Last week, when it was still August (where the hell did the summer go?), Evernote released the mother of all iOS updates. There was a lot to it — a cool redesign, a lock feature for premium users — but the big deal was the inclusion of a rich text editor and the ability to access notes in shared notebooks.
The new features aren’t as robust as the desktop version of Evernote, of course, but are nonetheless dripping with the sort of awesome that makes you want to find your Irish roots and dance a merry jig.
Here are the highlights:
Rich Text Editor
The new editor allows for basic bold, italics, underline, bullets and the like, as well as strike-through, header text, highlighting and linking. You can also edit notes that were already created with rich text, which is great, but don’t think the append prompt is gone for good. If the note has too much fancy in it, even the new editor may not like it. There is a new option, though, that saves at least a bit of headache: the ability to simplify the formatting to be workable in the iOS apps. This way, you only lose some of the formatting, instead of everything.
Note: Checkboxes are still not able to be created in Evernote for iOS. You can check them, but not make them.
Shared Notebooks
Tired of not being able to access a note or notebook that someone shared with you? Now that Evernote has added shared notebooks into iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch, you can breathe easy. Note that I said access, however. You can only read them, not create new ones. Yet.
Another handy feature is the new ability to search within notes. Want to find a word or turn of phrase from your note? Now you can, quickly and easily. It’s no desktop search, but it’s definitely a good start.
This is only the tip of the update-iceberg. There’s a lot more going on under the hood and in the form of a new look and feel for Evernote’s iOS apps. If you haven’t updated yet, you should. Get the full list of new features here.
Thoughts on Evernote’s new iOS features? Head down to the comments!
