Following the extensive work we did on Evernote’s foundations in 2023, the team was able to hit the ground running at the beginning of the year. Thanks to an ambitious product roadmap and weekly release schedule, we managed to release twenty substantial improvements in the first three months of the year. But the work is far from done—we’re already exploring many exciting opportunities to make Evernote even better in the coming months. Below, I’ve included a list of our top improvements so far this year, along with a preview of what’s coming soon.
Prefer to watch? Check out this video where I cover many of the same topics.
Key improvements in January-March
📝 Note Editor
We doubled-down on improving the Editor to bring you a more powerful and fluid note editing experience. This involved adding several new Editor features, such as:
- Slash commands. Easily add tasks, events, links, tables, headers, and much more to your note with a single keystroke (“/”).
- Collapsible sections. This gives you more control over how you view your notes. Just click the toggle icon on the left of a heading or list item to collapse or expand the content below.
- AI Edit. As an evolution of AI Note Cleanup, AI Edit can summarize, translate, edit, and generally improve the written content within your Evernote account. Learn more.
- Image alignment. This fundamental option wasn’t previously possible in the Editor and was one of the first changes we introduced to ensure you have all the functionality you'd expect from your go-to note-taking software.
- Arrow ligatures. Now, character sequences like "- >", "< - >", and "= >" are automatically formatted into nicely rendered arrows. It’s a small improvement that immediately makes notes look more professional and polished.
📅 Calendar
Calendar has always been a useful tool, but for a long time it was a paid feature buried within the product and limited by the fact that it only connected to Google Calendar. We focused on making it relevant and accessible to more people (while also setting the feature free for everyone to try!).
- New Outlook Calendar integration. Sync your Outlook Calendar with Evernote to see your events and create event-specific notes with just one click. Learn more.
- Quick Calendar access. The Calendar now has its own spot in the navigation bar. There are two display options: a full-screen mode for a detailed view and a pop-out window to quickly check your schedule.
💎 Quality of life improvements
We wanted to make the overall Evernote experience simpler and more intuitive while avoiding any changes that would disrupt the workflows you rely on. As a result, the UI and UX changes we did introduce were carefully chosen to make Evernote easier to use. Recent changes include:
- A new user interface. We refreshed the entire Desktop and Web user experience with a clean and simple design intended to improve readability and put the focus on your notes. Learn more.
- An intuitive ‘New’ button. It used to take two clicks to create a new note or task, which was one click too many! Now each action has its own button.
- Note breadcrumbs. During customer research, many people requested a way to see the note title while scrolling in the note. We added the title to the in-note breadcrumb, which keeps it visible without taking up valuable Editor space.
- In-app notifications. For now, in-app notifications are being used to share news about product changes and improvements. Down the line, we plan to include additional notifications for tasks, reminders, shared documents, and more!
💫 Universal access to top features
In addition to all the new items we released, we also made fourteen powerful features available to everyone—see the full list here. But we didn’t stop there: We’re currently exploring how we can make even more advanced features, such as Tasks, Calendar, and Home, available to everyone.
🐞 Bug fixing
Since the beginning of the year, we’ve solved nearly 100 bugs—here are a few that stood out:
- We fixed an Android issue where offline notes weren’t showing in the offline note list.
- We repaired broken keyboard shortcuts for non-US keyboards.
- We made sure the “All results" button in the Filtered Notes widget was working as intended.
- We also solved a problem with the "Fix conflicts" button in Scratchpad.
🔍 Search rewrite
Most of the time, we can resolve problems with a simple bug fix and patch release. However, occasionally some issues turn out to be more complex and systemic, in which case the best option is to start from scratch. This is what happened with Evernote Search. Over the past months, we completely rebuilt the feature to reduce buggy behaviour and small idiosyncrasies.
🔐 Platform security
We’re always looking for opportunities to introduce proactive changes to keep your account safe. Here are a couple of our recent security initiatives:
- Legacy Evernote decommissioning. Evernote’s legacy apps presented a non-negligible security risk. Four years after the release of v10, we finally sunsetted all of Evernote's remaining legacy versions and eliminated the associated vulnerabilities. Learn more.
- Compromised password reset. We took extra measures to protect accounts that were using passwords found in public data breaches, prompting a password reset in order to keep any personal data safe. Learn more.
📚 All-new Help & Learning center
We completely redesigned the Evernote Help & Learning center to make it easier to find useful information and create support tickets. I strongly encourage anyone experiencing problems to check it out—it’s an impressive repository of valuable information that can go a long way toward quickly resolving many of the most common issues.
Coming soon
We plan to introduce even more exciting features and improvements in the coming months. Here’s a sneak peek at what we’re already working on:
- 🏠 New mobile home. One of the most important reasons to use Evernote on your mobile device is to quickly capture information on the go. The new Evernote mobile home page will make the process of creating new items, like note and tasks, much faster. Tell us what you think about the design!
- 🗄️ New Files feature. Many people use Evernote as a filing cabinet to store important documents, scans, images—you name it! Up until now, these files could only be uploaded and viewed within a note. With the new Files feature, you’ll be able to see all your attachments in one place, with helpful links back to the relevant note. Get a sneak peek.
- 🗓️ New daily templates. We're working on new daily journal, planner, and checklist templates to help you start your day feeling more productive and organized.
- ✅ More robust Tasks. Our plan is to bulk up Tasks with a full-screen view that includes multiple tabs, and two helpful new fields: description and priority. Share your feedback.
- 📅 More Calendar functionality. Before, we focused on making Calendar more accessible—next, we’re working on making it more useful. The first step is to introduce a native Evernote Calendar for anyone who wants to use the feature without connecting an external calendar.
- 📥 Easier import into Evernote. We’re improving the import process so that you can add any markdown, .txt or .docx files into Evernote while preserving the original formatting.
- 🔄 RENT (metadata sync): RENT is a counterpart to last year's collaborative editing initiative. While collaborative editing focuses on instantly syncing note content across multiple devices, RENT handles note metadata syncing. With RENT, you'll see changes to note titles, thumbnails, dates, and note list content reflected across all your devices faster than ever before.
And that’s all…for now. If you want to keep up with our progress on a weekly basis, I encourage you to follow @evernote and @fedesimio on X (formerly Twitter). I’d love to hear your thoughts on new initiatives as we’re working on them.
👋Until next time,
Federico