Using Evernote with Drafts

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Warning: At this time we can only recommend the “Email to Evernote” method below for integration with Evernote. Previously available methods (such as URL schemes and AppleScript) have been removed from their apps, and the “Evernote Action Step” has become unreliable due to a lack of support from Evernote.

Evernote is a popular note platform. Drafts can capture text to Evernote in a number of ways.

Email To Evernote

Evernote offers the ability to create notes by sending emails to a unique email address assigned to your account. Details about how to email to Evernote are available in their documentation.

Once you determine your unique Evernote email address, you can configure a Drafts’ Mail action step with that “To” email address and “Send in Background” enabled for a quick, single tap method to send a note to Evernote.

To simplify use, we have created a couple of sample actions pre-configured to send background email. The first time you run one of these actions you will be prompted to enter your unique Evernote email address - which will be remembered in Drafts credentials system for later use.

  • Mail to Evernote: Send the current draft to Evernote, using the first line as the name of the note, assigning any tags assigned in Drafts, and including the body of the draft as the note content in plain text.
  • Markdown Mail to Evernote: Same as the above, but the body of the draft will be treated as Markdown, converted to HTML and sent as HTML mail. This allows links and most Markdown formatting (lists, bold, etc.) to be maintained in Evernote.

If you plan to use the email system, review Evernote’s docs to get familiar with options. You can, for example, include @notebook-name in the subject line to route a note to a specific notebook.

Note that because these actions go through email, there is a slight delay before the resulting note appears in Evernote.

Share Extension (iOS Only)

Evernote offers an iOS Share extension for creating notes which can be used with the Drafts’ Share action. This requires no special setup or configuration, just that both apps be installed on the device. Tap the “Share” action in Drafts, and select Evernote as the destination. The share extension offers great flexibility in assigning Evernote tags and destination notebooks.

Mac Note: Evernote does have a share extension in their Mac application, but it does not accept text for some reason, so it does not appear as an option when sharing from Drafts. This is something Evernote would have to change at their end to function with Drafts.

Evernote Action Step (iOS Only - LEGACY)

Deprecation Note: The Evernote action step relies on the Evernote SDK, which Evernote no longer supports. We have maintained a branch of this SDK attempting to keep this functionality available, but it has become increasingly unreliable, and recently Evernote has imposed rate limits causing the integration to fail often. I have reached out to Evernote about these limits, but not received a response. If it is not resolved soon, this functionality will be removed from Drafts in an update.

Drafts offers native integration with Evernote using the Evernote action step. Actions using this step can create, replace, append or prepend to notes in any notebook, assign tags, etc…even convert Markdown to Evernote rich text. Some ready to use samples from the directory:

  • Save to Evernote: Saves draft to Evernote in a timestamped note, converting Markdown to Evernote’s native ENML rich-text format.
  • Append to Evernote Journal: Append draft to rolling monthly journal notes in Evernote.
  • Evernote with Todos: Saves to Evernote converting Drafts’ task marks to Evernote checkboxes.
  • Save to Evernote (Text): Same as save action above, but treats text as plain text converting line breaks, but not applying any Markdown formatting.
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Is it possible to add a list of pros and cons for each method to aid in choosing one? Thanks! :doughnut:

Is it possible to modify “Append to Evernote Journal” so that it converts Markdown into proper format for Evernote, like “Markdown to Evernote” action?

Never mind, I figured out how to Edit the action and change it from Text to Markdown.

Like most users, I have many (in my case 300 + notebooks) in evernote.
Perhaps useful to mention that only new note in evernote allows the user to choose in which notebook the note is inserted, whereas save to evernote just sends the newly created note to the all purpose ‚non classified‘ dumpster, forcing the user to open evernote the move the move into the appropriate note sometime in the future, a laborious task.
For this reason, IMO using New Note is a no brainer.

Sorry to resurrect this old thread, but I was wondering whether it is possible to change the Evernote note title from the date/time as it is now to the first line/heading 1 of the Draft?

Thanks

Jim

Yes, it mentions this in the original post above.

Assuming that you are now referring to this action, you would change the noteTitle definition from [[time]] to [[title]].

You can find documentation for these points as follow:

Hope that helps.

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I’m changing my MacOS Evernote shortcuts to email a note into Evernote. This is very reliable. I write in Drafts using Markdown. Is there any way to use a script to convert Drafts/Markdown checkboxes of [ ] to an Evernote checkbox? I’m using HTML output.

I do not believe there is anyway to generate any kind of checkboxes through their Email interface, I’m afraid.

I feel like I am way over my head with Drafts, but here goes. I can not seem to be able to figure out how to send my Drafts, from either iOS or macOS to Evernote. All I am looking to do is create a new note in Evernote from a draft.

Thanks

Can I check that you have tried to use one of the actions Greg posted at the start of this thread?

If you have, can you share what happens? e.g. nothing, an error message.

Thanks for the suggestions and have tried all of them and get this error

Okay, I guess that is on Mac not iOS/iPadOS which those particular actions are for (Mac action was further down and I think would now require the Evernote legacy app). Is that correct?

I’m sure this is a relatively simple scripting thing, but it’s beyond me. I’d like to take the Drafts tags and convert them into Evernote tags for the email subject.

As I understand it, [[tags]] returns tag1,tag2,tag2 whereas Evernote is expecting #tag1 #tag2 #tag3

Can someone point me in the direction of how to do this?

Thanks!

You could use JavaScript to build the title. Process each tag separately and append to the title.

I was thinking of that. In all my years of working in the computer industry, I’ve never really learned to code. I guess this is as good a time as any to start. :slight_smile:

To get you started, you could check out this action.

Perfect! Thanks! Stack Overflow and other examples have allowed me to hobble along thus far.

So are we to expect that at some point Drafts app won’t be working with Evernote at all anymore?

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If Evernote continue on their trajectory in relation to integrations, then at some point all third party apps and platforms, including Drafts, will stop being able to integrate with Evernote.

Hopefully, Evernote’s recent acquisition will turn out to be an opportunity to set a new course for their third party integrations and general automation strategy.

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As stated above, I would only recommend integration via email. I don’t expect that would change. I’ve tried to keep the Evernote action step working as long as I can for existing users who rely on it, but it’s never going to be cross-platform, and I would not setup any new actions/workflows that rely on it, because I it’s highly likely it will stop working at some point, since it’s been about 10 years since Evernote even official supports this type of integration.

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