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Evernote uses lots of storage space on iPad


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I am running out of storage space on my iPad mini (iOS 8). 

 

Evernote uses 3,6GB and is  by far the largest consumer of storage space. On my iPhone 5s (iOS 8) evernote use 1,6GB of storage space

 

None of the notes are available off line on my iPad mini. 

 

Is it normal that Evernote should use so much space ? 

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How many Notes do you have?

 

IAC, 3.6GB sounds excessive to me, but it depends on the number of Notes you have.

 

I have about 11K notes, and my new iPhone 6+ shows only 437MB are being used by Evernote, and that is with several NB being stored offline.

 

Since you are not storing any NB offline, I think the simplest, quickest, approach is to:

  1. Check/record Total storage used (all apps)
  2. Do a MANUAL Sync on your iPad mini
  3. Confirm Notes are sync'd to Evernote service (go to PC or Mac, use EN Web client)
    1. STOP here if all Notes are not sync'd.
    2. You will need to resolve this before proceeding
  4. Uninstall Evernote from your iPad mini
  5. Restart your your iPad
  6. Check/record Total storage used (should have gone down by 3.6GB)
  7. Download/install Evernote from App store

If this doesn't fix the problem, then you can submit a Support Ticket (link below).

 

EDIT:  Added Steps 2 & 3

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Most definitely unusual, unless you are using Offline Notebooks off course. Best solution would be to sync all devices to the cloud ( for backup), delete your Evernote IOS app, reinstall and resync. Should definitely solve the problem in my optionion

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Yeah, I once noticed that when I switched a notebook away from offline viewing the storage did not drop immediately, Not sure how long, or if, EN cleans itself up.  May have been what occurred here.

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Yeah, I once noticed that when I switched a notebook away from offline viewing the storage did not drop immediately, Not sure how long, or if, EN cleans itself up.  May have been what occurred here.

Remember that Evernote caches notes on your device, even if they're not in offline notebooks. The rules for kicking a note out of the cache are unknown to me, and I don't recall seeing anyone from Evernote commenting about them either. So it makes a certain amount of sense that Evernote would just let go of notes as per their usual (though not publicly known) algorithm. But if you want to be sure, you can clear the cache on your own.
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Jeff,

 

Yes, know about cache, just not sure an offline note book would qualify as cache; maybe it does in the EN setup.  I have about 6GB of EN on my phone.  I may switch the smallest notebook (of the 4) from off line and see what happens.  Just for giggles.  Will report back.

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Remember that Evernote caches notes on your device, even if they're not in offline notebooks. The rules for kicking a note out of the cache are unknown to me, and I don't recall seeing anyone from Evernote commenting about them either. So it makes a certain amount of sense that Evernote would just let go of notes as per their usual (though not publicly known) algorithm. But if you want to be sure, you can clear the cache on your own.

 

 

How do you clear the cache on EN iOS?

 

I checked the EN settings, didn't see anything.

There is also a forum thread asking this exact question -- which has gone unanswered.

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While not an obvious location, it seems reasonably intuitive if cache clearing is understood largely/entirely as a troubleshooting task. By this logic, cache clearing is likely a task that support personal might recommend to a user, rather than a task a user would feel compelled to do on their own on a regular bases outside of troubleshooting. 

 

Again, certainly not obvious, but I gather that this isn't something users should normally/ideally have to concern themselves. 

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While not an obvious location, it seems reasonably intuitive if cache clearing is understood largely/entirely as a troubleshooting task. By this logic, cache clearing is likely a task that support personal might recommend to a user, rather than a task a user would feel compelled to do on their own on a regular bases outside of troubleshooting. 

 

Again, certainly not obvious, but I gather that this isn't something users should normally/ideally have to concern themselves. 

 

I guess we have a very different view about this.  As evidenced by this thread, many users might be concerned about a shortage of storage space, just like we are on our Macs and PCs.  So, if my iPhone was nearing it storage limits, I would definitely look at the apps I use a lot to see if I can eliminate unused storage.

 

And, if in fact clearing the cache also clears the storage for offline NBs that have been removed, then it definitely needs to be located in a more user-friendly place.  Maybe from a Support Reps POV it is logical to be under "Support", but NOT for most users.

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Per "The Lazy Programmer's Handbook"1, considering notes from a previously offline notebook to be in the cache would be a cheap way out of doing anything special.7

Jeff,

 

Your creation above seems to be the case!.  Started at 6.4 GB.  I "unchecked " one of my off line notebooks and the storage did not release until I cleared cache.  I gave it an hour before I did clear the cache, just in case.  Rechecked the note book and now am at 6.3 GB.  Only one data point but...

 

I guess I might be less concerned about the location of the cache clear button and more concerned about why I would have to hit if I switched a notebook out.  I know it's not the case, but un-checking off line might feel a bit like a file delete to some.  Seems to be maybe how this thread got started.

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csihilling,

I agree (if I understand you correctly). When I remove a notebook from Offline access, I expect that storage to then be made free, not to remain occupied. The fact that it doesn't is counterintuitive in my opinion, and mildly frustrating. 

As I say, it makes perfect sense to me. You've just moved the notes from "guaranteed-to-be-cached-if-storage-allows" status to "not-guaranteed-to-be-cached-but-might-be" status (which is the norm for notes not in an offline notebook). Presumably Evernote has a storage policy that will uncache notes as storage is required by other applications and/or Evernote. It would be great to know what the policy is, as a matter of interest.

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csihilling,

I agree (if I understand you correctly). When I remove a notebook from Offline access, I expect that storage to then be made free, not to remain occupied. The fact that it doesn't is counterintuitive in my opinion, and mildly frustrating. 

As I say, it makes perfect sense to me. You've just moved the notes from "guaranteed-to-be-cached-if-storage-allows" status to "not-guaranteed-to-be-cached-but-might-be" status (which is the norm for notes not in an offline notebook). Presumably Evernote has a storage policy that will uncache notes as storage is required by other applications and/or Evernote. It would be great to know what the policy is, as a matter of interest.

 

This is my assumption too, but my experience and what I've read of others is that this cache-pruning policy is pretty lazy. 

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csihilling,

I agree (if I understand you correctly). When I remove a notebook from Offline access, I expect that storage to then be made free, not to remain occupied. The fact that it doesn't is counterintuitive in my opinion, and mildly frustrating. 

 

Totally agree.

 

As I say, it makes perfect sense to me. You've just moved the notes from "guaranteed-to-be-cached-if-storage-allows" status to "not-guaranteed-to-be-cached-but-might-be" status (which is the norm for notes not in an offline notebook). Presumably Evernote has a storage policy that will uncache notes as storage is required by other applications and/or Evernote. It would be great to know what the policy is, as a matter of interest.

 

If one gets semantical with cache and off line storage, cache is water and storage is ice (how's that for mixing metaphors and making up words?).  IMO, off line storage will/should fail if storage does not allow.  To have a cache policy one would have a cache limit of some sort, not likely to be 3.6 GB per the original poster.  I go back to your lazy programmer guide Jeff, not a well conceived cache/off line storage strategy.  Anyway, there does seem to be a fix.

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This is my assumption too, but my experience and what I've read of others is that this cache-pruning policy is pretty lazy. 

Cache-pruning policies tend to be lazy; that's sort of a hallmark of the beast. Why toss something out until you really need to? The relevant question here is how pressure on the storage system affects Evernote's use of storage, but I've never seen anything that document that, nor am I au courant with the Android SDK to know if there are system facilities in place that help an app with this sort of thing (e.g. could an app mark files as  discardable by the OS?) and whether Evernote makes use of them.

 

 

If one gets semantical with cache and off line storage, cache is water and storage is ice (how's that for mixing metaphors and making up words?).  IMO, off line storage will/should fail if storage does not allow.  To have a cache policy one would have a cache limit of some sort, not likely to be 3.6 GB per the original poster.  I go back to your lazy programmer guide Jeff, not a well conceived cache/off line storage strategy.  Anyway, there does seem to be a fix.

 

I disagree, and your metaphor doesn't really capture the relationship between cache and storage at all; in general, cache is just available space in the storage that can be used to speed up accesses to frequently used items. See e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cache_(computing)

 

With respect to Evernote, notes in an offline notebook are cached in some sense, but, per Evernote's rules, they are required to be in local storage, so that's not real cache; it's storage that Evernote needs. Notes that are not in offline notebooks are not required to be in storage, so any of these notes, if they're stored locally can be kicked out without violating Evernote's requirements. Regardless, there's no actual need for a fixed limit (e.g. 3.6GB or 1GB or 50MB or whatever) on storage used for Evernote's non-offline notes; it may be just a matter of system storage needs (including needs of other applications). If no other app requires the storage, why would a different app need to do anything to toss items from its cache? There's nothing to do; just wait until someone needs it, then do something about it.

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This is my assumption too, but my experience and what I've read of others is that this cache-pruning policy is pretty lazy. 

Cache-pruning policies tend to be lazy; that's sort of a hallmark of the beast. Why toss something out until you really need to? The relevant question here is how pressure on the storage system affects Evernote's use of storage, but I've never seen anything that document that, nor am I au courant with the Android SDK to know if there are system facilities in place that help an app with this sort of thing (e.g. could an app mark files as  discardable by the OS?) and whether Evernote makes use of them.

 

But this is precisely the trouble I and it seems, others, have encountered. The cache builds up, and it quite simply isn't pruned when storage runs shy. 

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IME, caches are usually short-term, temporary storage.  Seems like the EN caching of previously view notes to speed up later viewing meets this criteria.  

 

However, Offline NB are, IMO, definitely NOT cache.  They are permanent storage the user has requested.  So, when the user removes a NB from Offline storage, the space should be freed up immediately, not reclassified as "cache".

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Cache in my history is either purged based upon need or age.  Some age pruning occurs even if space is available to facilitate busier times, particularly in multiple media cache systems.  Could set off another set of alarm bells refining the difference between cache and history (for this example of same media type in use ).    :)

 

Relative to the metaphor, cache is like water which rises and falls and is faster to drink than ice.  Storage like ice tends to sit there consuming space awaiting some event or other, global warming, I don't know.  Not the best of metaphors, but could we give a boy a break....  :P

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Note: my analysis really depends on the stipulation that an Evernote client has a working mechanism for uncaching temporarily cached notes (i.e., those not in an offline notebook). If it doesn't, then that's a far more important problem to solve than the one that's the topic of this thread. In fact, I don't know whether it is or isn't a good mechanism, on any device; I claim it's not particularly germane to my approach. Anyways...

 

Cache in my history is either purged based upon need or age.

This is the key. Remember, "The Lazy Programmer's Handbook" would guide you to a solution that's the path of least resistance: in this case, if you have a mechanism whereby cached notes are kicked off the island when storage pressures mount (that's the "need" portion; "age" usually only matters when that need arises and you need to pick a particular note to kick out, ref "LRU"), then a simple solution for changing a notebook to mark its notes as cached (i.e. available to be removed from storage), and let the aforementioned mechanism take over. Easy.

 

For those who didn't understand the point: items in an offline notebook certainly are cached: not in the sense of "can be kicked  willy-nilly off the device" but rather in the sense of "available locally for purpose of speed of access" (though the fact of the matter is that even these can be kicked out, if storage is low). That being said, removing them from the latter status can simply be accomplished by giving them the former status. There is no hard-and-fast rule that cached items need be removed immediately; again, why would you do work that you don't need to? They should be removed in due course as storage is required by the system. I suppose that in this case, you could make "And remove from device" an option for the operation of marking a notebook as non-offline, but I'd guess that most users don't notice, and you can always clear the cache anyways.

 

By the way, the Lazy Programmer's approach shouldn't be construed as saying anything bad about a programmer who uses it. You're just taking advantage of existing mechanisms, because writing new code almost always results in new bugs. In many cases, there's no loss of generality, and nothing that the user can perceive as being different anyways. Win-win!

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Jeff,

 

I get what you are saying, but I have a different view of cache and storage.  Cache comes and goes, but storage is permanent (and it grows).  Relative to this topic I, personally, would have an expectation that the storage would be released if I switched a notebook to off line.  I wouldn't expect to have to free the space myself.  Probably to do with the file metaphor with which I grew up.  No more than that.  

 

Theoretical, if one allocates more notebooks to off line storage than available capacity on the iPhone, does EN stop and say no mas - I am cached, or does it barf and go paws up, or does it eliminate the last used off line storage note or some of its own note cache space, or does something in IOS get engaged?  Got me, but cache is what the app gets to manage, storage is what I get to manage when I run out.  Which I'm thinking I would end up doing in the theoretical.  

 

Friday afternoons are a great time to pontificate, sorry.

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