For most people, the note-taking application of choice is Evernote. And Evernote users have good reasons for choosing the service for their note-taking needs -- it’s very functional, highly accessible, and has add-on features that can take you beyond the default Evernote experience.

If you're not already convinced, read why you should be using Evernote as your go-to place for remembering everything. In fact, there are a number of apps, plugins, and even pieces of hardware which can take advantage of Evernote, making the service even more beneficial for you.

Here are seven tools that hopefully will make you tap into the potential of this widely popular note-taking application.

EyeFi SD Card

how to improve evernote

If you like taking plenty of pictures with a camera that uses an SD card for storage, you’re in luck. The EyeFi SD card is a Wi-Fi enabled storage device which can detect when you’ve taken a new picture, and then upload the picture to your favorite service such as Flickr as well as Evernote. This is great if you use Evernote for everything, as it’ll be a quick and easy way to store your images in the cloud where you have access to them anywhere, as well as incorporate them into any other Evernote notes that you already have or make in the future. It is not free but is a worthy investment if you take a lot of pictures and are searching for a SD card.

EverClip

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If you do a lot of browsing and research on your Android or iOS mobile device, you probably want to create a lot of clips from the pages that you look at. While Evernote is capable of doing this for you, it requires you to switch back to the app every time you wish to clip something. Instead, you may want to use an Android and iOS app called EverClip. This app lets you quickly and easily clip whatever you’d like, and send it straight to Evernote.

EverClip can also send everything that’s in your system clipboard to Evernote, so that you won’t lose anything that may have been important to you at some time or another. If EverClip saves more than you really want to keep, you can always delete notes -- it’s just a good way of making sure that you won’t miss out on anything. With EverClip, you’ll have more time to complete your research. There are both free and paid versions of EverClip available for Android [No longer available], but iOS [No longer available] users can only use the paid version.

Skitch

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Evernote is capable of a lot of different formatting styles, but it lacks annotation features. If you want to draw or annotate on images, you’ll need Skitch. While it is developed by the people behind Evernote, Skitch is a separate application for drawing on a blank note, as well as annotating on different images and PDFs. This brings along a more intuitive approach to taking notes, and it’s especially valuable for students who have to add little notes to lecture materials all the time. It’s free and available for Windows, Mac, Android, and iOS.

StudyBlue

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Students can get a lot done by using Evernote for school,by using it to save lecture notes, even audio recordings, and them organizing them for easy access. However, once you've written down all those notes, you'll need to study them in order to ace your next test. There's a service called StudyBlue which can help turn your notes into studying material. You can create flashcards, automatically create self-quizzes, track which terms or concepts you're struggling with to focus on, set up study reminders, and a save feature to continue wherever you left off in your study session.

You can also use StudyBlue with your browser or on your mobile device, making it easy to study wherever you are. If you ever need to revisit your notes, you can go to your original notes on Evernote or to your StudyBlue backpack.

IFTTT

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IFTTT, the amazing automation service which stands for "if this, then that", can also make use of Evernote. While IFTTT is commonly used by us authors to automatically share new articles via social media, the possibilities are downright limitless as the number of services which IFTTT supports grows and grows.

For instance, with IFTTT, you can set up a trigger in one service (say whenever you checkin via Foursquare) and have it archive those checkins within an Evernote note. There's way more that you can do by mixing and matching, so it's best to check out IFTTT yourself so that you can connect services that you use.

Car Locator

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If you often have a problem of locating your car after parking it, Car Locator is an excellent solution for your problems. Despite being fully functional on its own, the app can use an optional plugin to communicate with Evernote to store geo-tagged notes about the whereabouts of your car and other important items you wish to locate at a later time.

This is beneficial because, if you already use Evernote heavily, you'll enjoy having those tidbits stored on Evernote as well. Car Locator is available on Android only, and costs $3.99 plus another $1.99 for the Evernote plugin.

Voice2Note

 

how to improve evernote

 

Voice notes can be very useful for people for a number of different reasons, but there isn’t a whole lot you can do with them -- they’re voice recordings which you can listen to or delete, but nothing else. Instead, it’d be fantastic if those voice notes could be transcribed into text. That way, you can read out the contents of the recording rather than have to listen to them, and you can also skip ahead to a certain part that you want to look at. It also makes it much easier to copy, manipulate, and search with Evernote's amazing search features.

With Voice2Note both the actual recording and the transcription are on the same note. Best of all, Voice2Note can even give you your own number which you can call with any phone to leave an Evernote voice note. It’s very simple and it gives you multiple ways to use the service, which is simply great.

You can get the service for free, but it limits you to just 5 transcriptions per month. Otherwise, the full service costs $29.99 per year or $2.99 per month, and even allows you to transcribe audio notes recorded by other apps.

Conclusion

These seven ways to make more out of Evernote are only the tip of the iceberg -- there are still plenty of other great things you can do with the service. There are even a number of apps out there which have Evernote plugins if you’d rather use them instead. For more ways to extend Evernote, check out these ten creative Evernote ideas, as well as the flotilla of apps on Evernote Trunk. Then we have the free MakeUseOf Guide on Evernote, in case you are still trying to come to grips with the service.

Do you use Evernote? What do you do to make the most of out of the service? Let us know in the comments!