Evernote is brilliant. I am a very experienced Mac user, and loath subscriptions but Evernote is justified and it runs my life.
All the alternatives are no where near as good.
Apple notes - no tags, web clipper ,
One Note need I say more this has to be the worst piece of software ever created. Just awful
Notion - interesting. Not as powerful
DEVONthink. I use for long term storage but it is a bit clunky.
Noā¦ but it does look interesting. Might download it and play a bit.
Iāve begun experimenting with migration from Evernote. Working on replicating my various workflows (both Mac and iOS) to Apple Notes. Generally, working ok. One glaring problem that I will need to reconcile is lack of Apple Notes search support in HoudahSpot. Problem for a different day.
Does anybody have experience with backupery? Iām seeking a method to export my notebooks from EN in some bulk fashion. Individually choosing each notebook to export will be quite tedious with the number of notebooks I have.
Experience with backupery? Other options?
thanks for any guidance ā jay
Iāve been an Evernote premium user since near the beginning of Evernote but this year Iām not renewing my license and Iāve moved just under 20,000 notes to DEVONthink.
The sync on Evernote has become too slow. Iām keeping the free version for quick cross platform shares but DEVONthink gives me much more control over the backend database(s) that I require. Also, the recent C-Level departures at Evernote was enough of a scare that I decided to export all my notes to DEVONthinkā¦which took me about 90 minutes but was very easy to do.
Can you describe how you transferred the notes?
I have a lot of different notebooks in Evernote so rather than doing one massive export from Evernote I decided to export my Evernote notes one notebook at a time. This step required about an hour in total but it allowed me to breakup the task into manageable note export is a built in feature on Evernote.
I used the DEVONthink utility for importing exported note files from Evernote. This was fast and easy. I utilized the same notebook organization via tagging in DEVONthink.
So, there are utilities in both applications that make this fairly easy. Note, DEVONthink isnāt going to do crossplat syncs and syncing in general requires setup and planning. I havenāt finished that process yet because I want to read up on my options regarding DropBox vs iCloud before I commit.
DEVONthink seems to have a very powerful association engine for creating links between notes. It also utilizes the ScanSnap scanners like Evernote. Very well.
Overall Iām happy with my decision but itās going to take me weeks before I fully appreciate what DEVONthink can do.
My experimentation with Notes as an alternative to EN was short lived. While Iāve enjoyed the change in UI using Apple Notes (both Mac and iOS), Iāve encountered a few insurmountable problems. Truth be told, Iām not sure my attraction to the UI was due to truly novel differences or simply a change of scenery. May be the latter!
Quite simply there are 2 key issues that will keep me from moving from EN:
Many notes converted āgood enoughā, but many lost enough formatting that the integrity of the note was lost. Many of the problem notes that I spot checked were notes that were created via the āEmail to Evernoteā feature. With close to 4,000 notes Iām not going to check integrity of each note. This alone is a deal killer, at least for a complete move from EN to Apple Notes.
Iāll deal with this for now. However, this one is worrisome as it just underscores the difficulty of getting data out of EN.
I rely heavily on search. Apple Notes are not individually indexed in the Spotlight index. As such, external search tools (eg, HoudahSpot or Alfred search) do not work. Dividing my search workflow across 2 search tools makes no sense.
I contemplated āpoint forwardā migration. That is, donāt convert the old and start new in Apple Notes. Migrate away over time. The search issue killed that idea, too. Splitting my notes across 2 apps is only feasible if I can do a simple search across both. This is not an option.
While not as significant, through this experiment I realized how much I depend on āEmail to Evernote". I havenāt been able to come up with a suitable workaround that is not really clumsy and inefficient.
I was able to cobble together suitable web clipper replacements for use with Apple Notes on both Mac (thank you Keyboard Maestro) and iOS (Workflow/Shortcuts).
I was also able to replicate most other EN workflows of mine (many Alfred or Hazel based) using AppleScript and Workflow/Shortcuts for iOS. It was fun to build these and Iāve enjoyed the thought problem of ācould I move off ENā.
Though, for the simple reasons above, Iām going to hang out in EN for the time beingā¦ ā jay
So I currently have about 2 years left on my 3 year subscription of premium. Have tried over the last couple of years to move away from Evernote but always found flaws with the programs I have used.
I primarily use it as a filing cabinet, drop receipts, tickets etc etc in it but it contains a lot of stuff that I have no longer got the paper copies.
I decided a couple months back to dive in with Hazel and get using it and now have a lot of the statements saving to both Evernote and iCloud in a folder structure I set up. I have also taken the historic docs from Evernote and put them in to the relevant folders here on the back of the recent news which seems like impending doom for the company.
I am happy to use Apple Notes or Drafts for my note taking so thatās not an issue for me. So far I am actually quite happy with iCloud Drive for the doc storage too.
I stopped using tags a few years ago and trusted the full doc search in Evernote and that is the one thing I am reluctant to lose or walk away from.
Do any of you have any ideas how I could replicate it. I primarily have PDFs of images or the scanned docs but there is the occasional picture here and there?
Thanks and sorry for somewhat hijacking the thread it just felt quite relevant to this one rather than starting a fresh.
Has anyone noticed that the Evernote Web Clipper for Safari has been discontinued?
When web clipper works, that is. Every time I go to use it in chrome, it doesnāt work. Uninstalling reinstalling doesnt fix it.
Youāll find the web clipper here:
https://safari-extensions.apple.com/details/?id=com.evernote.safari.clipper-Q79WDW8YH9
Itās been working flawlessly for me in Safari 12 / macOS Mojave.
Iāve been using EN since I got. Free 1yr premium subscription as part of a Mac desktop SW bundle, a few years ago. The main feature I like is that it als works on Windows. We use Windows where I work, having access to the data is helpful. Recently, the IT Dept blocked ENās port, so I have to turn off WiFi, and unplug ethernet on my work laptop, then tether my iPhone to sync over cellular. Too much trouble .
I never liked the UI. One should be able to drag notebooks inside of other notebooks, instead of having to use the menus. There are other clunky UI issues too, but since I havenāt used it in so long, I donāt recall them.
Itās become the roach motel that @MacSparky always called it.
I rarely ever refer to the data I put in EN, but thatās part of my broken workflow, not the app itself.
I really liked the web clipper, but itās been broken more than it works.
That said, Iām up for a replacement as long as it works on iOS, Mac and Windows. I donāt mind paying for a subscription, as long as the app and its helpers are working.
I was thinking about trying Devonthink as a potential 2-OS alternative, but since I donāt get enough time on my Mac, I think it will end up as a one-way, EN-like bitbucket.
FYI OneNote has a web clipper.
https://www.onenote.com/clipper
I played around with the Chrome extension for it, and it wasnāt bad at all. (I donāt know what the situation is with Safari, though.) But I gave up on OneNote for other reasons.
(Safari 12.0.1 on 10.14.1) I thought the same, especially since the App Store does not have a āmodernā version of the web clipper. However the link that @timstringer provided above is the way to go. I first had to remove the non-functioning Evernote Clipper via Safari preferences and then reinstall it from the āoldā Safari extensions site.
I suspect this method will die eventually as Apple makes Safariās interaction with applications even more restrictive in future releases.
Anyone notice Evernote still seems to be around.
Itās a good product and could be around for many more years. But I do wonder why their CEO, CTO, CFO, and Vice President of HR have all left in the past couple of months.
Bingo. It points to a toxic environment.
However, Iām interested to see what Ian will do at the helm.
Yes, I read about that too. Perhaps they plan on founding a new company. They want to devalue Evernoteās market value. They want to start the clock ticking on an anticompetitive clause in their contracts. Hands caught in the cookie jarā¦ internal conflictsā¦ or other unfortunate guesses. We can make up 50 other scenarios. (Not suggesting truth in my baseless explanationsā¦)
That said, Iām not following the story closely. There may be people who have dug deeper and have substantiated the idea a executives fleeing a failing company.
I wonder how speculative stories hurt Evernote as a company.
FWIW Got this email from Evernote yesterday: Inventing the Future: Greetings from Our New CEO