CyberBaratna

Thanks for the DEVONthink suggestion, PinkElephant - will try the 30 day free trial. Looks like a good option so far for Mac - $99 for Standard version, $199 for Pro, and $499 for the organization-focused "Server" version. Evernote premium is $8/month, so if you use it for a year, you're already going over the DEVONthink Standard cost. While I'd love it if Evernote brings back the local notebooks, if they're just going to stay full-cloud all-the-time, DEVONthink seems to have similar features and they pretty clearly planted their flag on giving users security flexibility with the quote below from their main page: https://www.devontechnologies.com/apps/devonthink.

I understand that Evernote can offer some pretty cool additional features with a bunch of processors crunching pattern-recognition programs against my notes up in Evernote's cloud: the programming language recognition and color-coding, extracting text from images (like screenshots) for search, etc. Those features are really cool, but so are the really basic things that you don't need their cloud for like image resizing and indexing basic text for search across your notebooks (try it now on a local notebook in Evernote Legacy disconnected from the Internet - you can search against stuff you just typed). I kid you not, finding features like basic image resizing in Evernote competitors has been like pulling teeth... see a recent convo on this below about the Bear tool. The critics say Bear is "beautiful" and "elegant", but when I stick a screenshot in there, it fills up my whole screen like I'm trying to play PS5 on a TV from the 70s. To resize, you have to lower the resolution separately - which isn't tough but obviously slows you down. And the Evernote alternatives that are more focused on developers? Try dropping a screenshot - a lot will just say "[Screenshot1.jpg]" or something derpy like that and not actually render the image. I've been using Evernote's local notebooks for years - and sure it's a trade-off whether we want more security on a notebook or more features on it, but at least we had that freedom to choose.

Do you guys know if there's any way to continue using the new Evernote application and still have notebooks that don't sync to Evernote's cloud? I mean, maybe they have Evernote for offline clouds that you can install on a corporate server or something? At the very least, that would allow a cybersecurity team to collaborate and still keep those notes close-hold.

Hey Evernote, I totally get it - being able to sync your stuff between devices using the cloud is wonderful, and Evernote is very confident in its security... but sometimes there's stuff that the Evernote app handles really well that you just shouldn't put on the cloud: sensitive IT admin stuff, stuff on airgapped malware forensics environments, financial stuff, stuff for freelance projects where your client isn't comfortable with the cloud. Local notebooks have been great for these things, because they remain in your full control on your devices and don't require Internet access. And it really kills me that local notebooks are being dropped in the "Legacy" category to be phased-out (https://help.evernote.com/hc/en-us/articles/209005107-Convert-local-notebooks). I'm a cybersecurity person and have been a paying Evernote customer for years, but unfortunately, this change is enough to make me look for alternative note-taking apps. As far as I can tell, there aren't any that render screenshots, embedded documents, code, etc as well as Evernote, but if none of Evernote's products (the free version, the paid version, the business version) offer notebooks that won't get sucked up into the cloud as soon as I connect to the Internet, it won't matter - I'll still have to go to the second or third solution when the Legacy Evernote is gone. Come on Evernote, you folks must have other customers in my situation - just keep the local notebook option please!!!