A search for an Evernote replacement

I was a happy, loyal, and paying Evernote customer for ten years. I loved the integrated toolchain it provided, with the ability to draw, annotate, tag, OCR, and much, much more. It did everything I needed in a note-taking application, and more besides, such as basic task management and a dumping ground for miscellaneous ideas.

And then came version 10. I have not made a secret of my dislike of poorly implemented cross-platform applications that serve business interests far more than customer interests, and Evernote 10 was a perfect example of why I hold this opinion. It was bloated, slow, and barely fit into any operating system paradigms. It lost features the old (curiously titled version 7) app had, and worst of all, barely accomplished its basic tasks of creating notes, without timing out or crashing. Sadly, i kind of expect poorly implemented “desktop app” experiences like this on macOS, but it was also terrible on Android and iPadOS.

I kept the older version 7 around for some time, regularly seeing if version 10 improved (not, last time I looked). But as it slowly ceased to work, and Evernote also broke other (previously excellent) functionality such as API and web hook integration (useful for tools like Zapier). I realised it was time to cancel my subscription and move on.

The question was, to what?

I had a handful of requirements.

• It needed to work on macOS, iPadOS, and Android (yes I am one of these odd Apple people who uses an Android…