Evernote Review

Over the past few years, Evernote has become an ubiquitous note-taking app. What started as a simple cloud-based Notebook has expanded to include various note formats, sharing abilities, and even physical-to-digital conversion via special Evernote/Moleskine notebooks you can buy.

I’ve been using Evernote off and on for the past three years or so. At first I primarily used it to take notes while on my phone or tablet while I was out and about. After awhile I started to use it as an outlining and drafting tool for writing. I would use the Clippings feature to get clips from sites I wanted to reference, add in any pictures, and I could even add in audio note recordings. It was great because I could pull up the app on my phone or tablet and access all my notes to show colleagues and meetings or add on to my notes from anywhere. And now with Evernote’s increased push toward making the desktop app more streamlined and clean, longer form writing is even more appealing on the platform.

These days I personally use Evernote as a recipe and grocery list tool. If I find a recipe online I like I can just Clip it into a notebook. If I’m writing down my own recipe I can include photos If I want. Throughout the week I add to a grocery list note and then when I go shopping I can just access the list from my phone without needing to worry about jotting everything down on a little piece of paper or trying to remember what it was we needed while I’m in the store. If I need someone else in the family to do the shopping I can just share the note with them and they have access to the grocery list, too.

My one gripe with Evernote is its organization system. You can sort notes into a notebook and add tags to the notes but that’s about it. If you search online you’ll find all sorts of blog posts detailing various tagging methods or advising you to use multiple email addresses to create multiple Evernote accounts, one for each subject you want to organize. This all seems like a bit much. I’d really love to be able to put notebooks into one folder or segment notebooks into subjects (like with Microsoft OneNote). I think if this basic kind of subcategorization was available it would make the organization of notes so much better.