[UPDATE: Evernote for iPhone 3.2 adds expanded support for offline notes and notebooks. Read all about it »]
The latest release of Evernote for iPhone, version 1.4, introduces our most (MOST) requested feature: offline notes. We call them Favorites, and here’s how they work.
When viewing a note on the iPhone or iPod Touch, you’ll see a little gray star in left corner of the note title. Once the note is fully loaded, tap the star and that note instantly becomes a favorite. It’s now quickly accessible any time, even offline. To view your favorites, click on “Favorites” in the tab bar along the bottom of the application.
Great for the iPod Touch
This feature is particularly useful for iPod Touch users. Now you will be able to view selected notes even when outside WiFi range.
Planes, trains, and automobiles
With Favorites, you can access selected notes any time you like, no matter where you find yourself. So, whether you’re heading to the corner deli or to New Delhi, the information you need is always close at hand.
Tips
To help you get the most out of Evernote, we’ve added a little “Tips” tab into the bottom of the New Note screen. New tips will show up all the time, so be sure to check back.
And whole lot faster, too
In addition to the server-side tweaks that we mentioned in the last blog post, we also put significant effort into speeding up the application. So this version of Evernote for iPhone is faster than ever.
Make sure your iPhone is upgraded to the latest firmware from Apple and, as always, it’s a good idea to restart your iPhone after upgrading an app, especially if you have a lot of other apps installed.
Get the latest version of Evernote for iPhone now.
[UPDATE: Evernote for iPhone 3.2 adds expanded support for offline notes and notebooks. Read all about it »]
117 Comments
Joe
Hey, great.. but when are you gonna give the rest of the world, which does not use an iphone this ability? Most of us use Windows Mobile, not iphones… Those of us who don’t have internet plans on our phones really want this feature.
BF
this is just perfect!
Number 1 App on my iPhone.
Keep up the great work!
nesman89
how about a little windows mobile love. can’t we get the same features or do I have to whine like the Iphone homers.
ScruffyDan
Offline access to notes are is a great feature, but it would be great to have the option to automatically have offline access to all notes.
Keep up the good work.
Karsten
Great. This is what I was waiting for. Excellent. For me Evernote for iPhone is now “ready” and nothing (no features) is left to be done.
You may now turn towards something completely different
BTW: Can I switch the “tips” off once I feel I known enough? Didn’t bother to find out myself yet.
Josh
How do I tag all my notes as favorites then? So I can easily take them all with me?
Matthew
Cool! I hope that you find a way to allow text editing on the iphone of documents that have minor formatting. I created a note on the desktop, put a couple things in bold (nothing complicated) and discovered that the note was uneditable on the iphone.
Also, I’m still missing the ability to clip webpages and articles from the iphone. There is no good workaround to get something from safari to evernote. One easy solution would be to allow users to send text and links to user@evernote.com.
karen
This is great news — thank you.
(And how fun to see my suggestion included in that recipe tip! That Ward Street Bistro post was a lightbulb moment for me.)
Joshua Karjala
Great!
One step closer to completing one of the most important feature. Though as others I wish to have the option to save “everything” on my iPhone.
I don’t want to have to log-on to evernote before leaving the house just to remember to favourite some notes.
@Mathew – If you go to your settings you will see an e-mail adress that you can use to upload to Evernote. But yes in-app editing would be cool.
Andreas Duess
This is awesome. Evernote went from “hmm, not sure what to do with this” to “can’t live without it” application within weeks.
As a creative guy I am great believer in scrapbooks to keep a journal of ideas. Once I started thinking about Evernote in these terms I was hooked.
Paul Arterburn
Along with Matthew’s comment above, I agree…being able to edit notes w/ formatting would be a plus.
Perhaps, a box saying “Continue to edit this note and lose any formatting?”. You could also place any inline images at the very end of the note so you wouldn’t lose them, just have them out of place (ie. lose formatting).
Neema Naficy
Finally! I’ve been waiting for this update almost since the Evernote iPhone app first came out.
Of course, being someone who always wants more, I’m curious if there will be an update to the Mac application to allow marking notes as favorites? This would be a great way to select which notes you want saved locally on your iPhone, and to possibly do so in bulk. Going further with this idea, it would be nice to be able to select which notebooks one wants to mark as favorite.
William Stewart
I second ScruffyDan, it will be perfect when the iPod Touch can be used as a big fat offline Evernote client. That would be perfect (except for the crappy soft keyboard input).
nesman89
well I just installed my preview release for windows mobile. I must say I feel like an Iphone user getting special treatment. as for the feedback you asked for here goes.
good
1. very nice interface
2. I love the new interface for accessing my online notes looks good and very functional aesthetically.
not so good(however I’m sure you are working on this)
1. unable to edit web notes at all.
2. cannot delete notes from client.
3. I would like the ability to resize (make bigger) photos from the client. this would make it easier to read OCR photos from my phone.
nice job glad to feel some love for windows mobile.
thanks.
Lars
great stuff, really nice improvements
Chris K
Just another voice seconding the request for some Windows Mobile love…
Tanc
I’m not sure what the Windows Mobile users are upset about: http://www.evernote.com/about/download/#a-mobile
Isn’t that a Windows Mobile version?
Eric
Wow, another iphone update while Evernote for Windows Mobile is still broken .
I hate how developers have all jumped onto the iphone bandwagon and abandoned WM users that have helped to pay their bills for over 10 years.
kjk
Nice! Would love to have a preference to make this a default-I want everything available offline!
andrew
GREAT!
nice to se that you guys are listening to the users
saving for offline is something i really need and I appreciate the work guys!
Of course having all notes for offline would be great but this is a huge step in the right direction
Adam
How about making all notes available offline by default?
rob
You seem to be concentrating on iPhone a lot, I’m still stuggling along with my windows mobile device and getting more fed up with Evernote
ben
This all sounds great in theory but in my experience so far with 1.4 it only partially downloads my notes so it’s unusable.
Shame really, could be quite handy. I may try it again when it hits v1.5
Steve
PROBLEM:
Checking a “to do” item as “done” does not carry over. Either this is an error or a missing feature. I’m going to be using offline viewing for all my errands and “to do” lists and will need to “check off” items as they are completed. If these actions aren’t carried over, I have to remember to repeat each action on my “to do” lists when online.
Steve
Another issue I ran into is the Favorite star button is so close to the Notes button (which returns to the list of notes) that I often press the Notes button and return to the list instead of selecting a note as a favorite. And I have small fingers!!!
codegirl
Thank you! Offline access/editing of notes was something i really missed having. With this update, and the new API, I think i can make Evernote on iPod Touch do just about anything.
cloo
Just another vote for this function for WM too please! We have wifi as well.
Jeremie
Yet another request for Offline access to existing notes for Windows Mobile…
Missing that functionality is the one thing that is keeping me from daily use of Evernote.
Thanks for the good product, though, and keep the updates coming
satch
I was about to sleep checking facebook notifications in my iPod touch when I read Evernote update. Jumped to my computer to download it, so excited. This is so awesome. Keep on your good work.
Zellenswager
Come on, EVERNOTE!!! There are a gazillion Blackberry users here waiting for this! Get RIM involved so we can EVERNOTE for BLACKBERRY!!!
Mr. Matt
Whoopty doo… what you really need is EVERNOTE FOR BLACKBERRY!
Aymeric
Please, please, please, we need the same update on the windows mobile version
Chris
Is there a timeframe when this comes to Windows Mobile? It’s nice to support the iPhone, but please support the application with the bigger user base first.
dirk
Would it not be easier to select your favourites from the Evernote app on your Mac or PC? I think most clips are created at the main computer, so it would be easier to select at the point of origination if they should show as a Fav or not.
Just a future request. Also it is easier to scroll through your clippings on the Mac/PC than it is on the iPhone.
Thanks
Nubben
Have to agree with “ben” – notes are only partially stored locally when added as Fav. Sent myself a gif image of the London Subway map by e-mail to keep handy and the attachment does not load when viewing the note. This is a great new feature – thanks! – but this release has proven very buggy so far (have had frequent crashes too since upgrading).
Apart from that, in the beginning I didn’t really understand the purpose of Evernote until I had one of those lightbulb moments mentioned above. Now I use it to collect all my notes and keep an Offline desktop notes library to store heavy PDFs etc as a database.
Keep up the good work!
morgan
Awesome work on this so expected feature, I will finally be able to use this incredible app.
It now only miss for me (ipod touch user, sorry windows mobile & blackberry users) the ability to search offline on the mobile device. It’s actually frustrating to now have the notes on the device, but loose a lot of time to drag down to get to the wanted note. With this use the tags are totally useless, what must not be evernote’s policy. But at least congrats on the already hard work done! If by any chance I’m wrong about the offline search, and if the feature actually exists, I would be happy that someone tells me how it works. At the moment I keep on getting the “Error communicating with the Evernote servers” message. Thank you in advance!
Chuck
Why do I have to select EACH note to make it offline? There should be a feature to do MULTIPLE selection for offline notes.
If I have 50 notes, this will be troublesome.
Additionally, the new Evernote cannot create tables, etc. like the old version. I had Evernote 2.2 for Windows XP and Windows Mobile and everything transfer correctly and sync the exact notes, be it tables, checkbox, etc. I can even create notes with text formatting on Windows Mobile and it’ll sync back on the desktop version.
The new Evernote moving to the cloud breaks the BASIC function of note-taking that made the previous version of Evernote famous..
Another reason why I have not sign up for the pay version….
Charles
I really would love to have all this functionality for the Blackberry!! We are hungry for a response from the company on what the hold up is?
I love the web version and use it a lot. Thanks for what you do.
jefff
Another request for the blackberry. If you were to do that, it would be the best app for note taking by far.
Steve
I’d recommend a process whereby we can specify “Favorites” from any Evernote tool i.e. A box/star we can check on/off on the web, mobile app and software.
Geert
Great for my iPod Touch but my main device is a Windows Mobile device. As there are more Windows Mobile users than iPhone users, please direct your efforts to that community first or at least treat them as equals.
Creating notes on Windows Mobile is fine but getting to my notes with the browser is not the way to go. You should extend the application to get to notes in the Evernote mobile app just as on the iPhone.
Thanks for the soon to be released update
and thanks for all the work so far. I really think Evernote is the best!
JellyBeen
This is very convenient, I’m planning on picking up an iPod Touch very soon. I’m definitely looking forward to making use of this app.
gijs
BUG?
Since this iPhone version, notes consisting of only a jpg only are shown as a thumbnail, but when clicked just show as a large white note….
(I have many scanned documents, full color, 2400×3500 jpgs)
Roman
I started getting “error communicating with the evernote servers” for every note I’m trying to view.
3G is enabled and available, I’m able to stream music with simplify and speed tests in safari give me up >600kbit per sec.
For some reason evernote fetches my note list, but I cant open a single note! – Please help!
Andrew Sinkov
@Roman We’re working on fixing that issue. It seems to be related to non-US mobile carriers. We hope to have it resolved shortly.
Andrew Sinkov
@gijs We performed a server update, which resolves image issues. If you see an image thumbnail, but get a broken image when you open the note, you will need to re-install Evernote on your iPhone/iPod. Remove Evernote and re-install from iTunes.
BrettQ
I find it very frustrating that the iPhone (which I own as a secondary device) is getting update after update while Windows Mobile gets ignored. We use Windows Mobile at my job, and if it had the capabilities of the iPhone client, I could easily talk more people into using it as a notes and collaboration tool. I would not dare recommend a client that forces you to go to the web browser to do everything.
I really love Evernote, but I’m getting tired waiting for a real Windows Mobile client. My only hope is that you can take what you’ve learned creating the iPhone client and mimic it on Windows Mobile.
I guess it could be worse…I could be a Blackberry user.
Hugh
Huge Groan!! This FAVORITES feature shows that you don’t even begin to understand what we are wanting when we say we want offline functionality. WE DO NOT WANT TO MARK THINGS AS FAVORITES – WE WANT TO BE ABLE TO JUST CONTINUE WORKING ON ALL OUR NOTES OFFLINE. ALL OUR NOTES. ALL. ALL. ALL. GET IT.
I find it intensely annoying and irritating that this blog post begins suggesting that Evernote has just implemented the most requested feature. You haven’t at all! If you think that this favorites thing is what we want, you haven’t even begun to understand what is basically a VERY SIMPLE concept: we can do offline what we do online. FAVORITES is NOT, NOT, NOT that.
Jeremy
Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! I really appreciate Evernote’s responsiveness. All of the major feature requests I’ve had since I started using Evernote on my iPhone have been addressed. Sure there are still improvements can be made, but Evernote has taken care of all of the big issues.
Barbara
I agree that the this version of offline implementation is barely better than nothing.
If I could select notes in Windows and mark them as favorites in a big bunch, that would help. But I can only mark them as favorites on the phone,one note at a time!
But really, the point is that EVERYTHING should be offline, period, and when online access is restored, EVERYTHING should sync. Or make sync manual. Whatever.
Look at toodledo for the iPhone and do what they did. Simple, clean, works like a charm.