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The problem with Evernote’s AI, is Evernote.
Navigating Evernote’s AI Journey: Balancing Privacy and Functionality.
Although Evernote has gradually evolved into a more collaborative space, it has been a place for personal note-taking since its inception. Furthermore, the company has consistently emphasized its privacy-first approach throughout the years.
If we compare that to how AI normally works, I believe it is a bit difficult to create an environment that will make both pro and against AI users happy and comfortable with the app experience.
An immersive AI experience like we see on Voicenotes would mean giving the Large Language Model access to all the notes and everything in our Evernote. Some people would never accept something like this, but that is precisely how to create an outstanding experience of fully interacting with our notes and all the memories and knowledge we have saved over the years.
Strip down Evernote and go back to basics to focus on notes.
Tired of Evernote’s clutter? Too many features overwhelming you? This is how you can strip it down to a pure note-taking app.
Those of you who have already watched the video at the end of this article, know how happy I was when I first tried that new Sidebar Configuration feature. I was both nostalgic and overjoyed to see my decade-old companion working as a note-taking app again.
If that’s also your goal, here are some tips to convert Evernote into a plain, simple note-taking app. But first, make sure you have the correct version. The settings below are only available on version 10.107.3 or later.
Removing Distractions
Click on your name in the top-left corner of the screen, open the Settings menu and go to the Sidebar tab.
Uncheck the Show Task and Event Creation buttons option to remove the big, super-distracting purple and red buttons from below the Note button. However, as a reminder—or tip—they are still accessible by clicking on the three dots.
The Show note counts is an important element in my Timeline System and I kept it checked. As for Show recent notes, I prefer them on the Home page because I can see the thumbnails. As a side note, both of these settings have always existed.
We’ll soon get back to the last option on that list. For now, scroll down to the section below and click to close as many eyes as possible 🤣. Jokes apart, Here’s what I left visible on my sidebar:
We are not done yet, but I need to take a moment to share a tip with those of you who love keyboard shortcuts.
More than just features: Bending Spoons has a vision for Evernote.
As a longtime Evernote user and frequent collaborator with the team, I’ve always felt a deep connection to the app. But a recent Vergecast episode with David Pierce and Federico Simionato made me see things from a different perspective.
However, before that, “The Great Evernote Reboot” episode title evoked a wave of nostalgia. It made me remember all the years I went to the Evernote conferences and when the company and its products were on the news all the time. Ironically, that nostalgia made me freeze for a moment and skip that episode. I wanted to listen to it with attention and give it the deserved respect and treatment. In honesty, it felt like a special moment.
The features discussed didn’t surprise me, though. For example, I just published a video about the sidebar customization. But Pierce’s approach was like turning things around just enough to give me a new perspective on Evernote’s direction after the Bending Spoons acquisition.
The goal is not to give users all the features they’ve been asking for quite some time. That’s great, but the main goal seams to be re-examining many things, from what Evernote is about for its users to the company’s revenue model. It is about focus and making the company sustainable for years to come. In a way, it feels like a reboot of the “100-year start-up” mantra, and I love it.
But listening to this episode also taught me a valuable lesson: sometimes, all it takes is a well-crafted question to gain a fresh perspective, even on something as familiar as Evernote.
I love that Bending Spoons is constantly adding new features to Evernote, but after a while it made the sidebar too crowded. For a long time, I’ve been wanting to remove many items from there. It appears that this day is closer than I thought.
My client didn’t show up, so let’s use that time to record another video. This one is about Evernote, as I really want to discuss a recent tweet from Federico.
On how am I rediscovering my creative freedom with digital scribbling.
The Supernote is helping me to rediscover the joy of handwriting my scripts. It’s like using magical paper to seamlessly capture and reorganize ideas.
Years before Evernote, I would write many of my first podcast scripts on any piece of paper I could get my hands on. I’d usually have the ideas after a run, like it still happens today for the YouTube videos. But even though writing them down was a great way to remember later, trust me, the final “document” was typically a big mess.
Let’s be honest, it’s tough to keep handwritten notes as organized as a bullet list. Ideas don’t always flow in a neat, linear way, so it can be a real challenge to make sense of them later. My drafts were often ugly and pretty challenging to understand because of all the small text inserts. On some occasions, I would use arrows and even a second piece of paper with numbers on both parts of a sentence to try to connect them. I suppose you can imagine that it was often difficult to decipher.
In hindsight, I’d say I’d moved to digital writing as soon as technology was portable enough, probably because of the impossibility of inserting new text in between lines on paper.
I frequently do that on my computer; however, typing comes with its limitations. For example, sketching can be difficult to integrate with typed text. That’s great on paper, but again, there are all the problems mentioned above. Furthermore, I’m not good at drawing, so I frequently have to erase and fix things as I go.
For example, the thumbnail you see in the image below was created at a much larger size. It was the first thing I did on that page. When I was happy with it, I resized it to fit the corner of the screen (paper?). All the text you don’t see — more on that in a moment — was rearranged several times as I was writing, just like the pieces of a puzzle slowly falling into place.
It’s impossible to do that on paper, but the Supernote brought back the freedom and joy I remember having many years ago, and improved the process. It is like having the best of both worlds. And the most convenient part is that I can easily send the final version to Evernote or Obsidian.
As for the hidden text, there’s no secret there. I’m just trying to keep a mystery aura because I have already started to produce this video and don’t want to spoil the surprise. But if you cannot contain yourself, the untouched drawing is available for supporters on Patreon and YouTube.
Anyway, I think that you can probably tell by the thumbnail and the other drawing that the video has something to do with sending content to the Supernote via Evernote.