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Three Quick Tips for Evernote Clearly
24 Mar 2012Clearly is a browser add-on created by the team at Evernote. It allows you to reformat the content of a web page into a cleaner simpler one for easier reading (like Readability) and of course also integrates seamlessly into Evernote. This application fits my way of consuming and saving interesting articles almost (see later) perfectly and I thought I’d share with you a few features you may not be so familiar with.
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Keyboard shortcuts
I love finding more efficient ways to do things. One of the most obvious ways to speed up interaction is to use keyboard shortcuts and Evernote thankfully included some in Clearly.
| OS X | Windows | Action |
|---|---|---|
| Ctrl + Cmd + Right* | Ctrl + Alt + Right* | Open Clearly |
| Ctrl + Cmd + Right* | Esc / Ctrl + Alt + Right* | Close Clearly |
| Ctrl + Cmd + Up* | Ctrl + Alt + Up* | Clip to Evernote |
| Cmd + P | Ctrl + P |
* These are defaults and may be changed in the Clearly options panel.
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Clipping part of a page
Sometimes I just want to use Clearly to simplify a particular part of a page so that I can slip it. Now you can do that by browsing the page you want to clip part of, open Clearly and then either clip the whole page to Evernote (and amend it to remove the extraneous content) or copy and paste to a new Evernote note the content direct from Clearly.
However did you know that if you select the section of a page, Clearly will just simplify that section meaning you can just clip straight to Evernote? Just that fraction easier ticks the efficiency box for me once again.
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Reading the invisible
The last tip is one that I think is really neat - as long as it’s used responsibly of course. Sometimes web sites obfuscate content. Often times this is to force you to sign up for the site which then sends you lots of marketing mails and may even pass on your details to third parties. Very little free stuff on the Internet is actually free.
Well guess what? Clearly tends to look at the whole content of the page and can see through many of these obfuscation techniques. I can’t help but think of the Thundercats Sword of Omens when Clearly does this; ‘to see Clearly is to see with sight beyond sight’.
There’s certainly a certain technology web site where “experts” “exchange” information that hides away answers like this and let’s just say that a close friend of mine has found this a very useful tip.
I said almost perfect…
So Clearly is, well ‘clearly’, a really useful browser addition. However I think there are a few tweaks that could make it better.
The first thing relates back to the second tip. Sometimes when I want to simplify and clip a bit of a page I forget to highlight it first. It would be great if you could highlight text in Clearly and just clip that.
The second thing I would like to see is an option to specify a default clip to notebook other than the default notebook for your Evernote account. It isn’t really an issue for me as I use my default notebook as an inbox (in fact that’s almost its name) and you can specify tags to add to any note. However it would just be a nice add for those who don’t use tags and/or use their default notebook like an inbox.
So if you have any other tips for using Clearly or if you just like these tips why not leave a comment?
