In its quest to make each individual more organized and productive, the popular note-taking app Evernote neglected a few important aspects. The speed of the application, or rather the lack of it, is a common element in user opinions. Evernote just released a redesigned iOS app that aims to address those complaints, as well as making your notes a little easier to review.
The first thing you'll notice when you start using Evernote version 8.0 is the new home screen that shows what you were doing before right where you left off, with your most recent notes ready. Note preview lets you see which notes have a large amount of content and which contain only text. In addition to this, the new navigation bar attached to the bottom of the application is also noteworthy, through which you can jump from one note to another, search, view the shortcuts, or view your account. One more green icon in the center of that new menu bar allows you to immediately start a new note and a long press on that icon allows you to swipe up to capture an audio note, a photo, or add a reminder.
A new feature for Evernote Business users allows you to separate your personal notes from your business notes. This is something that "dramatically streamlines these business contexts so much that it allows easy access," said Nate Fortin, vice president of design at Evernote. In addition, he declared: "We want people to spend less time browsing and more time doing things." Just long press on the account icon to switch between your business account and your personal account.
Your collections will now live at the top of the app screen and you can filter them by the tags that are used to identify your notes. Evernote's robust search feature has gotten faster and more powerful in this release, Fortin said.
And it's the improvements that have been made behind the scenes of Evernote that might matter more than the design (which is a huge improvement over the current look of Evernote). Evernote Executive Producer Eric Wrobel said the entire app was rewritten from the back-end, and it brought remarkable speed increases across the board, including faster syncing. In a comparison between the current version 7.0 and the new 8.0, the difference in speed between one and the other is quite noticeable.
The competition for your grades
Evernote was once the only option for taking notes on everything from managing simple tasks to complex projects, but now the popular app has serious competition. Microsoft's OneNote and Google Keep are popular options with integration with other services from these same companies. Apple's native note-taking app has also become more useful with new features, and lightweight apps and programs like Simplenote have made note-taking easier than Evernote has added layer upon layer of features. Price is also a factor, although Evernote offers a limited free version.
Evernote's reputation took a hit last month after making headlines for a change to its privacy policy that made it appear that the company's programmers could access its notes whenever they wanted. The news alarmed users, although Evernote quickly clarified that its engineers were accessing notes only to enhance the application's machine learning capabilities and have no knowledge of the content of the notes.
Of course there are many options when it comes to note-taking applications, but what is clear is that now, with the renewal of Evernote, the competition increases.
Yes, but they still limit the number of devices to two.
And they do not offer anything new enough to consider going through the box.