Curious about what's happening at Evernote? Check out the articles below to see all the exciting things we're working on.

Back in December 2024, we made Spaces—formerly a Teams-only feature—available for all individual Evernote users. The goal was to unlock a powerful additional level of organization for those looking to build a more robust system. Below, we explore how Spaces compare to other tools like Stacks and Notebooks, and how to mix and match these features based on your specific needs and preferences. 

What’s the difference between Spaces, Stacks, and Notebooks?

The main difference between these Evernote entities can be summarized with the following table: 

Notebooks contain a collection of notes, usually grouped around a single topic. Additionally, notebooks can be shared with others.

Notebooks are one of Evernote’s core building blocks. They serve as the most basic level of organization within an Evernote account. This means that, while it’s possible to use Evernote without stacks or spaces, everyone has at least one notebook in their account.

However, with several notebooks in an account, it’s easy for your account to get cluttered, making it difficult to stay organized or quickly locate the information you need.

That’s where Stacks and Spaces come in!

A stack is simply a collection of notebooks, grouped around a common theme. They’re great for basic organization, but have a few limitations: 

Stacks don’t exist as independent entities, meaning you cannot have an empty stack

For this reason you can’t have notes in stacks outside of notebooks

When clicked, stacks don’t differentiate between which notes are in which notebook, but show one single note list

You can’t share stacks directly—you would need to share each notebook in a stack individually

A space is a distraction-free workspace, perfect for specific projects. Unlike stacks, spaces are independent entities and have additional capabilities: 

Spaces can contain both notebooks AND notes

Spaces provide a structured interface with a clear hierarchy—unlike in stacks, with spaces notes are separated by notebook, making organization and navigation more intuitive

It’s possible to pin notes within a space

Notes and notebooks in a space can be sorted by Title and Date updated 

It’s possible to share your space with others—you can share the entire space, or choose to share specific items while keeping the overall workspace private

The best thing about stack and spaces is that you don’t need to choose which one to use—they can be used in a complementary way. We explore how this works in greater detail later in the article. But first...

Where is your information actually stored?

Evernote is designed intentionally to give you access to your content from various entry points. Here’s a quick guide to where you can find your notes and notebooks around your account.

You can find notes within its dedicated notebook or space. While notes might be visible in various parts of the platform (for example, in the Notes tab or pinned to your Home), each note is anchored to one single notebook or space in your account. 

You can also find all your notes, regardless of which notebook or space they’re part of in your Notes tab. From there, you can easily see and navigate to the associated notebook or space by following the “breadcrumbs” at the top of the note.

Instead, an individual note cannot exist within a stack.

You can find a full list of your notebooks in your Notebooks tab. If you choose to organize your notebooks into stacks, you’ll see them sorted into stacks in the Notebooks tab as well. If a notebook belongs in a specific space, you’ll see it referenced in the notebook list as well.

You can also see your notebooks in the Desktop sidebar. Again, if you’ve chosen to use stacks to organize your notebooks, you’ll see them listed on the sidebar.

Lastly, you can find notebooks directly within a space as well.

❗Keep in mind that both the Notes and Notebooks tabs have a filter to include/exclude notes and notebooks located in spaces, as well as a filter to display shared content. With these two filters, you can remove content hosted in shared spaces from your personal note and notebook lists, creating a clear separation between your personal and shared workspaces. 

💥Now, let’s see spaces, stacks, and notebooks in action! 

Below we look at some real-life ways that spaces, stacks, and notebooks can be combined to build robust, flexible, and personalized organizational systems.

Cleo and Damien are busy parents with two kids—Troy and Zoey. They use Evernote to keep track of their family finances, vacations, appointments, and more.

Cleo and Damien use stacks to group information on similar topics, like school, extracurricular activities, and other major parts of their family’s life. They also need a way to consolidate information for each kid, and for individual, one-off projects, like planning their next vacation. 

Here’s how they set up their Evernote account:

Cleo and Damian have a notebook for each individual activity and project.

They use stacks to group notebooks by specific topics and areas of their family life.

They use spaces to combine notes and notebooks for each individual kid, to create a “hub” of all their activities and important information.

They also use spaces to coordinate larger projects, like planning family vacations.

Joy is a women’s career coach with multiple clients. She meets with each client once per week and helps them with their job search, cover letters, resume, and interview preparation. She also discusses their goals and ambitions.

Joy needs a system to keep private and shared notes organized separately on a per client basis. She also needs an easy way to share content with her clients so that they can collaborate together.

Here’s how Joy set up her Evernote account:

Joy keeps separate notebooks for each of her clients.

She keeps them neatly organized in her sidebar with stacks, which are separated by private/shared content and by client.

At the same time, Joy has a shared space with each client where they keep all the shared materials, a list of goals, and resumes, cover letters, and other active projects.

Stephen is a college senior majoring in 20th century American literature. He’s working on a group project on the life and influence of Langston Hughes, which requires a lot of research and written analysis.

Stephen needs to keep his current notes organized, as well as keep old notes from past semesters on-hand for easy access. He also needs a shared workspace where he can collaborate with his classmates. For convenience, this workspace should also include Stephen’s relevant course notes.

Here’s how Stephen set up his Evernote account:

Stephen keeps separate notebooks for each of his courses.

Using stacks, Stephen can arrange his notes by semester, which makes it easy to find old notes without keeping the notebook list cluttered.

For his group project, Stephen and his classmates organize and share their notes using a dedicated space. Stephen combines notebooks from two stacks, since they both relate to the project. The group also creates shared notes in the space to take meeting notes, assign tasks, and contribute to a shared bibliography.

We hope this article was helpful in explaining how you can combine spaces, stacks, and notebooks to unlock your full Evernote potential. Spaces for individual users are still in beta, which means we’re releasing new functionality on a regular basis! For example, something we’re currently exploring is the ability to add stacks directly to spaces.

You can follow all our progress at product.evernote.com, where we’re sharing the latest Evernote developments. It’s also a great place to share your feedback and request/vote for new features.

Learn how to combine spaces, stacks, and notebooks to create a robust and flexible organization system that works for you!

Spaces, Stacks & Notebooks: What’s the difference and when to use them?

After securing Evernote’s foundational technologies in 2023, we turned our attention to building a fast-paced and dynamic weekly release schedule packed with meaningful updates. We set an ambitious goal to ship one-hundred improvements this year (more or less two per week). As 2024 comes to a close, we counted them up and… we were right on target! 🎯

Below, you can find the ultimate list of all one-hundred improvements from the past year, plus a deep-dive into the latest changes.

Plus, here’s what we worked on most recently:

We’re always looking to keep our product roadmap well-balanced between essential fixes and major innovation. I’m happy to share that between October and December, we rolled out four game-changing updates: 

Accountless collaboration. Now, anyone with a link can view or edit the content of a note—even if they don’t have their own Evernote account. This update resolves a big hurdle for many people who were looking to collaborate with classmates, colleagues, and other contributors. 

Once the note link is shared, it opens in a browser window, where collaborators can see and even change the content of the note using our new “lite” editor (the level of permissions is set by the original note owner).

Mobile navbar customization. After making it possible to customize the Desktop sidebar earlier this year, we quickly worked to release a similar option for Mobile. Now, you can select which sections are displayed in your navbar, customizing it to reflect the unique way you use Evernote on your phone. Anything that’s removed from the main menu is still easily available in under ••• More. Check out this video for a step-by-step guide on how to edit your navbar. 

Spaces for individuals. For a long time, Spaces were a Teams-exclusive feature, but we figured everyone can benefit from another powerful organizational tool! With Spaces, you can group notes and notebooks on a per-topic or project basis, making it easy to stay organized for work, school, or life in general.

AI Transcribe (and other tools). We’re expanding the Evernote multiverse with standalone versions of some of our most-loved in-app tools. Currently, we offer AI Transcribe, PDF Converter, and PDF Editor—and we have ideas for many, many more!

At its core, Evernote is a note-editor. For this reason, refining the Editor experience is always one of our top priorities. Over the past several months, we introduced a range of changes designed to make note-taking easier, more intuitive, and more personalized.

Draggable paragraphs. Previously, only a select number of Evernote’s content blocks could be rearranged using drag-and-drop. Now, we’ve unlocked new ways to quickly rearrange your content. These include the power to drag a paragraph block anywhere within the note, the option to reposition an entire collapsed section at one time, and the ability to move a paragraph block directly into a collapsed section.

LaTeX editor block. With this newest addition to the list of Editor features, you can add complex formulas to your notes using the popular LaTeX notation form.

Remove the default note thumbnail. Evernote automatically selects the first image in a note and assigns it as the note thumbnail. We’ve introduced a new setting where you can remove the thumbnail outright…and we’re very close to unlocking the ability to choose a custom image. 🎉

In addition to these bigger updates, here are some other subtle Editor improvements that make it easier to…

Start a new paragraph: Simply click at the end of the existing text block (no need to press ‘Enter’ each time).

Create a new line in the same paragraph: Press SHIFT + ENTER together.

Exit a quote block:  Press ‘Enter’ at the end of a quote to revert back to normal text, or hit ‘Delete’ on an empty line to separate quotes into individual blocks.

Exit a collapsible section: Just press ENTER at the end of the section.

Select text in tables: One click places the cursor where you click; one click + drag highlights the text as you go, letter by letter. Two clicks highlights the word you’re on; double-clicking and dragging highlights the text as you go, word by word. Three clicks highlights the content of the entire cell.

Add attachment to your tables: Drop them in without worrying that you’ll mess up the existing layout.

Evernote’s sharing and collaboration experience has been another major area of focus for us over the past few months. Aside from accountless collaboration (which I already mentioned above), here are some other ways we made the overall process smoother:  

New sharing experience. We made it easier than ever to share your great ideas with others. By clicking, “Share note” you can instantly create and copy a shareable link. From there, head to the sharing menu to adjust permissions, or quickly unpublish the note with just one more click. 
👉By the way, this is one example of how we occasionally release something and then decide we can do it even better. Stay tuned for a new new experience in early 2025.

Filter out shared notes and notebooks. Earlier in the year, we introduced the ability to leave a shared note or notebook—but then we thought: what if you want to keep the content and just declutter your workspace instead? With this new filer option, you can keep access to the shared content and easily remove it from your personal notes and notebooks lists.

Automatic note & notebook acceptance. Previously, to access a newly shared note or notebook, you first had to click on an email notification or intentionally open the content in your Shared with Me section. Now, we’ve updated the process so that the content appears directly in your note or notebook list as soon as it’s shared. Not only does this create a smoother experience, but it addresses common sharing issues that were caused by these extra steps.

In addition to working on the big things, we’re always looking for small, yet impactful, ways to make Evernote a better note-taking platform. Here are some examples from the past few months:

Now, you can create a notebook from the ••• menu on Desktop, meaning you have one more intuitive way to quickly add a new notebook without missing a beat.

We’ve introduced user-friendly changes to navigation on Mobile, such as more intuitive notebook navigation and the option to use a swipe gesture to return to the previous screen.

We’ve also added a new Title view on Mobile, so you can see up to three times more content at a time in the Notes tab.

You can now individually sort each notebook in your account based on your unique content needs. Once set, your preferences are preserved between sessions and across devices.

In fact, now Evernote syncs all your sorting preferences across multiple devices (including the note list, notebooks, stacks, and templates).

Last but not least, the team continued to work on backend updates to boost speed in a variety of ways. In particular, recently we managed to…

Boost the note list loading time by 3x on Mobile by fine-tuning the way we manage important queries in Evernote’s backend—read more details here.

Make note and notebook creation is up to 10x faster in Teams accounts, thanks to one small change to how we count tags—read more details here.


If you’re curious to dive deeper into other improvements from earlier this year, check out our past summaries—January-March, April-June, July-September—or catch up on our monthly video recaps.

We’re beyond excited with what we’ve accomplished this year, but our work is far from done. Here’s a quick preview of our plans for 2025—keep in mind, this is just the beginning!

We’re already working on a handful of exciting updates that we hope to release soon. These include: 

The ability to add a custom note thumbnail 🎉

Beyond these initial projects, the Editor will remain one of our primary areas of focus, especially when it comes to the Mobile note-taking experience. We also want to introduce even more customization options at both the note and account level. We’re also deep diving into the search experience to make sure it’s always returning the results you’re looking for. And, finally, we’ll continue to work on performance across multiple touch points with speed-boosting backend improvements. 

If you’d like to keep up with Evernote's rapid pace of development, I encourage you to follow our progress on:

YouTube, where we’re sharing monthly updates and helpful tutorials

@evernote on X, where we’re sharing real-time updates as they roll-out

@fedesimio on X, where I preview new projects in the works and ask for community feedback

The Evernote bugfixer, where we share real-time updates on any larger-scale bugs we’re working on

…and hopefully even more platforms coming soon!

Before I sign off, I’d like to express my appreciation for the Evernote team and their incredible work over the past twelve months, my gratitude to the Evernote community for supporting us along the way, and my excitement for everything yet to come. 

This year, the Evernote team set an ambitious goal to ship one-hundred improvements. As 2024 comes to a close, we counted them up and… we were right on target! Product lead Federico Simionato summarizes the team’s accomplishments and previews what’s in store for 2025.

We released 100 Evernote improvements in 2024 🎉

In spite of the summer season, the team was firing on all cylinders! Between July and September, we continued to release improvements at a fast pace, balancing small changes with major product developments. The highlights include a powerful image-to-text AI transcription feature, the complete roll-out of our new metadata sync engine, two-way Calendar sync, and sidebar customization. You can find the complete list below. 

Prefer to watch our updates? I cover the newest improvements every month. Here’s our latest video.

What's new at Evernote? 💜 September 2024

Whenever we speak with our customers, it’s immediately clear that everyone uses Evernote in a slightly different way. Not surprisingly, many have requested a way to personalize their Evernote layout in a way that matches their unique case. So we introduced the customizable sidebar—you can now go into your Settings to choose what’s included in your sidebar for a highly personalized Evernote experience.

We've received a lot of positive feedback for this feature, including some from this familiar face! 💟

In August, we completed the rollout of our new sync engine (RENT). With RENT, key Evernote operations, such as device-to-device syncing, app startup, and note-sharing, are now up to 3x faster. By replacing the legacy metadata sync process, we were able to unify all sync-related tasks in one system. Going forward, this will make it easier and faster for the team to introduce product-wide improvements. Learn more about RENT.

Everyone loved our AI-powered video and audio transcription feature. So, we decided to double-down and launch a version that transcribes text in any image you upload to Evernote. This feature is especially ideal for transferring handwritten content into a digital format. And yes, it even works with virtually illegible handwriting (like your typical doctors’ notes).

At the moment, the feature supports the following image formats: .jpg, .jpeg, .png, .gif, .bmp, .tiff, .webp, .heic, and .heif (while not all of these formats can be previewed in Evernote, you can still transcribe them!). 

In September, we finalized the highly requested two-way calendar synchronization feature. Now you can create, edit, and delete events in your connected Google or Outlook calendars directly from Evernote.

⬆️ Higher limits for note size, attachments, uploads for Free users

Also as of September, we increased the maximum note, attachment, and upload allotment for all Free users: 

The maximum note size is now 200 MB (up from 25 MB)

The maximum attachment size is now 200 MB (up from 25 MB)

The monthly upload limit is now 250 MB (up from 60 MB)

With this change, Free users can store more important content within Evernote in their preferred format (like PDFs, documents, images, videos, or audio recordings). It also gives Free users more opportunities to try our powerful new AI video-, audio-, and image-to-text features.

Collaboration was a main focus area for the product team over the past few months, and we plan to introduce even more improvements soon. The latest collaboration-enhancing updates include the following:

Link unification and simplification. Before, Evernote users could share their notes with others via two distinct links (an app link and a web link). This often created some confusion, especially if the person opening the link didn’t have the Evernote desktop or mobile app installed. Now, we've unified two into a single "note link." With this single link, you can share notes with anyone, and they open seamlessly on any Evernote application.

Up to 1,000x faster access to shared content. Joining a shared Evernote note, notebook, or workspace is now significantly faster, especially when it comes to the time between accepting a share invitation and receiving the content in your account. You’ll see the greatest difference for especially large notebooks or workspaces.

Ability to leave a shared note or notebook. Until now, there was no way to remove a shared note or notebook you no longer needed in your account. We’ve introduced a new action in the ··· menu so that you can easily remove irrelevant content.

To date, we've had a Desktop-first approach to new feature development. This means that we typically build the initial feature for Evernote Desktop/Web first. If we see that our customers enjoy and use the feature, we prioritize adding it to the Evernote Mobile apps as well. Between July and September, we introduced the following features to Mobile:

Event creation. Now that Evernote has its own native calendar, you can create new events from anywhere in the app using the new ‘Event’ button.

Multiple calendar views. In addition to the Summary view, you can now toggle between calendar views to see your whole week and month at-a-glance.

Notifications on Mobile. Get news about product changes and improvements directly in your Evernote account. Down the line, we plan to include additional notifications for tasks, reminders, shared documents, and more!

👁️‍🗨️ Evernote Mobile UI & UX

The summer months also brought significant progress in our efforts to improve the Mobile interface, with the following updates:

Improved note readability in Mobile. Previously, note content wouldn’t automatically resize to align with custom device settings—it does now. This means that, based on the text size you've set on your phone, you may see note content in larger formats. You can also set your desired note content size directly in Evernote, regardless of your phone settings. This is helpful if, for instance, you prefer a standard size for your phone but want a larger font size when reading your notes.

New Notebook button. Quickly create new notebooks directly from the Mobile home page.

Floating buttons: Use the convenient, thumb-adjacent floating buttons to swiftly add notes, notebooks, tasks, events, and tags to your account.

We've also been working hard to keep pace with the evolution of the iPhone operating system to ensure Evernote can fully leverage the latest capabilities. With the release of iOS18 in September, we implemented the following integrations:

Control Center and Lock Screen. Perform quick actions in Evernote directly from the Control Center and Lock Screen to make your note-taking process even faster.

Siri and the Shortcuts app. You can now use Siri and the Shortcuts app to create notes, tasks, and more in Evernote. Set up voice commands or custom shortcuts for a more seamless workflow.

Spotlight. When you create notes or tasks, iOS will learn from your habits and suggest actions based on time, location, and frequency, making it easier to stay organized.

Widget and app icon. Evernote widgets are now fully adapted to iOS18 for both the Home and Lock Screens. You can also enlarge the Evernote app icon to quickly convert it into a widget. We've also refreshed the Evernote app icon to ensure full compatibility with iOS 18, supporting Light, Dark, and Tinted Modes.

Sometimes the (seemingly) smallest improvements can make the biggest differences. That’s why our quality-of-life track has remained a constant and essential component of the overall product roadmap. Since July, we’ve released several such improvements—here’s a selection of the top ones:

Auto-updating table-of-contents. Now, any table of contents in your notes will update automatically whenever you add, edit, or reformat a heading. 

Filter and sort by reminders (reintroduced). You can once again sort and filter your notes by Reminders, both in your Notes list and in each individual notebook.   

Mark notifications as read. Select “Mark all as read” to remove the notification badge on Desktop and Mobile.

[Calendar] Outlook connection issues & improved synchronization performance. Customers were reporting problems connecting their Outlook Calendar accounts and syncing their existing events in Evernote. After a thorough investigation into the underlying problems, we've made significant progress in resolving them.

[Calendar] Improved navigation. We've streamlined the Desktop experience by removing the Calendar Modal and redirecting all actions to the full-size Calendar view.

General UI improvements on Desktop and Mobile. Since we unveiled Evernote’s new design in January, we’ve been systematically cleaning up outstanding inconsistencies to create an overall more polished and beautiful interface.

[Desktop only] Open link in a new window. For better multitasking, open your note links in a new Evernote window by holding CMD and clicking on the linked note, or by clicking on the ··· menu and selecting Open in New Window.

[Mobile only] Setting popup menu revamp. We separated out important items like My Widgets and Trash to be easily visible and immediately accessible and moved everything else to its own sub-menu.


CAPTCHA improvements. CAPTCHA is an essential part of keeping Evernote accounts secure from bots and human bad actors. But we’re the first to admit it can be a bit annoying to fill out endless puzzles when you are, in fact, human. Taking your feedback to heart, we implemented several UX changes to make your login experience smoother, without compromising your account’s security. You can read more about the changes here.

Bugfix tracker. When it came to fixing bugs, we noticed that not knowing when something would be addressed was frustrating for customers. This meant that tackling problems as fast as possible was only half the battle. The other half was to make the process more transparent for our customers. And so, the Evernote bugfix tracker was born. This simple document is updated regularly to give you a clear view of what the Reliability team is working on at the moment. I encourage you to check it whenever you encounter an issue—we may already be working on a fix!


Want to get real-time updates about changes to Evernote? Make sure to follow us on X (formerly Twitter) and YouTube. We’re posting monthly videos explaining all the changes we’ve released in that specific month and we’re announcing new features on X on a weekly basis (plus, I often post sneak-peeks of exciting new prototypes). Head to the comments in either channel to share your thoughts—the team and I are always happy to hear from you.

Product lead Federico Simionato recaps everything the team introduced between July and September 2024. Top changes include a powerful image transcription feature, the rollout of our new sync engine, two-way Calendar sync, and much more.

Twenty-five new product improvements you might have missed

We’re excited to announce the release of a significant update to Evernote’s infrastructure: RENT—an all-new metadata sync process. We’ll explain later what RENT is and how it works, but for now let’s dive straight into the most important information.


Prefer to watch? Product lead Federico Simionato shares an overview of how our new metadata sync process improves your Evernote experience. 

Evernote sync is now 3x faster!

Here’s how your Evernote experience will improve going forward

With RENT, key operations are executed up to three times faster. These include:

Device-to-device syncing. Important account-based changes made on Desktop will show up on Mobile right away (and vice versa).

Note sharing. You’ll see shared notes appear in your account almost instantly.

App startup time. The launch experience on all your devices will be smoother and quicker than ever.

Product development will accelerate. By replacing the legacy metadata sync process, we’re able to unify all sync-related tasks under one system. This makes developing and releasing new product improvements much more straightforward, leading to an overall faster development pace.

The Evernote database on your device is now up to 70% smaller and 20% faster. While this isn’t something you immediately notice when you use Evernote, it can go a long way toward improving the app’s overall efficiency.

RENT metadata sync is a direct counterpart to the work we did in 2023, when we introduced real-time note editing and instantaneous content syncing across different devices and accounts. While these past improvements focused on the content within your notes, the process powering RENT—which stands for Remaining ENTities—focuses on syncing other important information within your account, such as notes, notebooks, workspaces, tags, profiles, sharing permissions, and so on. Or, as we like to call it, your metadata. ✨ 

Here are just a of the important ways metadata is integrated into your account:

Do you have a note in your account? (yes, it’s that basic!)

Did you delete a note, or move it to another notebook?

When was the note or notebook last edited, and by who?

Who has access to a particular note or notebook?

Syncing all this information over multiple sessions and across different devices is essential to keeping your account up-to-date and working properly. Previously, devices worked on a “polling” system, receiving updates from Evernote at predetermined intervals. This created a lag in showing changes across different accounts and devices. Thanks to our new metadata sync process, Evernote’s backend is now constantly sharing updates with the clients, making sure each change is reflected right away.


RENT is another huge step towards better platform reliability

Since early 2023, we’ve given the highest priority to increasing Evernote's reliability and stability. One of the most important initiatives in this work stream has been switching key parts of the product’s code away from the Evernote Monolith to faster and leaner micro-services. (For those of you who aren’t familiar with the Monolith, it’s a rather large and clunky part of Evernote’s legacy codebase that has the tendency to cause our developers quite a few headaches.)

With RENT, we can finally align all of Evernote’s sync processes under one unified system, which helps us further reduce our dependence on the Monolith and significantly reduces product complexity. This, in turn, reduces the possibility of introducing bugs during development and—ultimately—improves reliability— a positive chain reaction that will benefit developers and customers alike. 

While we've done our best to keep your Evernote experience exactly the same (just faster!), it's possible some of your workflows may change as a result of our new sync structure. Please contact our team if you have any questions or experience any problems.

RENT is currently available for all Evernote accounts using version 10.101 and up. Have you noticed that syncing, sharing, or app start-ups are faster? Let us know! Tag @evernote on all social media.

Thanks to our new sync engine, you'll instantly unlock a much snappier Evernote experience.

What's new at Evernote

What's new

Spaces, Stacks & Notebooks: What’s the difference and when to use them?

We released 100 Evernote improvements in 2024 🎉

Twenty-five new product improvements you might have missed

Evernote sync is now 3x faster on all devices!