my subscription (been subscribed since mid 2011) having barely now used Evernote in past six months, instead using apps with local storage/database support as I have previously used my green elephant to export and migrate all my data. I hope Legacy continues to work for everyone that uses and relies on it, to the limits of OS compatibility.

Back in February 2021 I made a note that I had looked at Joplin, Standard Note and Obsidian and really didn't like any of them. Fast forward two years... I started "test driving" Obsidian with my "daily diary" notes on 19 June (simple text only notes) my incentive being switching my personal phone from Android (where I had an old EN app) to iOS. Think I first tried iOS then Mac desktop app of Obsidian. Early test with that day's note seemed "promising". Notably for this use case there is a "core plugin" in Obsidian that is designed to make a daily note named with the day's date. Been doing that manually in Evernote for almost four and a half years by that point, sometimes even getting the date wrong. I noticed the Obsidian Sync service is certain a little quirky on iOS - one way to guarantee a sync is to close the note and re-open it. I don't see the issue that often. I have no idea how well the other half of my Evernote note collection will transfer (some have formatting, or embedded pictures/files), or even if Obsidian will be my note taker of choice long term. It could for example eventually be Joplin. Since starting my "test drive" of Obsidian I have had an EXTREMELY basic quick look at Joplin - in some ways I prefer it, in others less so. I know for "local storage" Joplin builds a "database" (SQLite I believe) containing your content where Obsidian (on desktop) is basically an open folder with a file per note meaning you can take your notes anywhere. Joplin has a visible formatting bar though. In one of my notes Obsidian had trouble when I pasted in a Windows file path and the backslashes didn't display after an edit to the note. Joplin "imported" the Obsidian note and the display was fine meaning it was just a display issue. At the moment still using Evernote for my "reference" notes (about 900 of them I think), but haven't created a new note in a month and only edited 7 (mostly using NixNote2). There it a lot of "doom and gloom" predictions about "Legacy" stopping working soon (notably not from Evernote), but personally I am not too worried. For one thing at least one copy of my notes are in a "local database" maintained by a non Evernote client which uses the published API that I don't think has changed in the last couple of years. Tempting to spin up another third party client I know about (Quentier) to get ANOTHER independent local copy. I've successfully played with that a little in the past and it is available for Linux, Mac and Windows.

Various comments about "people on Legacy don't know there's a new version" I would suggest likely is the polar opposite of the actual situation. I suspect if people really do have "Legacy" it is a very deliberate move to avoid v10... Based on the current problems where people are losing data I thing the nag prompts (daily, couple of times a day sometimes?) are INCREDIBLY badly timed and should be stopped... IMHO... YMMV... etc

Based on what I've read in recent days about people losing data in EN v10 I am more than happy that I stuck with older version, except the hour-ish with a Mac v10 and maybe a few days with v10 on an iPad but didn't use and uninstalled when I realised (never really used it) The irony being right when there are a bunch of sync issues and data loss issues EN is pushing legacy (and pre-legacy) users to "upgrade" - would say now is definitely NOT the time to switch. I'm "test driving" Obsidian and last time I put in any research v10 had export limits so if I HAD switched I would NEED old versions to export as I have several "diary" notebooks with 360+ notes (usually a note a day, occasionally two)... Test export (to ENEX) of a notebook with about 170 notes converted perfectly well with YARLE. Home? Widgets? Tasks? Links? Not interesting for me... For me right now it seems like too much effort on "new and shiny" and the core functionality of being a NOTE app is being compromised. Now if I could only stop those nag boxes when I use an official client (mostly Mac) then I'll be as happy as when I use NixNote2 on my personal "daily driver" Linux laptop which is where in the past three or four years about half of my Evernote usage has been - probably about five years of almost exclusive Mac usage before that, which reminded me of how un-Mac like v10 seemed when I looked at it.

Looks like the update nag is daily now (if left running) or every launch. Which I'm not liking. It does actually include the version reference. Or at least my just pre-legacy one does (7.14, not 7.14.1).

Have just seen the same update banner appear on my 7.14 (just pre Legacy) Mac Evernote which has update notices turned off... Thankfully I read everything carefully...

EN says member since June 2011, interestingly my "Welcome to Evernote" note is dated 9 April 2010, but guess that's just the date they had last edited that welcome note. Earliest personal note I can find is 16 June 2011.

I'm not against a company advertising an upsell if there is a cut price promotion, what I am against is being shown this in multiple different ways in multiple places multiple times.... ONCE is enough! Never seen this type of spam in MANY years of using Evernote (started April 2010 according to the "Welcome to Evernote" note still in the initial notebook created).

Nice trick with sidebar... For the keyboard shortcut lovers, Command-Option-S twice.... Great for the people (like me) that think v10 is still a toy and adds nothing they find useful to their experience and that a real local desktop app (with Internet sync) is better that a web app with an offline mode. I've lived with this niggle because my only Ventura OS is a MacBook Air that my employer owns. The bug doesn't affect smaller EN windows as much.

I always said if a MacOS update prevented me using Legacy (or oldest "still green" v7) I would look at an alternative client rather than v10... Quentier is a Qt based client available for Linux, Windows and Mac which I've "run up" a couple of times in the past - no idea on Ventura compatibility... For now I'm still using Legacy/v7 on Mac (though my daily driver is a Linux laptop with NixNote2) and yes on Ventura there is this UI bug... I think smaller windows don't show it (or not as much) but I've not tested comprehensively... For what is hopefully a simple fix I'd love some kindly Mac developer (if there are any still at EN) to spin up Xcode see if they can provide a UI fix... Probably never gonna happen...

Currently I (now) have Legacy on an Apple laptop and an Apple desktop (Intel Mac mini) and have "fixed" the non-Evernote green icon with a little "copy paste" on the Get Info... Very pleased you can still do this trick that I used back in the "System 7" days... The old "squarish" green icon fits better alongside Apple's icon IMHO. I also have the last pre-legacy Windows version on a Windows machine (which I barely use) and last pre-10 Android app on my personal phone... iOS I did upgrade "by mistake" on an iPad not long after "v10" came out, regretted it and uninstalled... I just don't use it on iPad any more due to the "refusal" to offer the old app even renamed Legacy as Evernote did for the "computer" apps. Somewhere I may have a device with the old version but EN is "dead to me" on Apple iOS. I rarely miss it. On Linux I have one of the forks of NixNote2 installed. This and the Android app are probably 80% of my usage and guessing maybe 19% "Mac" and 1% Windows. If Legacy breaks (very happy to report it launched after pushed my work laptop to macOS Ventura) then I've eyed up Quentier which is cross platform using I believe the same Qt based code base across Mac, Windows and Linux. Of course as of yesterday the interest will be what will happen under "Bending Spoons"... I could be looking to "move" my database if "bad things" happen which as people have mentioned is where "Legacy" versions are so much better than v10 regarding backups, etc. Time will tell...

The "proper app" versions included a Spotlight plugin, proper local copies of your data etc which made this possible. With v10 Evernote just threw this away. Sadly with Mac OS updates since ENv7 this has gradually become more and more broken, but had EN kept developing proper apps I feel sure they would have solved this and we would've had a better product. IMHO. Other opinions may vary.

There are currently three web versions of Evernote (vaguely called new, previous and classic) - If you go to your Account Summary you should be able switch to a different version which may or may not help if the version your account is set to is acting up. I don't know if everyone has access to every version but it is worth investigating.

Currently mostly using a mix of: Evernote non Legacy v7 (green icon is easier to find on dock) on work "test" laptop running Big Sur (app works though has some annoyances more to do with v7 than OS conflicts I think, and "helper" apps are sometimes a bit unhappy and crash); Evernote v8 on my Android 8 phone; NixNote2 on a Linux laptop; Sometimes use a non Legacy Windows v6 app but rarely; Just recently had the pleasure of spending a couple of days a week back in the office rather than working from home where my main computer is a Mac mini with Mojave and has a copy of Evernote v5 (IMHO best version on Mac) which I know works up to macOS Catalina but NOT on Big Sur. Until "covid" EN v5 Mac was what I used most. I have very very briefly played with Quentier, a for now fairly basic cross platform (Mac, Windows and Linux) client using the Qt framework sometimes described as "public alpha" by the developer, but appears to work. NixNote2 is built with same framework but has primary focus on Linux with Mac and Windows support going in and out of fashion depending on whatever developer forks and maintains the code. Development of Quentier is somewhat slow but ongoing. Might be something I start using in the future. Have tried many of the "complete alternatives" listed throughout the forum but have either had technical issues (so much use of Electron framework) or had major personal preference issues in term of the UI, sometimes again related to so many of them using the Electron framework...

Evernote 10 is a rewrite in JavaScript with Electron (one of a few different JavaScript "containers") as the means to run that JavaScript code. It does this with an embedded copy of the Chromium browser as the engine, a less Google-y version of Chrome that's allowed to be used in that way. As a result developers are "held hostage" to the framework for platform support breaking beyond normal "limitations" of JavaScript within a browser, i.e. if a new OS feature comes out out something like Apple's M1 chips happen then app developers cannot do anything about it until the framework adds support. Last I checked "mobile" builds of Electron were experimental or even unofficial at best and only Mac, Windows and Linux are first class platforms with Evernote not really interested in one of those three. IMHO something like Qt allowing native compiles on all the platforms would've been better if they wanted a single code base (for all but web app) but this is straying away from the question...

For the first two and a half months of 2020 the v8 Android app was probably the app I used second most (behind a v5 Mac app) using it every day and I found it perfectly fine... Web seemed fine too on the occasions I used it, which I admit wasn't often... Actually last I tried I found I can't use the new web app, just wouldn't load at all for me, so I have myself set to one of the TWO other web versions... just checked and I have it set to "classic" as opposed to either "previous" or "new"... Perfectly usable...

There are a lot of official versions of the desktop clients you can download just by finding announcement posts on this forum... When I get back to working in my actual office I'll be happily "reverting" to using the installed v5.x Mac client for at least a while longer, and my personal Android phone has a v8.x client I think (thankfully can't run any v10)... These have been perfectly stable and usable for a very long time (Mac v5 a very very very ling time) and in terms of the Evernote service I would be VERY surprised if something broke them... But... I know v5 Mac breaks on Big Sur (crashes on launch), and v6 isn't that much better (some note lists don't work and the editor is odd), but it's not Evernote breaking these, it's the underlying OS... v7.x is okay, though every so often one of the helper apps crashes, but the app itself is as "okay"... Just same bunch of annoyances that I've had when trying v6/v7 before... tables that auto size to just a bit wider than edit window for example... No boundary between the note title and note content... There are a few other third party apps using EN's API I have my eye on, so when my Mac life turns Big Sur throughout I'll probably switch away from official Mac apps... Found two that use Qt to allow multiple platforms to be based on the same code (one on EN's arguments for the rewrite) and I already use one on Linux... Wish EN had gone down the Qt route as I believe that could allow Mac, Windows, iOS and Android apps to be built from the same compiled code, leaving just the web client as "different"... For people who point to the release "velocity" by the way, including EN themselves, I'm one of those people that think it's a bad thing... IMHO... I would much rather a heavily properly tested FEATURE COMPLETE release once or twice a year than a series of hasty half-baked releases... Let me get used to things... Along those lines... the "Home" feature... released as a "starting place", so still work in progress as I understand it, and in the FAQ is the question, can I disable it? No says the answer... Remember Context? A "missing feature" for some in v10... Introduced in v5.7 IIRC and for me it added clutter to the window so I turned it off... fancy that... a feature added that you can disable simply by going to the application preferences window...

Nested notebooks IMHO don't "make sense" (a book inside a book) and very quickly raises complications, but I could imagine the scenario where you might have a group of books that you could "collapse" like a folder in a file system navigator and you could maybe put groups into groups if you really wanted, and from a tech point of view you'd add a piece of metadata to the notebook called "parent" which old clients could ignore, then make a new class of object for the groups. Providing clients ignore unknown metadata fields (or maybe the API has a way of telling whether or not to include that bit of data) it should be possible to implement without breaking old clients. By having groups ONLY containing groups and notebooks you avoid breaking and complicated issues like notebooks and notes at the same level inside the same container...

A few days ago saw Mac 7.14 (non Legacy) pop up a big message saying this version was no longer receiving updates and it was time to upgrade to a new version... Dismissed it and went to double check the update check option... still disabled... Seems like even pre "Legacy" they at some point implemented a sneaky "back door" update notification system... Might be time to investigate the "robert7" fork of NixNote2 which uses Qt... I already use it on Linux (alongside old official Mac, Windows and Android clients, not so much iOS now). From the About Qt blurb... "Qt provides single-source portability across all major desktop operating systems. It is also available for embedded Linux and other embedded and mobile operating systems." Imagine if Evernote had decided to go down this route, rather than start with "hey what we need to do is re-write Evernote in a interpreted language rather than a compiled one - we're sure people won't notice it getting slower..."

Part of me still hopes EN "does a Winamp"... A huge amount of time was spent totally rebuilding Winamp and when Winamp3 came out a lot of people found it was unstable and missing features (sounds familiar) and went back to version 2... The Winamp devs took stock of the situation and went back to the version 2 core code for a couple of minor revisions before releasing a version 5 based on version 2 with some new features of version 3 re-built to work with the version 2 code. I think maybe "less than single digit" percent chance of EN following that route as they've "admitted fault" but are pressing on with their new code base (plus they are in a bit of a different situation) but it shows it is not unheard of for total rebuilds to be classed as "oops, we dun goofed" and abandoned in favour of older code by developers. In the back of my mind I've toyed with the idea of making my own app, maybe with one of several cross platform solutions I've used before, or toyed with, or just thought about toying with (wxWidgets, GTK, IUP, Mono, Qt) - unlikely but in my mind I believe I could do it with 90%+ of the code being the same on all the desktop platforms I use (Mac, Windows, Linux). At least some of these fully support mobile app development too (Electron seems less official) and IMHO would've been a far better route to get a mostly unified code base with the exception of web code. Real code for real machines, web code for web. For now I'm mostly on classic (not legacy) apps downloaded from official Evernote forum release announcements with the odd bit of API based third-party action. Also an old version on my Android phone that won't run a version of Android that EN supports making it safe from "upgrade". If that stops being an option I'm outta here.

Very nice and have looked at this before but I wish there was an option "not an Electron app". There are plenty of ways to do cross platform apps with "real code" rather than write a bunch of HTML, CSS and JavaScript... Qt, GTK, wxWidgets, Mono, IUP (I've at least tried most of these myself). The lure of writing a web app and magically creating a desktop app is too great for many people. Even Microsoft have gone down that dark path in recent years...

IMHO they should "republish" the old mobile apps, under a different name if needed rather than fall back on "oh the application stores don't let us give you an old version of the existing app" excuses. I've managed to dig up a couple of old iPads and the older EN versions that were on them is wonderful in comparison and totally removed V10 apps from newer devices, not that I used mobile apps that much. My personal phone is running an older version of Android so is "safe" from getting V10 as far as I'm aware.