Evernote unveils complete iOS 7 redesign to cut down on digital clutter

Evernote is making a big move to fit in on iOS 7 through a complete redesign of its iPhone and iPad apps. The new design does away with Evernote’s card-style navigation and frequent reliance on textures and real-world metaphors in favor of something crisp, clean, and right at home on the new operating system — though you can still navigate through cards if you really want to. But stylistic changes aren’t all that’s come through in the design process. “We definitely did not want to just do a style update,” Jamie Hull, Evernote’s head of iOS product, tells The Verge. “We took the opportunity to rethink everything in the app.”

The changes will seemingly make it a lot easier to become one of Evernote’s digital hoarders. There’s now a persistent button that’ll allow users to add a new note from anywhere in the app, instead of requiring users to navigate to the proper screen as they did before. The new app also allows images and PDFs to be annotated — though the PDF feature requires being a paying member — and notes will automatically be synced up in the background through iOS 7’s new multitasking tools. “The update is about taking a look at how we present and when we present different parts of our app,” Hull says. It’s not a far-out concept, but the changes made look like they should make Evernote much simpler to use.