There are updates and then there are UPDATES. Our users are not shy about letting us know what they want, so we get incredibly excited to release an update that we know will make a lot of people very happy. I have four words: iOS rich text support. I have two more words: shared notebooks. But that’s not all. We’ve also added passcode lock, a redesigned new note screen, a completely new iPad interface, and much more. Let’s take a look.
RICH. TEXT. SUPPORT.
This one was a doozy to implement, which makes it all the more exciting to announce. You can now add styled text (bold, italic, underline), highlight existing text, add URLs, create header text, and make lists. On iPhone, we had to completely rethink the New Note screen in order to accommodate the styled text features.
In order to create styled text on iPhone, tap on the new “A” button along the top of the note. You can either apply styles to new text, or to existing text by highlighting it. Certain options, such as lists and header styles, apply to the entire line that you’re editing.
On iPad, the rich text buttons are located along the top of the note.
Editing existing rich text
This update dramatically increases the creation and editing capabilities of Evernote for iOS. You will be able to edit any note that contains rich text that was created on the device. You will also be able to edit any note that contains styles available on iOS. There are some limitations to be aware of. You won’t be able to make direct changes to notes that contains more complex styles than what can be made in Evernote for iOS. These may include web clips, other typefaces or tables.
If you try to edit a complex note, you’ll be presented with new options: Append or Simplify. Append will add your additions to the end of the note. If you choose Simplify, Evernote will simplify the styles in the note to ones that are editable, which means that some complex styles may disappear. If you want to get back to the original, you can fish it out of the trash.
What about checkboxes?
This feature isn’t perfect yet, but we’re working on it. For now, to create checkboxes you must use the desktop version. As always, you can check off boxes in iOS.
Access Shared Notebooks
You can now view any notebook that other Evernote users have shared with you from both iPhone and iPad. Here’s how to access Shared Notebooks:
- iPhone and iPod: Tap on Notebooks in the menu bar, then tap on Shared Notebooks. Next, select the notebook you wish to view.
- iPad: Tap on the Shared tab in the top bar of the application. This will display the list of notebooks that have been shared with you.
When you tap to open a Shared Notebook, Evernote will begin to download snippets for the notes. Just as with your own notes, any note that you view in a Shared Notebook will be stored locally on your device.
You cannot create or edit notes in a Shared Notebooks, yet. We’re working on it.
New Premium feature: Lock Evernote with a Passcode
Premium Evernote users can now lock the app with a passcode for an added layer of security. This is great for keeping sensitive information hidden from prying eyes, or just making sure that your kids don’t accidentally delete some notes after they finish playing Angry Birds. This feature is available on both iPhone and iPad. To activate the passcode, go to Evernote settings, choose Passcode Lock, then set your code. The passcode request will popup whenever you open Evernote.
Search within notes
You’ve always been able to search across your entire account. Now we’ve added the ability to search within a particular note. To do this, open a note and tap on the magnifying glass. This will open a search box. The search you perform will be within the specific note you’re viewing.
Slideshow View
On both iPhone and iPad, we’ve added a new image viewing mode called Slideshow View. Slideshow View is perfect for viewing only the images attached to a given note. Simply load the note you wish to view and tap on an image. This will load the image in full-screen view. Next, swipe right or left to view other images inside of that note.
The Slideshow View has two additional useful features. When viewing an image, tap on the share icon in the lower left corner. You’ll see two options: Save and Copy. Tapping the Save button places the photo into the device’s camera roll. Tapping the Copy button places the image into your clipboard, allowing you to paste it into other notes and apps.
iPad Redesign
In addition to the great new features described above, the iPad also got a major layout update.
All Notes View
There are a number of updates to the All Notes view. Notes are now displayed as easy-to-read Snippets, giving you significantly more information about the content of a note than before. If you want even more details, pinch and zoom into the note list to increase the size of the Snippets. Reorganize the way notes are presented by tapping on the View Options button in the bottom bar.
The new interface also makes it really easy to share and delete multiple notes. To do this, tap on the Edit button in the top left corner. Next, select the notes. Finally, tap the share or delete buttons in the upper right corner of the screen. An alternative to tapping the edit button is to simply tap and hold one of the notes you want to select.
Snippets
The note list now displays notes as Snippets, which provide more information about the notes and give you a larger thumbnail. It’s a great way to quickly scan through your notes to find exactly what you need.
More to come
That’s a heck of an update. There are also lots of behind-the-scenes improvements to speed and stability. More great updates are on the way.
163 Comments
Greg Angell
so instead
of a list
like this:
i get a list
like
this
Lesa Z.
Yes! I have this problem too. I LOVE some of the changes in this version, but the weird extra spaces are frustrating me to no end. I was just about to get a bunch of library co-workers to begin a cooperative notebook of book lists, but the formatting problem is an issue I’m trying to deal with before sharing with them.
Steve
I am not that trilled about the new version. Still crashes just as much as before, syncing is quite obtrusive (sometimes get notes that I am trying to click on jump around, making it difficult to do anything until sync is over, if it doesn’t crash). Also, I don’t think I am the only one that would love to see sub-tags.
I think the product is great, that’s why I purchased a years subscription. However, these things do concern me some. A few areas that don’t seem very well polished yet.
rudolf
the updates make everything worse. or to better say: what was usefull and snappy became slugish (on the ipad2) and unclear/confusing (ie the slider on os x).
i hope there will be an update soon to improve performance on ipad — it’s unusable (ie keyboard response).
and the huge distance between lines is disturbing. if i would want such a distance between two thoughts, i would hit return twice. i hate it that the software does it. i use evernote as a kind of diary and not as a substitution for my website. please allow no html-like texts as before. thanks.
i will not update my macos version on my imac (snow leopard), my macbook (lion) is already updated and i don’t like it.
if nothing changes in the next, say two weeks or so, i would start to find a replacement service for my evernote account. at the moment almost useless!
thanks for the years up to now,
rudolf
Xavier
How do I return to the previous version of Evernote…
Agree with this comment “the updates make everything worse. or to better say: what was usefull and snappy became slugish”
Scott
I liked the previous version for iPad where only the images were displayed as opposed to the index card like background for each picture. Can this be turned off so we can just see the photos?
Brandon
So far, I’ve enjoyed the changes to the Mac desktop version of Evernote, I haven’t noticed any major problems with it and have liked the interface change a lot. That being said I don’t use the desktop version very often.
On my ipad2, I initially had an issue with typing, it was sluggish and impossible. But a simple restart fixed the problem.
I have also had the problem of double spacing of lines in my notes after editing them on my ipad–very annoying. It’s clearly an issue with the default ipad font selection, which appears to be Helvetica 16 double spaced. Every rich text note on the ipad gets reformatted that way regardless of what the font is in the desktop version of the note. This definitely needs to be fixed.
Finally, I also wish I could reorganize my notes view on the ipad, it only shows them in the order of most recently edited. Usually this is fine, but I would like to sort some notebooks in different ways.
John
I thoroughly endorse the complaint over the double space problem with iPad and iPhone apps. Small screens to begin with, can’t afford the unnecessary real estate. I have literally migrated over 500 notes onto Simplenote — unless EN can modify this they have lost me forever.
Andrew Sinkov
We are looking into the issue.
John
The conversion to double-spacing on the iPhone/iPad app is a fatal flaw. I now have to use my iDevices as read-only since it would otherwise corrupt any file I modify. It boggles the mind that the developers let this bug get by them. Every improvement made in the update is completely eclipsed by this flaw.
Gail
What happened? Everything seemed to be working fine, and then the update…I work only off my iPad and I can’t stand the double space with my writing. Also, the the font and spacing has changed in many of my saved notes. I’m very frustrated by all these changes. As far as I’m concerned all the update did was make things worse. I hate to have to switch to another app for my writing. Please fix soon!
Admaque
Just like to say that I love the new capability for formatted text. As a long term Essay user it’s all very familiar and is the reason that I’m thinking of switching all my stuff into Evernote. Two points:
- the word count feature in Essay is no longer in the Evernote version – will it return?
- it is not possible to edit a shared file on the iPad – this should be a MUST for future versions
BTW please keep the spacing between paragraphs. A double return screws things up if you transfer a note to Pages.
JD
I use Evernote on desktop, web and iPhone and via several “Trunk” apps. I’ve found that the only way to use it across all these platforms without the formatting becoming corrupted at some point along the line is to use plain text. After the update, every time I edit a plain text note on my iPhone it gets transformed to rich text, so now I can’t sync across platforms anymore. Well, technically I can, but my notes now look a mess because the rich text formatting changes unpredictably during sync. Please provide an option to switch off rich text formatting on iOS. Thank you.
Parker
Password protection just be a feature for ALL versions of Evernote. It is a fundamental security flaw not having the most basic protection for the Evernote database (for the free version.) How about offering a more robust encryption and password access for the premium service and a simple password protection for the free service?
KimG
I agree with many here that the previous version of Evernote for iOS work much better. I think you guys dropped the ball with testing this update before shipping it. That happens. But when it does, you’ll hear about it.
## Issues
* The magnifying glass that should appear when you tap and hold a finger on the screen doesn’t appear very often anymore.
* The spacing between sentence of the same paragraph is too much.
* The app crashes a lot.
* Where’s the option to just use plain text? Some items, like links and numbers, get converted automatically to a clickable item. Not cool.
Eric
I just wanted to join the chorus of complaints about the double space issue. So much of my Evernote usage is for lists that this really hurts usability. At least give us the option of not having it work this way.
Joel
I will also join the chorus of complaints. Holy moly this is annoying.
Greg Angell
I would just like to make notes
Like this
So I can orgnize them as I wish
Sam S.
What happened to multiple uploading of photos on the iphone app?
Andrew Sinkov
You can add multiple photos to your notes in two ways. You can add them one by one by tapping on the paper clip icon at the top of the note, or you can add multiple images from your camera roll by tapping on the little share icon when viewing the roll from inside Evernote.
Scott Ettin
I know Evernote is very aware of the iOS rich text problem. I’ve filed help desk tickets and posted in the forums.
Could you please just inform us as to when you’ll have the bug(s) quashed and a release available for iOS?
Having to bounce notes into Apple’s NOTES on the iPhone and BareBone’s Software app Text Wrangler before I enter text into Evernote is a crazy workaround.
Please, soon?
Thanks.
Chris Adamski
I’m with you! This needs to be fixed. I have hundreds of plain text notes that are routinely edited in iOS and on the PC, I need the consistency in the formatting between platforms back!
Chris Adamski
Please, please fix this update! I am having issues with the formatting of notes in iOS.
1) text is double spaced by default and there is no way to turn this off.
2) notes created on my PC formatted as plain text, single spaced, in Tahoma 10, are converted in iOS to a different font of a different size, and the text is converted to double space. When the note in iOS is saved back, this formatting is retained in the PC version.
3) I am unable to insert spaces at the beginning of a line for the purposes of bulleting plain text.
Please fix this. The iOS app before was great, worked perfectly for me. I really like the new update’s visual changes, along with the additional functions, but adding those while taking away the most basic functions isn’t making me so happy.
John Eley
I vote for the new update!!
What about TextExpander support, Please
Greg Angell
Thanks for fixing the double spacing, but still, when I try to use the space bar to indent a line (for example, for a sub item) the cursor goes back up to the end of the last line.
Greg Angell
It would be back t normal and much more useful if we could insert spaces at the beginning of a line so we could organize notes, particularly outlines, as we wish
Ian S
Iphone 3GS with latest evernote update & ios5 will deal with snapshoy ok but not with a photo from camera roll. Photo shows on thumbnail but not when tap thru to note and only blank not appears on web.
Grant Caley
I’ve and iPad 1 and have been suffering with poor performance and occasional crashes. I’ve about 18000 notes and am really struggling to find Evernote usable on the iPad.
Please,please please I prove the performance.
Brian Chee
It would be great if I could use the share arrow on the iPad to toss email/web/etc into Evernote just like I can share in Facebook or twitter….perhaps I missed a feature, but so far i’venot seen it.
Brian chee
Richard
Fix the iPad 2 double spacing already!!! Pressing return shoild give you a single spaced line. Who would think users would want every line double spaced!! Editing notes on my new iPad2 is impossible with this bug!