Evernote has been on all my devices for probably more than 10 years. My collection of notes in Evernote is extensive, almost too big to fail, I would say.
Unfortunately, Evernote hasn’t really evolved much in recent years. At the moment, a major relaunch is being prepared, which I’m very much looking forward to as a long-time user. Whether this will help Evernote regain lost ground remains to be seen.
What convinced me so much 10 years ago that I’ve remained loyal to the tool for so long and even treated myself to a Pro subscription? There are several things.
Cross-platform
First of all, Evernote lives on all imaginable platforms. Even on my Apple Watch. So I’m able to take notes anytime, anywhere. On the Watch, of course, in the form of a voice message 😊
Synchronization
The synchronization between the different worlds happens in the background and is absolutely solid. It has never let me down in all these years. Evernote also works offline: the entire database is synchronized locally, so you can access all data even without a network connection. Incidentally, this also provides a local backup of all your notes, which is an important criterion for me.
Search Function
Once the notes (text, handwriting, sketches, clips, audio) are in Evernote, you can find them again. This is because Evernote comes with an extremely good search function and can also be searched via Spotlight on Mac. And because a browser extension, if desired, ensures that when I do a Google search, my possibly existing notes in Evernote are also listed in parallel. How often have I googled a topic for which I already had records in my Evernote notebooks!
Tags
Evernote has relied on tags / keywords from the beginning. While other tools like Apple Notes, Goodnotes or OneNote are based on a hierarchical organization of notes in folders and lists, in Evernote you can simply throw everything into one pool. If you take the trouble to assign a few keywords to each note, it’s much less work and you can still find everything again.
Based on the keywords, it’s also very easy to filter notes on a topic and combine them into new notes. Evernote offers some clever tools here that help you sort your notes.
Web Clipper
A killer argument for Evernote is finally the Web Clipper, with which you transfer content from the browser to your notebook. If you’ve found interesting content of any kind on the internet, you can send it to a new Evernote note at the push of a button. Various formats are available: you can save the entire webpage as an archive. You can strip the content of any ballast (advertising!) and save only the condensate. You can create a screenshot. Or you can save the webpage as a bookmark.
You can save a comment along with it and of course assign tags right away. In my eyes, this Web Clipper is unbeaten, even though OneNote has now copied the concept quite well 🙂 Notion also offers a Web Clipper – but none of them yet match Evernote’s original.
What Bothers Me
All these functions (plus some others like sharing notes with other people) speak very much in favor of Evernote. Nevertheless, Evernote will probably no longer be my favorite tool in the future.
A major reason for this is the lack of ability to structure content. While you can change font size and appearance as in Apple Notes, no semantic information is stored. This is especially unfortunate when I summarize several short notes and enrich them with my own thoughts and content. Then I would like to set hierarchical titles and give structure. This is not possible in Evernote.
A second reason for me is the lack of innovation. Evernote is a workhorse and functions absolutely reliably. But in the last 5 years, it feels like not a single new function has been added. Other tools like Notion now offer completely new, exciting approaches – Evernote, on the other hand, is currently busy completely rebuilding its core functions and making them more consistent across all platforms.
There are totally exciting insights behind the scenes on YouTube. I hope Evernote manages the turnaround, and I won’t jump ship for the moment – especially since I can’t give up my large collection of notes overnight. But I’m still a bit doubtful at the moment that Evernote can make up for the lost ground.
