I’ve been a long time user of Evernote. For the last three or four years, I’ve been a paying customer as I need to sync my notes to multiple devices including two computers, a phone and a tablet. But the Windows 10 experience, on a tablet, is poor. Why is that?
How I use I Evernote
Before you all jump in with “Just use OneNote” or “Apple’s Notes app is great” I need to point out a couple of things. I have thousands of notes in Evernote that are categorised in a way that fits my workflow.
I also use a Fujitsu ScanSnap scanner on my desk which every statement, receipt and letter does through for storage as a searchable PDF in Evernote.
When I’m speaking at events or doing my semi-regular radio spot I prepare my notes in Evernote and have them in front of me on an iPad mini.
At events I’m writing about I can record audio, snap photos and write notes all from one application.
I could probably make all those things work with alternative applications but the effort to make that work isn’t something I have time for at the moment.
Evernote can be great
On a Mac, a desktop Windows system and using iOS Evernote works fine. I can snip webpages, scan documents straight in, write and edit notes and snap photos. It passes the “It just works” test easily.
But on a Windows 10 touchscreen device such as the Surface, the user experience sucks.
Evernote can do better
Evernote’s developers have proven, through the versions of Evernote for other platforms that they can make a touch-friendly version of their software. And, for a time, they did ship Evernote Touch through the Windows Store. But that’s long gone.
Some of the things that I really hate about Evernote on a Windows 10 tablet are:
- You can’t scroll up and down a page using your finger. Drawing a finger up and down the screen selects text rather than scrolling like every other touch-friendly application
- I can’t right-click using a tap-hold on the screen. When I make a spelling error in Word, I tap on the misspelled word and the context menu appears. On Evernote, I need to use the touchpad to right-click
- None of the screen controls are touch-friendly. They are all small and hard to hit with a finger – even my pinky is too big!
These may seem like petty differences but they are just some of the things that get on my nerves.
Evernote can do better. I know this because their iOS software is pretty good. And with Windows tablets and 2-in-1s doing so well in the market, they have an opportunity to turn some of those free users into paying subscribers.
Or perhaps they have given up on Windows, leaving that huge market to Microsoft and OneNote.
Maybe Evernote sucks on Windows 10 because the developers just don’t care. What do you think?
Comments
One response to “Why Does Evernote Suck On Windows 10?”
It’s one of the pitfalls of Microsoft’s “Project Centennial” in that it’s all well and good to get developers to re-release their desktop programs through the Windows Store, but it goes against getting developers to re-develop their programs entirely as a “modern app” or whatever the naming convention is for them these days.
The experience is still going to suck using those apps on touch screen devices, but while touchscreen Windows 10 devices are still in a minority, devs aren’t going to care enough to re-release their apps as Modern apps.
Project Centennial is a good start on motivating devs to release apps for the Store, but it could do so much more.
I’m finding now that it’s much quicker to use Evernote on a web browser than through the Windows 10 desktop application. My database is nearly 5gb. I’d much prefer it if Evernote was plain text.
Completely agree! You can see their lack of concern with Windows too, OSX app has looked so much better for years, so I very highly doubt any updates will come. I would be interseted in seeing what percentage of their users are Mac vs Windows. @Anthony Caruana, did you try get a comment from Evernote if they are aware of this issue, care about, have plans to solve it?
For me Evernote for Windows sucks completely, the Mac OS X version is way better in every aspect. I don’t know why Evernote don’t do a better job for Windows users.