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
Anthony
Terrible update! After Beta working fine, I also have the problem where install is successful, and evernote process starts but nothing on display at all on the screen. I’m using Windows 7 premium 32 bit on a Samsung Netbook.
Davo
Sadly no longer installs under Linux + Wine (and there I was hoping for improved Wine compatibility, not total incompatibility).
When will we get a native client?
Dickie Mint
@Andrew Sinkov – Yes, I know there’s different views. What I’d like (and what 3.1 had) is a ‘no view’ view, if you get my meaning.
cb
On WinXP and Evernote 3.5, anyone experience a
“bad image” error – “The Application or DLL C:\Windows….\ext.exe is not a valid Windows Image”
anytime you click on a note with an image in it?
Patrick
It is a shame that you introduce more options but remove previous functions that people are used to.
and there were a lot of remarks of the blurry fonts in the test, unfortunately this is not solved.
I think you should return to the drawing board. version 3.1 was okay and from there implement the new stuff and keep the old functions where they were.
If you want that people will use this program the rest of there lives, just improve it but don’t change it.
I will check the new (4) version… if I don’t find other software that will do the trick for me.
Greg
I’m not happy with the new client. I tried the beta but quickly returned to the 3.1 version.
I think the anti-aliased text is terrible on the eyes. I emailed you about this weeks/months ago, including screenshots and asking for a way to turn it off, but no answer. Why in gods name did you guys do this? It makes no sense.
Plus I keep getting synchronization failures, while I know my login and password are correct. It even downloaded all my existing notes when installed, but it won’t sync anymore. And I keep getting synchronization failure messages all the time when Evernote runs in the background.
Plus you still haven’t implemented shared notebooks in the desktop client. It’s been in the webapp for a while now. How long do we have to wait for this feature to reach the desktop as well? Why is there a difference in the web client and the desktop client at all?
I really liked Evernote and used it a lot, but because of all these things it has lost my interest. I would not recommend it to anyone anymore.
Please read all these comments as well: http://lifehacker.com/5453987/evernote-35-for-windows-released-introduces-better-interface#comments
sergei
you can’t search tags? the feature in all previous versions when you go to tags section on the left, start typing and tag appears. it was quite handy. i de-installed 3.5, the previous one is so much easier to use. sorry
Sin Trenton
Sorry, but have you had an Apple-design on this project, or something? The new interface is horrible, waste of screen estaste, startup time has quadrupled, turning it to bloatware, thumb drive support suddenly gone (The “We don’t need no stinkin external memory” approach is for Appletards, ok?), the overview of notes is horrible, useless and so inefficient it is scary.
And it seems not to be working on Wine!? Suddenly the Linux users got one on the nose from the left.
Evernote used to be about flexibility _and_ efficiency–not about trying to make everyone become an iPhone drone.
I don’t sit by a 28″ screen, wanting to look at pretty colours and big happy buttons.
In my job I use a netbook a lot, while on the road. I don’t toss a bird if your designer is trying to win a design prize in some obscure competition, I want to Get Things Done.
I used to recommend Evernote to my friends. Not any more. I will stick to 3.1 as long as possible, then ditch it for something more useful.
Fail, Evernote. Big, big fail.
Andrew
Guys, love your work but I am still often frustrated by the simplistic rich editing options. One major example: table editing.
Sure, you can create a table, but how to add a column? I can’t see a way of doing that except by copying and pasting to an HTML editor, adding the column, and bringing it back — and that is what I do. Table editing guys, it already exists elsewhere. In fact, give me access to the HTML source, and I’ll edit the note myself.
ej
A functionality that I miss from 3.1 is tagging several notes simultaneous.
I prefer the 3.1 tag system. The direct tag using balloon tip is also missing.
Another changed functionality is drag and drop, if I drag 3 files in 3.1 I it will create 3 notes. I 3.5 it will create 1 note merged, why?!?
Will be available a 3.5 portable edition? I can’t install evernote in some places, and I always prefer a local application to a web one, the web clipping is more smooth using a local app then in web.
In general I prefer 3.1 GUI, its more user friend friendly!
I love Evernote (the 3.1 edition), I don’t like 3.5 direction…
Chris Upfield
Just tried the new 3.5 update, but must say that the rolling tape veiw is a BIG omission from this version!
I generally keep my notes grouped via tags relating to each projects name, and by filtering on a project tag I have a rolling list of notes just for that project, which makes things very easy to find – I don’t very often need to resort to using the search box. However, none of the new views allow easy scanning of the content.
The new thumbnail view is only really useful if you are storing a lot of pictures, but is pretty meaningless for text only notes which most of mine are.
I have to agree with the many other posters generally the screen rendering looks a little ‘soft’ – I feel it would become very annoying after just a short session working with the app.
I’m sure the new ‘back stage’ features are great, but having lost the most useful view layout that the programme had, makes this a disappointing update. I not sure that I could make the transition to 3.5 at the moment because of these problems.
marie78963
This is cool. I have to try this and download it right now.
Tim
Hmm, I just started using EverNote and I’m already addicted, but I’m beginning to regret switching from OneNote. What happened to the “tag” button? I want to be able to just click on the tags I wish to use, not type them in. I don’t always remember which tags I have used before, so I prefer to see a list. Also, the adding more than one tag is kinda odd in the new interface.
Editing notes is also, frankly, way behind OneNote, but I’m willing to overlook it. The beauty of OneNote is that it expects nested lists and lots of bullets. Hitting ctrl+shift+b every time I want to use bullets is annoying. I also don’t understand why tab doesn’t do anything.
Anyway, I still like the program, especially iphone/ipod touch integration. I just wish things were a bit more intuitive.
Mojo Yugen
What I miss most from 3.1 is that now I cannot select multiple notes and tag them simultaneously. For me that was a huge time saver. I add hundreds of notes a month and many of them had overlapping tags. Please bring this functionality back.
Dinesh
I started of with v3.5 since its original beta release, and have pretty much stopped using Evernote since then, the main reason being the high load times and the high memory usage. It takes close to 15 sec to start off and takes close to 100 MB memory. My outlook with 10K mails inbox takes that much size. This is in sharp contrast to 3.1 where it took less startup time and less memory, because of which i always used to have it running in the background, but since it takes lots of memory i don’t run it in background and since it has high startup time, i no longer start it actively. Many peoples use case is to just have a simple, quick note capturing tool, and 3.5 does not fall under that category. Time to look for alternative tools for me (i am actively using some)
Alexey
Not going to upgrade without clear text rendering and tape view.
Carl Sandberg
I agree with the other comments that tagging worked alot better in version 3.1.
What happened to the search tags function in the sidebar? You used to be able to type in a letter and find the tag instantly, which is a must when you have several hundred tags
It was also a big mistake to remove the crtl+shift+t function to add new tags.
Please add these functions again, I could never work with the 3.5 version as it is now.
Jeff Svensson
Wow that’s just amazing how much better evernote 3.1 is than this new version. Judging from the comments, you have alot of work to do on 3.5. Prettier thumbnails is fine – but you should focus on making it easier to sort and organize notes. Please add some of the old tagging functions again, they are absolutely necessary!
Stefan
Wow, what an incredibly poor performance with 3.5 – I’m going right back to 3.1.
Andy Bevan
Installed it over the beta version 10 seconds ago and I love it already! I can read my PDFs again!
Jacques Turbé
Hope improvements are still in the works. For now, we lost the find and select tag feature !
With my large tag tree (>100 for >2000 notes) I can’t use 3.5 and benefit of its new niceties, and have to stick to 3.1.
(I miss EN 2, which was an unrivaled jewel, and is not at all obsolete for local databases)
Michael Piefel
How can you earnestly state that screen clipping has been improved? It’s horrible, it lacks every feature the old clipping has for the benefit of needing fewer clicks. I want to be able to save to a file, and I want the last region to be the default for a new clipping, so I can take a series of clips. Make ‘extended clipping’ an option if you so strongly believe in feature-poor clipping, but offer extended clipping to power users.
Steve Weiser
Add my disappointment to these. How ironic that I publicly got on the Evernote bandwagon the day you released 3.5. 3.5 is S-L-O-W on my Win 7 64-bit machine with 8 GB RAM. Takes forever before it will acknowledge anything I want to do. I am going to rollback to 3.1. Back to the drawing board, guys
Adam Porter
Sounds pretty bad. But I’m on Linux…so I can’t even use 3.5.
It’s really sad that you did a complete rewrite but ignored Qt4. If you had written it in Qt4, it’d run on Windows, Mac, and Linux with little-to-no modification, and you’d have so many advanced features available for free, from GUI to network code and more. Sad that you guys seem to be “drinking the Microsoft kool-aid.” :/
BenLuck
Hey guys, I’ve been reading through the comments and see you are getting a lot of negativity about the upgrade. I’ve been using Evernote for 18 months. My main client is the Windows version, but I also use the Mac client and iPod Touch client from home. I think the update is great, some nice new features, and still very flexible, it’s easy to customise a few settings and make it look like the old version if you want to. My only initial problem with the interface was the font clarity, but I changed the font type and size and now it is fine. This product continues to increase my productivity and efficiencies at work and at home. It’s a real life saver. I have no complaints, especially as it is free. It’s a great free product and I think a lot of people overlook the price tag when making negative comments. I have one question though, how far away is the collaboration functionality? My systems team are keen to have shared notes/notebooks rather than maintaining seperate copies. You guys do a great job, keep it up!
Josh
It would be interesting to hear a response from the evernote folks about all this criticism. How did you justify REMOVING function thats users depend on for using the platform? Will you add the old functions in future updates?
Jimmie
Rolling back to Evernote 3.1. Everything looks really blurry, and when I used to hit the print screen button, the clipper allowed right clicking for a bunch of useful options. Now, it’s just clip a section or a window into a notebook.
Along with everything else everyone has written above, I’m kinda happy that I’ve kept myself from migrating to Evernote as a primary note keeper.
Mladen Mihajlovic
Just wanted to add that I’m also hoping for the scrolling interface to come back. And the subject date field.
alimbada
Bulleted lists are broken in a big way. I’m going back to 3.1. This is unusable and unacceptable. I can’t believe it got past QA.
Andrew
Would have to agree with other users, the anti-aliasing on the text make it very hard on eyes, can you not add an option to turn it off so at least you have the choice.
Michael
I develop software, so I know how hurtful “constructive” criticism can be. I personally think if you tripled your price, many of the whiners would wander away. But that doesn’t seem to fit with your philosophy – and that’s why I’m such a huge fan.
I’m having trouble uploading the 3.5.1 RC1 – it says its loading it and it just hangs. Any news on this front?
As far as the “why is this gone” and “don’t ever change anything.” As someone who’s upgrading a client from a Winforms to a WPF app – it’s the .NET framework and application architecture / plumbing that is causing some of my clients’ growing pains. It’s hard to stand at the outside and know whats happening on the inside.
Keep at it folks, don’t get dragged down – you have a superb product and you’ll work the kinks out! We are cheering for you!
skyrider
I give you great credit that you did a major rewrite from the ground up. So often, companies are afraid to do that, even when it’s sorely needed. You did it for all the right reasons: improved compatibility, portability, etc. And I recognize that in using WPF, you did exactly what Microsoft would have recommended, using their “latest and greatest.”
So kudos on that. The shortcomings of Evernote 3.5 are primarily Microsoft’s problems, not yours.
That being said, sadly I have to say I’m going to drop back to 3.1, primarily because of “look and feel” issues:
* (look) The blurry typography drives me crazy. Also, the whole 2-dimensional design UI surface is a step down from the crisp, subtle 3D boxes of a “real” windows desktop app — it just looks, well, amateurish to me.
* The performance is just sluggish — it feel’s like (and looks like) I’m using a Web app, instead of a native desktop app — just the slight delay and unresponsiveness of the UI. I click – slight pause – something happens. I thought maybe it was just my 2-year-old laptop, but I see that people with the most powerful new machines are making similar comments. In fact, I prefer using Evernote Web to 3.5 — your real Web app is great!
* And yes, although this is not the deal-breaker, I too am irritated by the loss of features. (Here’s one nobody has mentioned so far: I used to be able to drag a document from my desktop to the “open” gray area below the last note, and it would be added as a new note in my default notebook.)
On the bright side: This Windows box is just for my day job. My real computer is my MacBook Pro, and I just love Evernote Mac — use it for everything.
chrpr
I also add my disappointment to these: 3.5 is a huge disappointment so far.
• The UI is slow, unresponsive and text is blurry and unreadable. Ugly like hell.
• Thumbnail and mixed view are no improvements in terms of functionality but a step back. They are inefficient and really useful only if you are storing a lot of pictures, but is pretty meaningless for text only notes which make up a huge amount of mine. The endless paper roll view is so essential for usability but not available anymore.
• Another changed functionality is drag and drop, if I drag 3 files in 3.1 I it will create 3 notes. I 3.5 it will create 1 note merged.
• Also in 3.1 was always a note ready to type in. In 3.5 I need to open a new one manually (also, I used to be able to drag a document from my desktop to this new note below the last note, and it would be added as a new note in my default notebook.)
• The loss of tagging features is mourned here extensively already.
All in all a huge disappointment and loss of much of it’s intuitive handling and functionality which made it so useful and worthwhile to work with Evernote. It’s time to move to a different software if things don’t get fixed quickly! Sad!
Bill
While I don’t like the additional memory usage, I think the interface is agreat improvement over 3.1. Yes, still much valued real estate is taken up, but not as much as before. The gigantic cartoonish un-customizable icons taking 2 1/2 inches of the top of the screen were trimmed down, note navigation is MUCH neater and smoother. I have not noticed any of the rendering issues these people are talking about, and I don’t miss the crippled time saver bell and whistle known as the time band.
I would kill for a calendar view, unlikely i’m sure..but I’d definitely settle for a mobile version with calendar view (icon lists on a large screen barely work for text heavy/picture light Notes..much less on a mobile screen).
Under the hood she looks much better than 3.1, the overhead is a slight improvement..just work on your memory issue and allow users to have some real preferences ala firefox…and possible support for a plugin community.
eager
I’ve been a happy user of Evernote 2 for more than 3 years now. It’s still working perfectly. It is really sad to see the ongoing litany of problems with the new Evernote 3. I’m just hoping against hope that someone will pick up Evernote 2 and revive it as a supported product. I had tried a couple of time to work with EN3 but I’m so glad I didnt switch.
Dean Morrison
Great update – love the new interface. My only complaint is that it takes up about 2 – 2.5 times more memory that 3.1 and is really grinding down my system.
don
For my use I like 3.5 and will be staying with it. The UI layout is nice, but I agree the rendering is soft on both XP and Vista. Not a deal breaker and switching fonts to Arial helped. Looks like you have alot of users that depend on items that are now gone like the tape roll view, which I acually didn’t like but got used to, and the sort/tag/search features. Might consider bringing those back. Love EN and have considered going premium, not because I need to, but just to support you for a product I depend on every day. Thanks.
JL
I’m with ‘eager’ – still happy with EN2. I tried EN3 several times and couldn’t stand it. Good luck, people.
Dan
The latest update to Evernote 3.5 is constantly crashing on my Win7 computer. Runs fine on XP. It is too frustrating to be useful at all. Love Evernote, but this is something that needs quick attention.
Frank J.
Add one user to the list of people who will not upgrade until the endless paper roll view is brought back.
Why the hell dont you listen to the people who use your product?
Did you brought back the screenclipper functionality since the beta version?
jfly
I really don’t like the new UI. Those thumbnails are totally meaningless to me. I think the thumbnails are only useful for those save lots of pictures. The point is evernote is not a picture organizer …
Bob Hoeller
Evernote is terrific as is but two additions would make it my goto program for everything I do manipulating data.
1- the ability to search files for duplicates and be able to delete same.
2- a hotkey that would enable you to copy highlighted items and place them in certain folder.
Info Select (www.miclog.com) and Zoot (www.zootsoftware.com) both have these capabilities but with your sync abilities where files can be accessed anywhere is why I I favor Evernote.
Peter Butkiewicz
Please bring back the portable mode (for USB sticks)
Vish
Why are the alt codes suddenly not working? If I do Alt+(Numpad)224, I used to get ‘α’ but now all I get is ‘a’.
bill
Mixed view + left panel disabled (f11) has such a better look,feel,and usability than the previous ones I can look passed the memory usage spike in favor of my own personal usability spike.
::prays for a Calendar view on mobile at least:: (amen)
Dave
It took a bit to memorize the new keyboard shortcuts [not too cool] but beyond that, I love 3.5. I run it on Win7 x64 with no problems at all.
Mike Stute
I can not leave 3.1 until I can access the underlying text in an ink note.
I publish a WordPress blog with my meeting notes.
Here is the sequence of events:
1) Create a new “ink” note for the meeting.
2) Take notes
3) Meeting ends. Hit “recognize text” button.
4) Copy the image of the ink note.
5) Copy the ASCII text that resides under the ink note.
6) Stick the image and text into a new blog post using Windows Live Writer.
7) “Publish” to my internal WordPress blog
My meeting notes are “super cool” because users can scroll through the blog and see the pages of ink. The blog is fully search-able because I also include the text.
I would love for there to be a way to publish my Evernote ink note to WordPress. I don’t see that functionality coming any time soon, so just having the text is good enough. Unfortunately, access to the text has been REMOVED from 3.5!
Agh!
I posted this some time ago in the forum.
Thiz
I like it guys, I know there will be some fix to be done, but I’m really liking all the new features and views. I LOVE Evernote, and I really appreciate the work you do.
modomiro
As much as I love Evernote overall, I dislike the font rendering of the new version. The fonts look blurred and are therefore difficult to read – a big annoyance for a note/text application. Why not using system defaults?
marinoz
When are you going to reinstate the “subject date” field?
Until that date there is only version 3.1 for me …