Evernote has announced that a new version of its Mac software, Evernote 5, will be available as a beta starting later this week. The update is touted as a significant redesign, for instance featuring a Shortcuts section on a left-hand sidebar where notes, notebooks, tags, and saved searches can be dragged for faster access. Immediately below that is a Recent Notes area, which shows the five last items opened.
A revised Notes List merges personal and joined notebooks, while including new menu options for sorting and filtering tasks. The Snippets view now shows the notebook associated with a note, and whether it’s shared with other people.
Another way of browsing notes is the new Cards view, which displays them in a more visually striking manner that can also be pushed fullscreen. An Atlas view, meanwhile, sorts notes according to geotagging, and automatically groups them according to city or town. Clicking on a place card exposes a map with flags for each note.
Search has been improved to scan both personal and joined networks, and auto-complete terms based on frequently-used words and sentences. Several more keyboard shortcuts have been added, such as the ability to jump to a notebook. The Activity Feed, lastly, has been tweaked to collapse redundant info and push alerts to the Mountain Lion Notification Center.
