Search the Community

Is there a way to increase the recording quality? Or can anyone suggest an alternative app that records in higher quality, for example in mp3 format? I use Evernote to record music ideas on my phone, but the audio is really compressed and so you can't hear the music very clearly. I just want an app where I can record and easily organise ideas. The recording does not need to be super high quality, but Evernote is really compressed. A 4 minute audio file is about 100KB. When I record using the default recording app on my phone, the quality is much better. I have attached an example of one of my recordings below so you can hear how bad the sound quality is. (I have converted the file to mp3 so you can hear it, but this is pretty much how the original file sounds when played in Evernote). 10_Jan_2018_I_can_t_think_straight.mp3

With each new version in the last year or two I've received little of value in the upgrades yet I've seen an annoyingly large drop in quality and usability where it counts. Simple note editing has gotten more buggy. For example, encryption features are worse than when it began. My mac and iphone cannot even read my encrypted notes anymore, only on Windows. I've lost encrypted notes a couple of times and had to go back to history. I can't add a hyperlink into an encrypted note anymore because as soon as the link dialog pops up the crypt collapsed and the link goes outside. None of this was an issue before. The suggested notes that keeps popping up at the bottom alters the view of the current note and is also *very* disrupting to flow. A nice feature, pretty, and I bet it took a lot of developer hours to implement but with no consideration to how it disrupts the user flow I had to disable it - wasted time that could have been spent fixing bugs. I am a developer, so I bet like most devs, Evernote's devs are more excited about working on new features than spending time getting the existing and oft used stuff working better. We've all heard the Pareto's Law (80/20 rule). All these features are in the 20% used category and are causing regressions on the quality of the features we use 80% of the time. This is where I felt Apple was great in the past, they focused on that 80% of what is used and spent twice as much time making it perfect as say Windows would, so everything is well thought out....not as much superfluous features but each feature a masterpiece. I need to return to version 4.2 or something. That brings up another point, every install/upgrade still fails with an error! I have to go find the MSI deep in my profile temp folder and execute it manually. Been that way since 4.4. Lot's of people are in the same boat here...why hasn't this been fixed? Kind of critical isn't it? Sure, there have been some cool features added - like the Chat, better Notebook sharing, etc. I've converted a number of people to Evernote in the past, including my business partner so better interaction with friends was wanted. I was looking forward to these new features yet I find they came and I haven't needed them as much as I expected. Rather than reap the rewards of these features I can't get over the loss of quality to the core product. I used to be a product evangelist. Now I no longer recommend Evernote to anyone and that is sad. My converts are saying the same thing so only my business partner is left anyway. I love new features, but not if they are breaking old and needed functionality. I'm a premium user, if the quality of Evernote's usability continues to fall over the next year I am abandoning it for something else. Please work making the core better. Sit your developers or testers down and have them *really* use the product. I want to be an evangelist again. Colin

The ability to record audio straight to a note is great but they are really low quality audio files. Is there a way of changing the recording settings?

Hello! First of all, just want to say I love Evernote and have been using it everyday since I downloaded it on my iPhone. Thank you for developing such a high quality product! I play music professionally, and would REALLY love an option to increase the Audio Recording Quality. Like a "Default", "Better", "Best" setting. That way, it would be much more convenient to keep my work in one place, rather than recording and importing from another app. Convenience is the main reason I use Evernote- I'd be willing to upgrade to Premium for this feature! Thanks for listening!

I am currently receiving very poor service from Evernote. As a Premium User for more than three years this is very disappointing. Evernote on my Laptop has not worked for a number of weeks. Customer Service are slow to respond and require a lot of prompting. Paraphrasing the most recent response from Korben D says "we don't know how to fix the problem, we can't tell you when it will be fixed." I have asked for a refund on my Premium payments as they are unable to provide the service. Is anyone else experiencing a technical issue such that the software doesn't run, and the very poor, unresponsive service contact?

What's going on, Evernote? Really, what is going on with you folks down in Redwood City? It was almost a year go that Jason Kincaid posted http://jasonkincaid.net/2014/01/evernote-the-bug-ridden-elephant/ and since Libin responded, in which he emphasized the already existing renewed commitment to quality and care that extended back to November 2013: http://blog.evernote.com/blog/2014/01/04/on-software-quality/ Over the summer of 2014 (and sporadically, prior that) many of us former "evangelists" LOUDLY raised our own concerns about the quality of the software and customer support as we had observed and experienced it over the previous year or so. We voiced our concerns directly to Evernote staff through private channels, then added our voices when the other members of the forum raised their own concerns: https://discussion.evernote.com/topic/66103-power-user-discontent-best-alternatives-to-en/ A year after Evernote's rededication to software quality and testing, where are we now? There have been some significant improvements that I think users benefit from a great deal. A few include: Sync being faster on ALL clients, MUCH faster. This is much appreciated.The text editor, at least on the desktop, has been improved with some of the major issues users complained about being ironed out (e.g., some table quirks and image resizing). The web clippers got a makeover and some significant refinement all around the board. While there were some mixed reviews about the changes, I think in general the consensus was positive. There have been some rather trivial improvements to the service as well. Namely: some of the various limits have been increased, so users can share and clip more and bigger things across all subscription levels.Context is an interesting feature and clearly benefits some users even at this early stage. It also generates revenue for Evernote which isn't a bad thing either. Work Chat seems like it could be a productivity booster for small organizations that collaborate using Evernote. Most importantly, there have also been some significant problems this year that hit much more at the heart of the user experience and Evernote's reputation. These issues, from the outside, seem to suggest longstanding, persistent systemic issues at Evernote. I won't rehash the various issues that plagued users earlier this year, there were plenty (and a quick search of this forum will reveal them anyway). Let us instead start this summer. Support This summer and fall saw the retraction of support for free users. This is not, in itself, unreasonable. It seemed to be motivated by a desire to improve the level of support for paying customers while working with finite resources and a burgeoning user base. How this change was executed, however, was problematic. Support for free users for most issues was scaled back and eventually fully retracted without official announcement. Existing tickets submitted by free users before the change was made "official" (exactly when this was is hard to determine) were simply closed, and free users continued to be allowed to submit tickets for weeks after support was revoked. There was a rocky transitional period in which free users with legitimate support requests (e.g., failed iTunes upgrades) were being rejected; the knowledge base lagged (and is still lagging) behind and lacks the requisite detail and robustness to allow self-support; the KB continued to direct all users to support, even though it wasn't universally available; major software and service issues created problems for all users, and free users were not supported. After several months of rockiness, the support expectation for free users has successfully been mitigated and the triaging of support tickets seems to have improved, as there seem to be many fewer false rejections on the forums. However, there seems to be no shortage of premium and business users waiting 3 or more business days to receive their initial human response. This doesn't seem to suggest any improvement over the situation before, when free users received support too. So all of the disruption and change led to what appears to be no noticeable improvement in support for premium users. Software Most recently, a series of very poorly executed releases have taken place, namely Penultimate 6 and Evernote for Mac 6 (also the Web Beta, but that's a bit of a strange case). Penultimate 6 was "publicly" beta tested for at least a couple of weeks, but despite this, the launch was extremely rocky, including reports of data loss, data being moved around, severe usability issues, and other obvious omissions and outright bugs, much of which was noted by Evernote staff. 6.0.1 was released within a week, but this should have been the 6.0 release. If only a week of work was required to address some of the most pressing issues, why wasn't the release a week later? Why wasn't beta testing extended by a week? How much more could have been done if you had taken an extra two weeks to polish things? Evernote 6 was released without any public beta. I am leaving out the aesthetics of the new version here, it has been debated elsewhere in all its subjective glory. My focus here is on honest-to-goodness functional bugs. Evernote 6.0 and 6.0.1 (frustratingly co-existing depending on how a user acquired it) presented numerous, seemingly widespread bugs that would have easily be caught in a brief beta period. Some low hanging fruit include: the title reverting to "untitled" upon printingColumn headers looking sloppy (and unreadable) because they accidentally displaying list contents when lists scrolledNote contents not appearing, or appearing slowly, or appearing sporadicallySporadic reports of data loss, corruption, or other similar things. Continuation of the general trend of (re)moving features and changing workflows abruptly and without clear documentation. We have received some interesting new features that are geared towards a very specific target user. I am thinking of Work Chat and Context here. Yet, we continue to see immensely buggy releases that are, by Evernote's own admission, half baked, and long-standing issues go un-addressed. Summary Support was shaken up dramatically and there has been no significant improvement as far as I can see. Despite a year of committing to improved software and service quality, there have been at least two major releases ridden with bugs and other very serious issues. This has included such foot-shooting as releasing major updates without public beta testing. Lots of new shiny features accompanied by a general failure to address longstanding issues and improve on fundamental elements of the applications and service. In a year since Evernote's commitment to quality, we have seen repeated failures to actually demonstrate that commitment. Repeated, obvious failures. In general this comes across as though Evernote is rushing or being outright careless with their releases. While I am still an avid user, I have become very cautious about the extent to which I rely on Evernote for most things and the integrity of what I store within Evernote. I have become more diligent about keeping critical documents duplicated elsewhere, and I no longer rely on Evernote for offline access to my travel documents. The number of bugs I have personally experienced (and I have experienced very few of the bugs that I see reported around here), and the reports of bugs on various online communities, have also meant that I no longer unequivocally recommend Evernote to my family, friends, and colleagues. The issues and struggles I have experienced and observed others experience, and the rapid pace at which features come, go, or are fundamentally changed, has made Evernote a bit of a liability with which I'd rather not become implicated by recommending its use. Additional Notes All of what I have written here is based on anecdotal evidence, largely from what I have observed in the years I have participated in this forum and been an Evernote user. Evernote will have far more valid and reliable data about how often many of these problems occur, how long users are waiting for a response from support, etc. So my observations here must be taken with a grain of salt. They may not accurately reflect the reality of the broader user base. While I see Evernote as a "liability", what I mean more than anything is that Evernote has shifted from being something I feel very secure and comfortable using as a repository for my important information, to being something that I feel now carries a much larger element of risk of loss. In other words, I feel less secure and less comfortable now, than in the past, (as opposed to feeling outrightly insecure and outrightly uncomfortable) Much of what I am discussing here isn't exactly related to whether Evernote listens or not. Evernote clearly does listen to its users. I have no doubt in my mind that most of what users are saying is heard by Evernote staff, and that many of these things are taken account of. Developing software and services is always a balancing act between the goals and vision of the company, and the perceived expectations of users. This post is not about whether Evernote is listening to preferences about colour or a linux client. Evernote, what's going on? We've seen new shiny features and minor qualitative improvements (mostly with sync), but we are persistently presented with a slew of new bugs and various other issues. What we haven't seen is a marked improvement in overall quality in a year where overall quality was your explicitly stated goal.

I use a retina macbook pro so need to scale screen grabs to 50% size before saving so that they end up the 'correct' size when shared with other users. When I look at the saved files I am always disappointed by the quality. Lines which are near horizontal exhibit bad aliasing. The output from Skitch is so poor that I have taken to grabbing and annotating in skitch and then resizing as a separate operation in another application which maintains image quality (trying the lightweight 'RePix' at present which so far I like.) Also - a feature request. Could the 'crop / resize' control please remember in which mode it was last used and default to that when selected? Annoying to have to select to resize each time. I have to say I preferred the much greater ease of use of the old Skitch in this regard.

I've been reading this Forum and the gist of what I see is that some users have upgraded via the App Store, and the result had been a complete face-plant. They are being advised to go through a complicated uninstall and then to upgrade only from the EN site. How does this happen? I know nothing about the industry. Is this something EN should have prevented? Or is it something that App Store should have prevented? Or is it joint negligence? Whose job is it now to warn those users who have not been fortunate enough to have happened upon the postings in this Forum, but who might upgrade via the App Store? I suspect that many, many users do not read this Forum; because, if they did, few users would be upgrading until the the wheels have been put back on. Is EN publishing an advisory?

I recall the blog post by Phil back in Jan where it stated that the stability issue and the overall quality was going to be improved. He also said it would focus on simplicity. How much has changed since then? Personally, I dont see much of a diff...

Hello, I ran out of space rather quickly, since I save lots of screenshots in Evernote. Since I use them for reference, is it possible to store images with less quality than the original? Can I choose the size of an image when I added into a note? Thanks.

I´m a song writer and I need to be able to work fast and send stuff directly from evernote to my colleagues and friends. The app is great for viewing sound directly on the area where lyrics is annotated, but with the current .amr quality it is next to impossible to hear anything, especially if someone is speaking low. So I made a little A-B test. I first recorded a bit of music directly through itunes out on my macbook, then just through the computer-microphone into the computer again. I did this first through Evernote Mac Application, the desktop, then through my android phone running evernote, latest version. At last I re-recorded the same audio through an audio app with the AAC codec in .m4a files. Settings used in the audio app: AAC / .m4a Bitrate: 24kbps & 48kbps Samplerate: 32khz & 44.1khz (32000hz, slightly under CD-quality for the 24kbps file, 44100hz for the one with 48kbps samplerate) Mono Here are all the files for everyone to judge for themselves: Evernote Desktop - MAC: http://cl.ly/210m1c2a2B1V Evernote Android - HTC Phone: http://cl.ly/0b3s12222v1g M4A / AAC - 24 kbps: http://cl.ly/3J3s3A003n3W M4A / AAC - 48 kbps: http://cl.ly/36250V0I0J3k Here you can clearly hear the same sound source for all the sound, although the sound source, the microphone, on the audio recording app on the Mac and the Evernote Mac App is better than the one on the phone. So I included a file recorded through the Easy Voice Recorder app for Android. This app is super simple and uses M4A/AAC to capture sound, with 48 kbps. Download here: Easy Voice Recorder - free version - AAC/M4A - 48 kbps: http://cl.ly/420L36112c08 My personal view is that the Easy Voice Recorder is the best of these. But the microphone position was a bit more angled directly towards the sound source, so this is a bit unfair. For completely normalized versions (to clearly hear everything loudly, not direct originals) ... ... click here to download (ZIP): (these sound files are the same recordings, but normalized in new versions through a music conversion application, for the ease of listening to them at the same volume) http://cl.ly/0C443e3o2e1g Here you will clearly hear the difference. Hope you get something out of this and what could be, easily, if the evernote team would consider changing the app a bit, or just give the user an option to adjust the setting.¨¨ I really hope you do, cause I´m hooked on your app and love sound next to text - and would gladly not have my recordings in 10 places if I dont have to... /Anders