Automatic Note Titles

Ythorn · February 17, 2012

When I created a new note, a calendar event title showed up as the default title "Note from (event title)". The calendar is a Google calendar that I connect to through Calendar.

I don't have the Evernote gagdet. I have no shared notebooks. I have not configured anything to sync with Evernote.

Any ideas how this could be happening?

iPhone 4, iOS 4.3.5.

gbarry · February 17, 2012

You're experiencing a new feature in Evernote 4.1.8, "predictive note titles", which draw from location and calendar information to present a default note title, rather than simply "Untitled Note" These titles immediately disappear the minute you enter your own note title when creating a new note, and help to differentiate between repeat new, untitled notes. iCalendar is likely drawing from your Google Calendars account, which we are then pulling for the default note title information.

Ythorn · February 17, 2012

Thanks for the clarification. I didn't see any reference to that feature in the preferences.

knicolini · February 17, 2012

I am having the same problem. Is there any way to stop this from happening? I'd much rather have "Untitled Note." It is very confusing to me, and tiresome to have to always be forced to make a note title. "Untitled note" will at least allow all my untitled notes together. Right now, depending on the day I get "Note from ABC," "Note from XYZ," "Note from PQR," etc. depending on what my most recent repeat calendar item is. Thus I end up with a lot of notes alphabetized under these "Note from PQR"-type titles.

Perhaps if it said "Note from (date)" that would be okay, but I certainly don't want my notes to have anything to do with my repeat calendar items. And it would be much better not to be forced to write over/create a title each and every time. But overall, I would much prefer Untitled Note, and not have to type "Untitled Note" myself.

It is defintiely pulling from iCalendar. (I know it is not pulling from my Google Calendar because the "Note from..." is always one of that day's repeat/ongoing calendar items that I have on my iPhone for that day (not on my Google Calendar).

Thanks in advance.

GrumpyMonkey · February 17, 2012

i hadn't thought of that, but at least with "untitled note" you have consistency. i suppose the predictive titles could mess that up.

E-NoteForum · February 17, 2012

Also, shouldn't Evernote have to ask for permission to access my calendar?

Didn't the Path app just get in trouble for accessing address books without permission?

jbenson2 · February 17, 2012

Also, shouldn't Evernote have to ask for permission to access my calendar?
Didn't the Path app just get in trouble for accessing address books without permission?

A comment from Evernote:

It's clearly a developing topic, and highly dependent on Apple's eventual policy change: http://news.cnet.com...privacy-change/

GrumpyMonkey · February 17, 2012

contacts (the path problem) and calendars, as i understand it, are handled differently under apple's policies. i'd like evernote to ask for permission as well, just as a matter of principle, but i don't actually use the calendar, so it isn't an issue for me personally.

gothick · February 17, 2012

Is there any way of turning this off? If not, is there any way of manually deleting the note title and leaving it empty?

I mostly use Evernote mobile for snapping photos on the go; they don't need titles (they're just for quick reminders I'll see next time I'm checking my RSS feeds), and I don't really want to have a random title attached to all these notes.

In my case, today it's pulling the name of one of three "to-do" items that are due today from a secondary Calendar on my phone. If I have a reminder in my calendar for today called "Buy cheese", it's quite unlikely that all the photos I'm going take with Evernote today will be related to the process of buying cheese.

Thanks,

Matt

JMichaelTX · February 17, 2012

Why Was Predictive Note Title a Priority?

I guess the real question is why is Evernote spending resources on this fairly complicated feature that, at best, has limited usefulness, and at worst, adds confusion, when, IMO there are so many other features the users have been requesting for a long time.

I don't recall anyone ever asking for any type of auto-title feature.

I am also very disappointed that Evernote chose to violate my privacy by accessing my Calendar items without my permission, or any type of notification.

This is independent of the Apple policy.

This is all just my opinion, and others may agree or disagree.

megsaint · February 17, 2012

You're experiencing a new feature in Evernote 4.1.8, "predictive note titles", which draw from location and calendar information to present a default note title, rather than simply "Untitled Note"

I like it. I hope it stays around.

knicolini · February 18, 2012

You may like it but the rest of us should have the option to opt out.

E-NoteForum · February 18, 2012

I'm with JMichael on this one.

GrumpyMonkey · February 18, 2012

Why Was Predictive Note Title a Priority?
I guess the real question is why is Evernote spending resources on this fairly complicated feature that, at best, has limited usefulness, and at worst, adds confusion, when, IMO there are so many other features the users have been requesting for a long time.
I don't recall anyone ever asking for any type of auto-title feature.
I am also very disappointed that Evernote chose to violate my privacy by accessing my Calendar items without my permission, or any type of notification.
This is independent of the Apple policy.
This is all just my opinion, and others may agree or disagree.

although i don't agree with everything that jm said, especially about evernote violating apple policy by accessing the calendar, i definitely agree about the prioritization. i don't understand why this feature made it to the top of the list when there remain so many other crucial parity issues like (in no particular order):

1) font control

2) text size control

3) metadata control (why can't we edit this?)

4) notebook stacks

5) note links

6) auto-save (to local memory?) or "save and continue"

7) list view (i am growing tired of icons of notes)--as competitors do, enable me to designate 0, 1, 2, 3 etc. lines of text visible for notes in snippet views.

8) the bugs that plague the iphone app (see emnote's posts)98) broken search operands

honestly, the predictive titles don't matter to me, because i am going to give a title to every note anyways. but, jm raises an important point about priorities.

gothick · February 18, 2012

8) the bugs that plague the iphone app (see emnote's posts)

I'd swap most things for an app that just worked how the last version of the app was supposed to work. I have all the features I want. What I didn't want was to be completely confused by this new functionality, which was quickly followed by the message "Synchronization failed. NSInvalidArgumentException". Helpful.

However, having checked the Evernote Trunk, I found the "FastEver Snap" iPhone app, which does what I mostly want the normal Evernote app to do, i.e. take a photo and send it to Evernote without trying to be too clever. At least these latest problems have found me something I can use instead of the official app most of the time.

And that's all due to Evernote providing an API and generating a plethora of third-parties who can use it, so I probably shouldn't be being as grumpy as I probably sound right now...

Matt

GrumpyMonkey · February 18, 2012

8) the bugs that plague the iphone app (see emnote's posts)

I'd swap most things for an app that just worked how the last version of the app was supposed to work. I have all the features I want. What I didn't want was to be completely confused by this new functionality, which was quickly followed by the message "Synchronization failed. NSInvalidArgumentException". Helpful.

However, having checked the Evernote Trunk, I found the "FastEver Snap" iPhone app, which does what I mostly want the normal Evernote app to do, i.e. take a photo and send it to Evernote without trying to be too clever. At least these latest problems have found me something I can use instead of the official app most of the time.

And that's all due to Evernote providing an API and generating a plethora of third-parties who can use it, so I probably shouldn't be being as grumpy as I probably sound right now...

Matt

grumpy is good

overall, i am pretty pleased with the evernote app and its development. however, the issues i mentioned really seem so much more important than dates in my titles. as for third-party apps, as much as i want evernote to improve, i would start using those if they could meet my ideal conditions:

1) plain text with saving each character stroke (elements, simplenote, and others)

2) ability to edit evernote notes (obviously, only the plain text ones, or append)

that's it. that would go a long ways towards making me less grumpy. in particular, on ios, the lack of a persistent saving feature is just a killer. there are too many crashes (problems with all apps) and it is just too dangerous to let something sit on your ipad unsaved like evernote does. saving, closing out the note, and having to open it again is a real pain.

knicolini · February 22, 2012

Dear Evernote, Please respond to this forum post about how to get rid of "predictive note titles." This feature seems to be generating some other concerns mentioned in the forums as well as problems for more people. This feature is also stopping me from moving forward with and recommending Evernote. It this something you or someone else can answer and fix? Will this feature ever go away?

GrumpyMonkey · February 22, 2012

you can "fix" it by giving the note a title yourself. i always do this anyways, so it seems to me that whatever evernote chooses to do in future iterations, it won't affect my workflow. as for privacy, all of my contacts and my schedule are already in evernote

alternatively, i imagine third party apps from the trunk will not have this feature, so you can use those.

gbarry · February 22, 2012

Dear Evernote, Please respond to this forum post about how to get rid of "predictive note titles." This feature seems to be generating some other concerns mentioned in the forums as well as problems for more people. This feature is also stopping me from moving forward with and recommending Evernote. It this something you or someone else can answer and fix? Will this feature ever go away?

We're reviewing putting an option in there to toggle on and off predictive note titles, and definitely understand how the new feature can cause some workflow problems, especially for those who relied on "untitled" notes. The feature is also receiving some adjustment as well. I like the idea of "Note on [date]", I could see that making more sense in many cases than location, which is the baseline information the titler draws from.

cynwren · February 23, 2012

We're reviewing putting an option in there to toggle on and off predictive note titles, and definitely understand how the new feature can cause some workflow problems, especially for those who relied on "untitled" notes. The feature is also receiving some adjustment as well. I like the idea of "Note on [date]", I could see that making more sense in many cases than location, which is the baseline information the titler draws from.

That's how notability works, and it seems pretty reasonable. If I start a new note the default title is simply "Note Feb. 21, 2012"

The next note I create on the same day is "Note Feb. 21, 2012 (1)" etc.

So they sort nicely and I can quickly find and retitle them later as needed. Although I don't mind the autotitle EN uses right now (I actually like it in some situations and am fine with overwriting it in other cases) I can see why others might prefer a different behavior.

knicolini · February 23, 2012

Thank you, gbarry. Do you think it is something that will get addressed in the near future, rather than the far future?

Predictive is nice, but only if it's predicting the correct information.

I like your add-on idea cynwren. Thank you for suggesting it.

gbarry · February 23, 2012

Thank you, gbarry. Do you think it is something that will get addressed in the near future, rather than the far future?

Without being flippant, it's too early for me to give a semi-straight answer. Devs will need to reevaluate the plans for the next few releases, identify where this sits in conjunction with other bugs and issues being worked on with the client, and then plug it into the roadmap.

jefito · February 23, 2012

Even better than 'Note on (date)' would be a user-modifiable template, with the date field specified by, say, '[date]'. So a user could have, e.g.: [date]: (source:iPhone)

Even better than that, the ability to format the date as you like it: e.g. [date:YY-MM-DD]

OK, so how about the ability to plug in other metadata into the title? For example, [location], [city], [state], etc?

[This is all in aid of my secret, grand goal for automatic note data generation for Evernote: rules for auto-tagging, and now rules for automatic title generation. Automatic title generation might help out the folks who are now assiduously formatting their titles with their favorite metadata items, by hand.]

GrumpyMonkey · February 23, 2012

lol. and, here we are again with options

if one could simply indicate automatic title generation preferences, this would pretty much solve all of the problems. do you want evernote to generate titles based on your calendar information? based on your location? based on the date?

of course, to make me happy, evernote would have to actually allow the date format i prefer (yymmdd). that still isn't supported.

as an idea for how this could work, see notetaker hd and its wonderful options for note title generation. that app may not be the prettiest one at the party, but it is one of the most refreshingly customizable things out there.

jefito · February 23, 2012

lol. and, here we are again with options

I took it as a given that enabling/disabling of the automatic note generation was going to be 'optionized'.

Beyond that, if you're going to give me options, I want options with some meat on their bones. Using a template gives you pretty much everything, and the ability to customize the formatting (e.g. date formatting the way that you like it, nudge nudge), and if you left it blank, that would just disable it altogether.

Owyn · February 24, 2012

I think FastEver does a very good job of Settings, including time stamp format.

https://www.evernote.com/shard/s29/sh/0603109d-e01f-4079-91d5-2c626346f744/6db63709ff765da466475191ae1334cb

Judy Lauwens · March 3, 2012

Grumpy Monkey...you say it's possible to "fix" the problem by entering your own title in a new note....I don't seem to be able to do this. When I open "new note" the title automatically enters details from my calendar. I can't work out how you're doing it!!??

GrumpyMonkey · March 4, 2012

Grumpy Monkey...you say it's possible to "fix" the problem by entering your own title in a new note....I don't seem to be able to do this. When I open "new note" the title automatically enters details from my calendar. I can't work out how you're doing it!!??

hi. what i meant was that you just click on the title and replace it with your own. in the beta version, i get an automatic title of "Note." i just put the cursor in the title field and type my own instead. as long as you are titling all of your notes anyhow, it doesn't really matter what evernote suggests in the title field.

Judy Lauwens · March 4, 2012

Thanks for your reply Grumpy Monkey...it seems to work today, yesterday it didn't....I wonder what tomorrow will bring!

ramblinwreck001 · March 18, 2012

Add me to the list of folks who do NOT want predictive note titles. I've just discovered this (it's how I found this thread) and now I've got a ton of notes captured from my iPhone with totally irrelevant titles.

If I don't explicitly add a title when I create a note on my iPhone, the I do NOT want Evernote trying to figure one out for me, I want it blank. Based on the content of my calendars, Evernote gets this totally wrong, and frankly, it is/was confusing.

Please make it default behavior for predictive note titles to be OFF, and have a preference to enable and/or opt-in.

dieselpower · March 29, 2012

I'd like to add my 2 cents to this. This behaviour is very frustrating.

I take a lot of snapshot notes for work which I only require for a very short time (ie. to take a serial number for equipment back to document, for example. Taking a snapshot into evernote is a much quicker way to get it to my workstation than to type it out).

I don't use calendars frequently, but have one calendar (GMail calendar) synced to my phone for bookings on my holiday property. There's almost always a booking in this calendar, and rarely in my own calendar. I'm finding now that I'm getting notes like 'Snapshot from Persons Name in My Location'. This makes no sense to me, since these calendar events have no bearing on my every day life. I'm not willing to turn off the calendar as I require access to it from my phone regularly.

The ideas for templating this above are great, but it would be even better to just have an option to turn off this predictive titling. I don't bother naming notes that I use to just ship serial numbers and other bits of information around as they get deleted straight away...

deepwat3r · May 5, 2012

This is the second time I've tried to switch to EverNote and been immediately frustrated by an annoying, useless feature I can't control. I shouldn't have to go forum searching to figure out why an app is taking a seemingly-random calendar object (especially when it didn't ask permission to access my calendar) and putting it in as my note title. And no way to make it stop? Count me out, uninstalling.

E-NoteForum · May 5, 2012

Yep. There's been a lot of discussion about this feature here and in the beta forum. It's hard to find anyone who likes it as-is, but currently there's no way to disable it. You can partially disable it in the next release (currently in submission), but even in that build there's no way to disable it completely.

It's baffling. No one asked for it; it just showed up. When it did, most people disliked it and wanted to turn it off (just search any of the forum threads about it). The devs won't let you disable it, though. Disappointing.

jefito · May 5, 2012

Just a comment: sometimes it's the case that it seems that more folks dislike a new feature because those that do actually are motivated post their displeasure immediately, while the folks that actually do like it rarely post. So I wouldn't actually take forum complaints as the whole story. Ditto the "no-one asked for it" line: the forum is only one avenue for user comments and suggestions, and of course, Evernote staff have their own ideas as to what is useful, and what isn't.

Case in point: the recent addition of a new multi-note selection behavior, on the Windows client. Immediately several people chimed in with "I don't like this why are you doing it nobody asked you to" (all of which is valid, mind you, as are your criticisms of this feature). So it seemed as if forum opinion was wholly against it. Eventually, though, some folks chimed in praising it. So I'd be a little careful of initial forum response; at least it should be taken with a grain of salt.

I think as always, though, nothing's final, at least until it's been wholly discarded (think the timeline is coming back?)...

jbenson2 · May 5, 2012

Whenever I have a strong opinion about a new feature in the Evernote beta, I fire off a comment to the Evernote Support (by selecting feedback).

My comment might not be seen on the user forum, but I know it is logged into the formal Evernote corporate feedback system.

JMichaelTX · May 6, 2012

My observation is that we have a very diverse group of users who frequent the EN Forums.

Lots of different views, different ways of using EN, different use cases, different ways of thinking.

These forum users are not all "power users" either. There are plenty of posts by those seem to be new to Evernote, and are just normal computer users.

And, most are not shy about expressing their opinion about features, new, old, or otherwise.

The point being that when, on rare occasion, that most, if not all, of these Forum users tend to agree about something, then that probably is something worth paying attention to.

I'm not saying that Evernote just automatically cave in when this happens.

But it is probably worth some serious consideration. It could mean that this group agreement might, and I emphasize might, be truly representative of many, many users who never show up at the Forum.

Just my 2c.

megsaint · May 6, 2012

Yep. There's been a lot of discussion about this feature here and in the beta forum. It's hard to find anyone who likes it as-is, but currently there's no way to disable it.

I like it.

megsaint · May 6, 2012

Just a comment: sometimes it's the case that it seems that more folks dislike a new feature because those that do actually are motivated post their displeasure immediately, while the folks that actually do like it rarely post. So I wouldn't actually take forum complaints as the whole story. Ditto the "no-one asked for it" line: the forum is only one avenue for user comments and suggestions, and of course, Evernote staff have their own ideas as to what is useful, and what isn't.

This is true of most support forums. People who are happy with the way things are working don't tend to drop in and say, "Everything's great. Love the new features. Ta Ta for now." I agree that you can't make statistical inferences based on forum posts.

shaykemup · May 30, 2012

Hi there,

This was probably covered by now.

I was having the same issue where my note titles were inputting from a Google calendar reminder that I had as a daily reminder.

I deleted the reminder from said calendar and now EN is back to default on all my note titles. Hope this was helpful.

DerekMoyes · June 8, 2012

Just adding my $0.02 -- please allow us to disable, at the least, or customize this feature.

Thanks for your hard work, making a great product!

E-NoteForum · June 10, 2012

I wouldn't hold my breath.

The latest betas still don't let you disable it, and no devs or mods have indicated that Evernote plan to let us turn this off. That's disappointing for the people who dislike this feature. I'd at least like to see the feature improved to where it's not so intrusive on the iPhone, where it breaks the flow of making a new note.

jefito · June 11, 2012

They made auto-titling an option on Android, so help may be on the way...

E-NoteForum · June 12, 2012

It's already an option on iOS, but it doesn't work. When you turn off predictive titles, it only turns off suggestions based on your calendar. It still suggests the titles of existing notes. I've asked many times here and never heard a good answer: why would I want to name a new note the exact same thing as an existing note? How is that helpful?

The misleading option is such bad user experience design ... as is the implementation of this entire feature on the iPhone, where the note suggestion list hides the text in the note. Ugh.

E-NoteForum · June 22, 2012

Still not addressed in 4.2.2.

Ruben · September 3, 2012

A previous update changed my predictive note title based on location. I'd like to change back to predictive tile based on calendar. Any suggestions on how to do this?

jefito · September 3, 2012

Which Evernote client are you using?

motohead · September 7, 2012

Recently the auto title hasn't been producing the "Note from (current Outlook calendar event)". Currently gives "Note from" and the location, city, or none.

Possibly this coincided with adding another calendar to Outlook exchange, or to an iCal, but I don't believe it did. Settings have smart titles turned on.

Any ideas?

JenGStevens · September 7, 2012

I'm having the same issue, using iPad client. Would really like to be able to revert back to calendar based titles.

ralfi08 · September 8, 2012

Same here. This was one of the most treasured features for meeting notes. And while you guys may look into this, why not also pull in the other calendar information, such as attendees and e meeting invite?

toddwarrington · September 10, 2012

I've run into the same issue. This was such a great feature. I really hope this gets fixed quickly.

winegirlnc · September 26, 2012

I would really love to see this reinstated...very frustrating to use Evernote without it.

transformd · September 28, 2012

Ditto! This feature delighted me when it first appeared. I was bummed when it stopped working! Please delight me again!

Milgrim · September 28, 2012

Yes, this was a great feature. Very sad that it's now defaulting to location.

jamesonj · October 23, 2012

New Evernotes used to suggest a Title based on the Meeting name from my calendar - which was excellent - e.g. "Meeting with Dave the Plumber" or "Due Diligence Discussion with Peter". However, now the auto-suggestion has switched to the location, which is a waste of time, e.g. "Meeting at 18 George Street" or "Meeting at Mascot Airport".

Which bright spark introduced this change and how soon until we can get it backed out?!

Thanks.

jamesonj · October 23, 2012

Hi Evernote,

I disagree with most posters. I found the predictive titling fantastic - until you changed it.

Previously it was based on the title of the calendar event. Thus if I created a note during a meeting, the note would be titled against that meeting - e.g. "Meeting with Joe the plumber" or "Worksession with client team". Now it auto-titles from the location which is worse than useless. You can geo-tag the notes anyway, but who would ever title a note "Note at 16 Arnold Street" or "Note at Sydney Airport"?

Please revert to the calendar titles. Please!

stenman16 · October 25, 2012

i'm in the same boat - loved the feature and now i really miss it. wish we had an answer...

maktakman · October 27, 2012

I totally agree this feature should be optionize with either from calendar and/or location.

if now it is only location should make no use to a lot of people.

OrenS · October 30, 2012

I have this problem too, and would dearly love to have the auto-title from calendar capability back! Any news on this?

transformd · November 9, 2012

This feature is back with Evernote 5 on iOS. Excellent!

bnusbaum · April 7, 2013

Yes, PLEASE provide a more efficient auto title feature...I use Evernote with my iPad, iPhone, Mac, Dropbox, etc-- shoeboxed and doc scan regularly with thousands of notes

I am stuck with either renaming multiple "untitled note"s or obscure unrelated region auto naming

Has this been corrected recently? Or any suggestions of something I'm missing?

KKoyle · July 13, 2013

Auto-title takes the default title from my calendar, which is ok sometimes, but most of the time it does me no good because EN has to guess at which calendar entry to use and it almost always guesses wrong. I would prefer to be able to set my own default title, such as selecting the date and a standard phrase, like "Meeting Notes," which is what I usually change it to.

asiajason · November 1, 2013

on iOS7, iPhone 5, when I hit "type a quick note" - it enters some weird text for the note title. it seems to be using events from my ios7 calendar.

So far, it has used two different events showing in my cal - one was an "all-day" event, and another was a facebook event showing on my cal as well.

is this normal behaviour?

redwoodtwig · November 1, 2013

on iOS7, iPhone 5, when I hit "type a quick note" - it enters some weird text for the note title. it seems to be using events from my ios7 calendar.

So far, it has used two different events showing in my cal - one was an "all-day" event, and another was a facebook event showing on my cal as well.

is this normal behaviour?

When I simply use evernote to grab a photo, intending to work on it later, the same thing happens to me. Up until a release or two ago, I was getting a location -- usually the location prior to the location where I am. Now Evernote seems to be grabbing random events from the day in question. Sometimes the events appear to be from the calendar on my mobile device, which is using Google's calendar, thank you. However, the birthdays it is grabbing are coming from Facebook, from that list FB pops up of contacts with birthdays today.

Where do I turn this off? I'd rather have "snapshot untittled" than either "Snapshot from Wade Birthday @ some location" or "Snapshot at 120 S. Main Street, some location" Particularly since in both cases the some location is not where I am when I make the snapshot. I'm not talking a few meters, I'm talking lots of miles, as near as I can tell one of the previous 2 or 3 locations I'd been at, even if I hadn't used evernote in those locations.

What would be awesome would be a dropdown in the title area that defaulted to "Untitled" but had drop down choices of the current location, the previous location, and the list of events for that day.

jhull · November 1, 2013

You can turn off automatic note titles in Settings. Tap your name/email address on the home screen, scroll to Note Editor and then toggle off "Suggested Note Titles".

You can also tap into the title field of any note and see additional title suggestions. We weight calendar events and precise location most heavily, but offer other suggestions as well.

yadayada · November 11, 2013

Shepherd, what if we just want to use the first line of our note as the title? I turned off the "suggested note titles" feature, but now I get "Untitled Note" every time.

The Windows Desktop creates a title from the first line of text in my note, can the iPhone app do this as well??

iPhone 5

iOS 7.0.3

Evernote Build 7.1.1.304754

redwoodtwig · November 11, 2013

You can turn off automatic note titles in Settings. Tap your name/email address on the home screen, scroll to Note Editor and then toggle off "Suggested Note Titles".

You can also tap into the title field of any note and see additional title suggestions. We weight calendar events and precise location most heavily, but offer other suggestions as well.

I didn't realize IOS and Android versions would be so different.

I did find a place in the settng to turn off auto note titles, but it seems to have turned itself back on again.

There is no list of suggestions on Android. Tapping on the title selects it, but that's it.

soundsgoodtome · November 13, 2013

Shepherd, what if we just want to use the first line of our note as the title? I turned off the "suggested note titles" feature, but now I get "Untitled Note" every time.
The Windows Desktop creates a title from the first line of text in my note, can the iPhone app do this as well??

What he said.

This wasn't "broke" before. Default note titles worked perfectly well. Now they're inexplicable.

I nearly just had a heart attack because I'd pasted into evernote some very complex text (lots of special characters, etc), saved the note, then did some other things on my iPhone. Then I returned to Evernote and looked for the note I'd just created — thinking the first words of the note would be the title; in fact I'd specifically placed those words at the top for that very purpose -- but it was nowhere to be found.

I began to panic, switched to "all notes" (instead of the specific notebook I'd selected) and then I noticed the oddity of the most recent note's title:

"Note from [proxy] [proxy] seminar in Los Angeles."

I was like, WTH? It just so happens that I'd placed, on my calendar, a seminar I was considering attending tonight. But I decided not to go. Yet, Evernote "decided" to name my note based upon info that it pulled from my calendar for an event I didn't even attend!! Seriously, folks? Creepy much? Sure, I can see how that might be useful — if i've been asked if I wanted Evernote to name my notes in that manner, and if I'd said "Yes, do that." Otherwise? CREEPY. And more importantly, inaccurate. The note I took has nothing to do with the seminar. Nothing!

Even worse, Evernote asked to have access to my location, which I granted — but then, if it's accessing location, calendar, and (presumably) contacts, it should have "known" that I'm at home, not at the seminar!!

Now, I've just learned that somewhere there's a setting for turning this "feature" off — but then we're left with "Untitled Note" as the default name for every note. With all due respect, who is deciding that these are good ideas? Who decided that taking away first-words-as-default was a good idea, and that replacing that with (probably inaccurate and irrelevant) location-based names was a better idea? Seriously, folks, I'm deeply troubled by this.

1. The default name should be the first few lines of text. I think 99% of users would find this intuitive and agreeable.

2. Naming notes by location should be available on an opt-in basis only (not the other way around). If you make a change like that, ask us if we want it! Don't make a huge change like that, then just expect us to want it. Especially when it. doesn't. work.

We all love for apps to have new features. But these features are not being thought through and/or you're not beta-testing them with enough users who can give you real-world feedback on their usefulness, friendliness, or practicality. I've loved Evernote for years, but honestly, it's getting more and more and more complicated — in an unfriendly way. I didn't intend for this to be a rant, but I'm really beginning to lose "faith" in Evernote. With each new version, things become harder to locate and harder to do.

And yes, I'm a paying user — and have been for years — so this is very serious to me.

Please make default titles useful again.

splitloop · November 24, 2013

In the title of the notes created on iPhone (ios 7.2, last version of EN) there should be a "Note from "location"". But instead of the locations in the notes titles, iCal event's titles appear in note title. E.g. there is a weather forecast in my iCal presented as full day event. And when I create a note in EN it would have a title "Note from Overcast 4C / 1C in St. Petersburg". How to get rid of this behavior and have normal location titles?

ScottLougheed · November 25, 2013

It looks like such fine-grained setting is not available. I also had a similar issue where I had an all-day event that spanned 2 months, so every note suggestion was simply the title of that event!

Evernote tries to use your "location, calendar, and other information to suggest note titles", I guess making very basic decisions about which source is most likely to be relevant to the user. Using calendar information as a first choice for suggestions makes sense, because if the current event is "party planning committee meeting", there's a really good bet your note will be related to the part planning committee meeting! However, Evernote is not smart enough to know that "Overcast 4C/1C in St. Petersburg" is not the same as "party planning committee meeting".

I think a setting that allows the user to select calendar, location or both as sources for suggestions would definitely be helpful. Do you use that weather calendar on iOS at all? Or is it mainly something you use on your desktop? For the moment, until/if Evernote decides to improve this feature, you may consider un-ticking that weather calendar from your iOS device's calendar settings, which should prevent Evernote from interpreting that event as important (but also preventing you from seeing it on your iOS calendar...).

splitloop · November 27, 2013

thanks for the reply, Scott! I got the point how it works. And it is a helpful feature indeed, but only if you strictly follow your calendar planning, which is not my case.

The weather forecast subscription was on my Mac, but for some reason it no longer works, saying "server responded with error" So everything is all right now

ScottLougheed · November 27, 2013

Ha! There's a certain humorous irony in a problem with your calendar subscription "fixing" your evernote name suggestion problem....

splitloop · December 2, 2013

Yeah, it reminded me a rule that 80% of problems get fixed on their own, 20% don't get fixed at all, so why worry..

jayinla · January 3, 2014

I am starting out on Evernote via the iPhone app, and I noticed that when I create a new note, it shows my location at the top of the note, rather than something more intuitive such as a title for the note. Having a list of notes that are all listed by the same location (or by any location, really, that I happened to be in when I created it) isn't very helpful. Isnthere a reason for that that I'm not discerning? I realize I still have a lot to learn but this is throwing me for a loop. Do others replace the location line with something else? Or does that serve a function?

megsaint · January 3, 2014

Are you prehaps seeing the auto-title? Notes are automatically titled with the location or calendar event. You are free to edit that to a title of your liking or even turn the feature off: Account>Note Editor>Suggested note titles>off.

CarynVainio · January 8, 2014

So, I actually really like this feature. BUT...it always pulls in the worst choice for a title. In fact, it keeps pulling in events from my Facebook calendar, EVEN THOUGH I've specifically not allowed that calendar to show up in my iOS calendar. So why is Evernote pulling it in? How do I disable my Facebook events from showing up?

I really like predictive titles when I'm in a meeting at work and it pulls in the name of the meeting, but if there's a Facebook event it always pulls that in instead. I can't seem to find a way to disable that.

One thing, though, that I would love: if I'm NOT in a meeting and I want to take a quick note at my work desk, it pulls in a predictive title for my location. But since my office is right next to Pike Market in Seattle, it always pulls in "Note from Pike Market." What I'd love is to be able to tell Evernote somehow that this location is work, and it could then use "Note from Office" or "Note from Work" as the title.

- Caryn Vainio

jcolosi · February 5, 2014

I agree that the title of the note should default to the beginning of the note content. Especially since the most useful view (the List View) relies heavily on the Title of the note.

I wrote a program here to retitle a batch of notes (instructions at the link). You still have to export the notes, run the retitler, then import them. But if you've taken a lot of notes on your phone or tablet, this is the best way to convert them.

I'd really love to have Evernote make this program obsolete by providing the default note titles on devices, the same way it does on the desktop.

dgifford99 · February 11, 2014

I cannot find the setting to change / remove this "feature" at all on my iPad, or MAC i too am a premium member. little help would be heat

pilotbob · February 13, 2014

I cannot find the setting to change / remove this "feature" at all on my iPad, or MAC i too am a premium member. little help would be heat

It's there.. got to Settings -> General... (this is the newest iOS version)

I would like to add that I think "suggesting titles is one thing" but I should have to tap on one of the SUGESTED titles. Otherwise... the first line or 20 characters or so of the note as the default title makes the most sense.

Premium user going on 3 years now.

BOb

coolpillows · February 23, 2014

This was just some weirdness I never really looked into: new note titles appearing populated with arcane references to what I thought was Facebook.

I just ignored it and, in all cases, deleted what appeared there and put my own title in.

Then I decided to look into this b/c it was just too weird and bothersome. I just spent some time reading this topic which explains the note titles are some predictive typing feature in iOS that pulls data from my calendar. (Don't even get me started as to how or why my Google calendar pulls in Facebook event data which is 99% of the time just some weird event some friend has that I care nothing about.) I can ignore it in Calendar and Facebook, but to have it popup in Evernote really made no sense whatsoever.

It doesn't explain why I can't turn it off in this thread, but I poked around and found the feature on the iPad in Settings>General. So maybe this is an update for people still bothered by this feature not knowing how to turn it off.

This thread, which was most active in 2012, didn't conclude with the answer.

http://discussion.evernote.com/topic/24126-bug-calendar-title-shows-up-as-note-title-in-evernote-why/page-3?locale=en

Otherwise, I'm a big fan of Evernote, but this was really absurd. Thanks for listening...

lee

ScottLougheed · February 24, 2014

Ok, so here are a few suggestions:

1) Fix your settings at Google.com so that google doesn't pull your Facebook events. (Not a google user so I can't help you here).

2) In Evernote on iPad tap your username to enter the settings menu. Turn off "automatic note titles". This will prevent Evernote from inserting title suggestions from your calendar and location.

3) In iOS, open the device's settings app>Facebook>Calendar and Switch that off. That will prevent your iOS from displaying facebook events.

Hummingbird Joy · September 18, 2014

Dear Evernote, Please respond to this forum post about how to get rid of "predictive note titles." This feature seems to be generating some other concerns mentioned in the forums as well as problems for more people. This feature is also stopping me from moving forward with and recommending Evernote. It this something you or someone else can answer and fix? Will this feature ever go away?
We're reviewing putting an option in there to toggle on and off predictive note titles, and definitely understand how the new feature can cause some workflow problems, especially for those who relied on "untitled" notes. The feature is also receiving some adjustment as well. I like the idea of "Note on [date]", I could see that making more sense in many cases than location, which is the baseline information the titler draws from.

A toggle on/off feature and Date/time stamp would be perfect. I created new notes his morning with names like "call mom".

ScottLougheed · September 18, 2014

Dear Evernote, Please respond to this forum post about how to get rid of "predictive note titles." This feature seems to be generating some other concerns mentioned in the forums as well as problems for more people. This feature is also stopping me from moving forward with and recommending Evernote. It this something you or someone else can answer and fix? Will this feature ever go away?
We're reviewing putting an option in there to toggle on and off predictive note titles, and definitely understand how the new feature can cause some workflow problems, especially for those who relied on "untitled" notes. The feature is also receiving some adjustment as well. I like the idea of "Note on [date]", I could see that making more sense in many cases than location, which is the baseline information the titler draws from.
A toggle on/off feature and Date/time stamp would be perfect. I created new notes his morning with names like "call mom".

all notes are already date and time stamped in the "created date" field. Your notes on iOS and Mac and Windows can be sorted by this time stamp.

Hummingbird Joy · September 18, 2014

Dear Evernote, Please respond to this forum post about how to get rid of "predictive note titles." This feature seems to be generating some other concerns mentioned in the forums as well as problems for more people. This feature is also stopping me from moving forward with and recommending Evernote. It this something you or someone else can answer and fix? Will this feature ever go away?
We're reviewing putting an option in there to toggle on and off predictive note titles, and definitely understand how the new feature can cause some workflow problems, especially for those who relied on "untitled" notes. The feature is also receiving some adjustment as well. I like the idea of "Note on [date]", I could see that making more sense in many cases than location, which is the baseline information the titler draws from.
A toggle on/off feature and Date/time stamp would be perfect. I created new notes his morning with names like "call mom".

all notes are already date and time stamped in the "created date" field. Your notes on iOS and Mac and Windows can be sorted by this time stamp.

Hi There - This discussion is specifically about photos taken from within the Evernote app. These "photo-notes" use a new naming standard called Predictive Note Titles. The default note name is not a date stamp. it picks something from the calendar.

ScottLougheed · September 18, 2014

No note name has ever contained a date stamp, predictive title or not. ALL notes, regardless of how they are created or what they contain possess a "Date Created" attribute. This is not in any way associated with the presence or absence of the predictive note title.

That being said, I do know some users like to prefix their notes with a date like yyyymmdd or the like. To me this is always redundant since that field already exists for every note, but some folks like it.

Having Evernote automatically prefix titles like that could be handy, but in my opinion it would just be redundant.

IceFishingGuy · January 2, 2015

Dear Evernote, Please respond to this forum post about how to get rid of "predictive note titles." This feature seems to be generating some other concerns mentioned in the forums as well as problems for more people. This feature is also stopping me from moving forward with and recommending Evernote. It this something you or someone else can answer and fix? Will this feature ever go away?
We're reviewing putting an option in there to toggle on and off predictive note titles, and definitely understand how the new feature can cause some workflow problems, especially for those who relied on "untitled" notes. The feature is also receiving some adjustment as well. I like the idea of "Note on [date]", I could see that making more sense in many cases than location, which is the baseline information the titler draws from.
A toggle on/off feature and Date/time stamp would be perfect. I created new notes his morning with names like "call mom".

all notes are already date and time stamped in the "created date" field. Your notes on iOS and Mac and Windows can be sorted by this time stamp.

Has this "Auto Title" issue been resolved? I get the same calendar auto title on my notes as well. It's quite frustrating as I have several calendars appointments within every day, so depending on the time it will pick one that may be a private appointment. Please help!

REVISED - I found solution to my issue under another forum - Sorry for this! My life is complete now!!

Freemjos640 · February 7, 2017

Why does note title no longer insert predictively on version 8.0.4

RonC · February 28, 2017

I am also experiencing a lack of predictive titles on all my platforms; in the settings section of the iPad version, at least, there is no way I can see to turn it back on. Any ideas?

Automatic Note Titles

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