Evernote has released version 10 for macOS and it would be an understatement to say that longtime users (like me) are less than impressed. I installed the new version for maybe an hour, and then went back to their “legacy” version.
It seems to me that this represents an opportunity for Agenda. Replicate the best bits and avoid the overheads and legacy issues. If you can get some of the integrations sorted out, then there will be a non-trival number of Evernote users looking for an alternative.
Thanks for sharing this, Agenda does have an Evernote importer (File > Import), do you have any particular features from Evernote you’d like to see added to Agenda especially?
One huge issue is that Evernote long supported scripting but now has reverted and no longer supports it.
If there were Applescript and/or Javascript support for Agenda that would hit an enormous home run with the power-user community.
Agenda has quite an extensive set of actions you can also trigger from AppleScript, see X-callback-url Support and Reference
Am I correct that generally the x-callback system lets one add data to Agenda or display specific data - but if one wanted to retrieve that data programmatically for use in another application that would be harder and probably require screen scraping or similar?
In any event, might I suggest that some sample scripts showing what can be done to integrate Agenda with other apps using Applescript would be really helpful.
Correct, the ability to read data from Agenda using similar callbacks is something we plan to add in future updates.
Great
May I suggest that some Applescript examples would be very helpful - both for reading and writing data but especially for reading data.
This is the simplest example I can give:
Thank you - that works and is a great starter example to understand how this can be applied. Much appreciated
The most pressing feature (and the one reason I haven’t migrated from Evernote to Agenda already) is the Evernote-style note list/sidebar. The ability to view All Notes (or all the notes within a category/project), and easily flick between them at high speed, makes Evernote incredibly powerful when working with large databases. You can display a short preview of each note’s contents (text and/or images) in the sidebar, making it easy to remember at a glance what each note was about. If you want to see the notes in full, you can use the up/down arrow keys to jump between them at high speed.
Agenda’s feature set is far more robust than Evernote’s, but the lack of Evernote-style navigation creates limitations when working with large databases containing thousands of notes. Scrolling through Agenda notes can be time-consuming (especially those with large text content), so there may be an issue with scalability, at least for the kind of research that I do.
Currently, Agenda offers the Table of Contents feature for navigation, but there are a few limitations:
If this one feature were implemented, I would migrate from Evernote to Agenda in a heartbeat.
On a more minor note, tabbed browsing and a favourites/shortcuts section for pinning notes would both be incredibly useful.
I use both Evernote and Agenda. I would not want Agenda to become Evernote nor would I want Evernote to add everything in Agenda. I use both of them differently.Evernote is getting close to bloatware. I think part of the update is to make it simpler and update its code to be more uniform on platforms before adding many new features. This is what Apple did when they revised the their apps a few years ago.
For the reason that @mkazlow outlines I don’t think we would want for Agenda to ever take over all the features Evernote offers. However over time you will see new possibilities appear that might be able replace some of the things you miss from Evernote. We have some ideas in the direction you are asking about. Stay tuned!
Certainly not all Evernote features, but I can think of a couple that would be particularly useful to emulate:
We indeed have plans for quite a few of these, thanks for the feedback!
Thanks, great to hear this. The last suggestion I’ll mention is integration with iCloud, Google Drive and/or Dropbox with embedded file links. I’m guessing that we can imbed a URL to the file, but deeper integration, especially with iCloud, would be welcome.
Thanks for all your efforts. Great software, getting better.
Long time Evernote user here. I see some overlap of Evernote and Agenda, but I find that Agenda is more and more becoming my schedule/calendar/tasklist and Evernote is the bucket of clipped websites, recipes, and scanned business receipts.
Could they converge? Maybe. But I will always have Evernote. If for no other reason that I’m less and less impressed with where the Apple Mac OS is headed and may ultimately go back to a Windows/Linux dual boot. Agenda is awesome, but I will never see myself managing all my notes from my tablet or smartphone, and without a suitable Web or Windows version of Agenda, it will always be in that category of ‘Awesome tools that only are useful with a Mac’
Well, colour me an Apple fanboi particularly now that I have a Mac mini M1 on my desk. My 8 year old Win10 dinosaur will soon be shut down for the last time. Here’s my current portfolio of productivity tools:
Agenda: for daily notes, journals, ephemera, etc. which used to go into Evernote
Things 3: for my todo list which used to be in Evernote, then Reminders, but now Things 3
Evernote: now used as a searchable repository but this function could be replaced by DEVONthink
I’d like Agenda to provide similar integration with Things 3 as it now provides for Apple Reminders.
And “smart” links to a note in Evernote or item in DEVONthink.
One significant change is the lack of support for audio recording. The loss of this feature, as well as some other legacy Evernote features, is why I’ve happen to land upon Agenda. While you all do not have audio recording yet(?), if you were able to incorporate this feature, you would likely find yourself with an influx of former Evernote users.