You know that amazing feeling you get when you cross the finish line after running a full marathon? Me neither, but I imagine it’s similar to what we’re feeling right now. After over a year of development and months of extensive beta testing, the new Evernote (version 3.5) for Windows is here, it’s out of beta, and it’s pretty awesome.
Download the new Evernote for Windows »
We’re staggering the auto-update process. If you have been using the Windows 3.5 Beta and want to upgrade, go to Tools>Options>Upgrade to pre-releases. Evernote 3.1 users should download the new version.
Why this is huge
The new Evernote for Windows is…well…new. Completely new, in fact. We rewrote it from the ground up to make it faster, more reliable, and just plain better than Evernote for Windows has ever been. The first thing you’ll notice is its revamped interface. The new look, complete with thumbnails, is great for quickly browsing and searching through your notes. Once you start using it, you’ll notice improvements to text editing, tagging, screen clipping, digital ink support, and tons more. Our goal was to use everything we’ve learned since our launch to make a great Evernote experience on Windows.
Ideal for switchers
Lots of people move among multiple computers and devices as part of their daily routine. The last thing you want is a wildly different Evernote experience on each platform. A major consideration for us in developing this application was uniformity—making sure that you could go from using Evernote on your Windows machine to Evernote on your Mac and back again without thinking about it. Now you can.
Latest and greatest
This means that not only it is more functional and stable and works great on Windows Vista and Windows 7, but we’ll be able to roll out continuous improvements faster than ever.
So, so, so much more…
Here’s an (almost) complete list of all that’s new and better in Evernote for Windows version 3.5. If you’ve been following us through the beta process, then you may have seen some of these already.
Three different ways to view your notes
- Thumbnail view: Rendered thumbnails showing the contents of your notes, images, and PDFs for easy browsing and filtering
- List view: Multi-column “List View” with sorting on any column
- Mixed view: Mixed thumbnail + detail view
- Zoom thumbnails to see more detail
- Display thumbnail or mixed views in visual groupings by date, size, source URL domain, and start of title
Note editing
- Auto-complete tagging and easier tag creation
- Spell checking as you type
- Better support for advanced markup
- Create tables within notes
- Specify default font size for text in notes
- Better handling of longer text notes
- Creating ink notes in easier with the new canvas-like layout
- Detailed note information and attributes
Searching
- Editable and descriptive search filter
- Ability to add or remove individual criteria from current search filter
- Save the current search for use later as a Saved Search
- Extend note search capabilities with ANY or ALL search criteria
- Support for advanced search grammar in the search field
Other stuff
- Find and Find next/find previous (both within and across notes)
- Better consistency across the Mac and Windows versions of Evernote
- New icons and buttons
- More user-friendly “Folder Import” feature to automatically create notes from a watched folder–great for scanner and other integrations
- “View on Map” button opens geo-tagged notes in Google Maps
- Evernote for Windows introduction video included on launch
- Multi-lingual spell check included in application
- Quick access to your online account information
- Improved screen clipping requiring fewer steps, with on-screen explanations
- Menu options for attaching files to notes without requiring drag-and-drop
- Remove tags from notes with a single click
- Advanced note text editor based on Google Chrome
- Improved synchronization performance via networking optimizations
- Improved database performance for faster searching and sorting of notes
- Full multi-language support (English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Japanese, more coming soon)
- Single binary for all supported languages
- Synchronization is improved, it is now both faster and more memory efficient
- Drag and drop files onto the application icon
- Informational popups alerting users to synchronization and clipping
- New, re-mappable global hot-keys
- Search support for Asian characters
- Improved auto-import dialogs
- Improved copy/paste support
- Incorporated more standard keyboard short-cuts
- Improved task tray with easier access to clipping and short-cuts
- Email notes via the Evernote Service to remove email client dependencies
- Configurable auto-update to pre-release versions
- Improved installer
And that’s just the beginning
You can expect to see tons of new features and enhancements soon. Stay tuned.
Download the new Evernote for Windows »
UPDATE: Evernote 3.5.1 is out. This update introduces major improvements and enhancements. Read about it here »
191 Comments
Phoenix
NOoooooooo, this version is ugly and boring and I can’t use it!!!!!! I like the old version much better. The new ways to view notes are so annoying compared to the old way.
aarjayaitch
I agree with those who want the paper roll view back. I installed 3.5 on my desktop and I absolutely loathe the new views! Sticking with 3.1 unless the endless roll view reappears.
Frank
The 3.5 doesn’t install on my WinXp. When the OS crashes (finally) I will switch to linux. So there will be no more Evernote for me then??! Not even for a “premium user”?
Robert Aubin
I think both versions are good. The old version seems to react
quicker.
SB
Can we have option for the old view back please? The new one is boring, slower, has redraw issues, and has the all important ticker view missing.
Why would you want to give us less functionality and more. Instaling old version now.
Only good thing in the latest version is the ability to format text withing the note view i.e. without popping out the window.
Valerie
This seems like a great way to get organized.
Katja
I really don’t like the new interface, which is much more difficult for me to navigate – like some others, I prefer the paper roll (I also think it looks much better). I’m sticking with 3.1 for this reason, at least for the time being. This is the same reason I’ve been unable to use the web interface.
Gustavo Niemeyer
What about Linux?
Aldennis
I want Evernote to run natively on my Ubuntu please…
Is that hard to create a linux version of Evernote?
Darryl Godfrey
Why is Evernote SO incredibly slow and clunky now? It used to be light, start quickly and be very responsive. Now, as of version 3.5.x, it’s so slow I’m thinking very strongly of ditching it in favour of something else. Don’t these people ever test their code?
Jordan Garn
Man, I hate the screen clipping “features” added to 3.5, 3.1 was much better and easier to use, plus you could press ctrl+s to save the note to anywhere on your computer (not just the desktop) or ctrl+c to save it to your clip-board, and that was alot more intuitive for me.
Is there anyway to go back without down-grading?
Philippe Allot
We also stick with Evernote 3.1 (3 premium users). As software designers, we know that it is not easy to improve a product which is well born, without in fact disappointing its users.
It was simpler in the old version to drag tags, to filter with them (just count the clicks), to have a synthetic view of all of them, and so on.
To have thumbnails can seem attractive but is not so efficient for (our) intensive usage (the major part of our notes are text or are software screenshots which appear very similar). As some users have said above, can you consider delivering the old interface with the enhancements on text editing ? That will be nice…
james
I installed 3.5 but I didn’t like it. I tried installing 3.1 and I like the simplicity and speed.
Sheree Young
I can’t install. Keep getting the error “Not a valid win32 app”. My OS is Windows 7. I’ve tried compatibility mode.
Suggestions?
Andrew Sinkov
Sheree, please contact our support team: http://s.evernote.com/support
stephen
I have windows 7 64 bit and I have tried everything but it wont install
Chris
Nice. I click the link to submit a ticket and it asks me for a username. I haven’t installed it yet because of the error message above! What now?
Heather
Username is not a required field on the submission form. You can leave that blank to submit your ticket.
Sean
Why is Evernote SOOOO SLOOOWWW these days??? (Specifically, desktop Windows client). This is really gonna kill the product amd service offering. I purchased my v2.2 long time ago and loved it, used it all the time for everything. Now having installed this new 3.5 version, I tried so hard to tolerate the speed…and gradually find myself avoid using the product. It’s just too damn slow.
Joe Reger
Totally agree. The Windows client is so slow that it makes Evernote a challenge to use. A notes app needs to always be there to catch data as you need it to. Waiting for startup and dealing with app stutter breaks my workflow when I try to simply jot down a note. Can’t tell you how many notes I’ve not taken because I try to avoid Evernote. The only thing keeping me there is the fact that I have a lot of notes already in the system and I don’t want to spend the afternoon it’ll take to research alternatives, install/test them and then convert existing notes over. Hoping that things speed up in the next release.
Öner
I like Evernote but Evernote for Windows keeps crashing when I double-click an even slightly larger text note and try to edit it. I use Google Chrome and Vista for Business. It happens every time I use Evernote for Windows which makes it impossible for me to use.
Marcus
Second the comments about speed. Windows standard GUI elements might be ugly but at least they’re quite snappy. I couldn’t believe it when I changed some preferences in Evernote 3.5 and even the checkmarks _fade_ in and out. For a tool like this, speed of response _always_ trumps looks. Sorry, I really like Evernote but this is a complete re-do.
dante
this software is not compatible to my window 7 64 bit
DJ
desktop version is bulky and slow. i have given up. for now accessing my notes from my phone or the web till i find a better alternative to evernote
OldSkool
I agree with Sean, Joe, DJ and others. The desktop version is too slow. My workaround is to type notes into Notepad and transfer them to Evernote when I have time. Uploading seven (7) pre-typed text notes just took me 20 minutes! That’s ridiculous. Anyone else nostalgic for the good old days of Tornado Notes and InfoSelect? Those were fast on slow machines!
fng
i don’t really care what version or what interface, i just care about one thing. why is it soooooo slow now almost to a point that it is not usable via the website.
the same experience with chrome, IE, and firefox. different versions of these browsers produce the same end user experience.
i love the service, please do NOT go where everyone else does, it’s not always about new features. new features are only cool if you can keep the performance at a constant.
thanks for listening.
-fng
Suki
Please Please can we have the old evernote back again.The new one is not half as good.
Tarryn
It wont install on Win7 64bit – I have tried everything – is there a solution for this issue?