Evernote released version 5.6 of their Mac app today. Hidden behind a seemingly minor update is a series of important changes to the desktop app that make it faster to sync and that bring welcome new features not available in Evernote for iOS.

The Evernote blog has the details, but, to sum up, I’ve found Evernote 5.6 (public beta testing started a few months ago) to be faster and more reliable than before both in terms of sync and startup times. I’ve seen less conflicted copies of notes (they used to be a problem in shared notebooks) and there’s a ton of other fixes and improvements in the note editor. For instance, images can now be resized and checkboxes are larger and easier to click.

Two of my favorite changes include an easier way to create tables inside notes…

…and the ability to look for specific notes with Spotlight. Here’s how an Evernote search looks like in Yosemite:

Combined with version 7.5 for iOS (which added a great share extension), it’s been a good month for Evernote on Apple platforms. I like that the company is making good on their promise of improving their apps throughout 2014.