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Tag: DEVONthink (page 2 of 4)

Things: Cross-Platform Attachments with DEVONthink – Part 1 (40Tech Video)

I’ve made my first ever YouTube video for 40Tech. This short video addresses one of the main shortcomings of Things, my current task management app of choice. Things does not support the syncing of attachments from Mac to iOS, or vice versa. This video takes a look at how to use DEVONthink to add an attachment to Things on the Mac, and have it available in Things on iOS.

I’m sure I’ll work the rough edges off of these videos if I do more in the future, but I hope this one helps some of you out there. The video is embedded below, or you can click here to go to the video on YouTube.


DEVONthink Tuesday Tip: Use Workspaces →

Jim Neumann writing for Devontech’s Devonian Times blog:

Workspaces save the content and positions of all open windows so that you can restore them later. This is ideal if you are working with the same set of windows over and over again. Save these windows as a workspace and recall them whenever you need them again.

DEVONthink is one of those apps where you really could discover a new feature almost every day, if you wanted to. I’ve been using DEVONthink for a few years now, and was completely unaware of the workspaces feature. Although I mostly use the widescreen four pane view (with my PDF or file displayed in the far right pane), workspaces could be handy for different workflows. One that comes to mind is when you need several items on the screen at once.


Using DEVONthink and Things →

Eric Böhnisch-Volkmann writing for Devon Technologies’ Devonian Times blog:

DEVONthink and DEVONthink To Go can be comfortably used with OmniFocus by using item links. Many other applications support URLs, too, and can so link back to documents stored in DEVONthink. For example Things from Cultured Code which works with DEVONthink very similar to OmniFocus:

As a couple of the commenters to the linked story point out, you can use the Things quick entry hotkey on your Mac from within DEVONthink (assuming you’ve set up the Things helper app) to automatically create a task in Things with a link back to the item in DEVONthink. Setting up your task in this manner will create a link that works on both Mac and iOS. On iOS, you can use the share sheet from within DEVONthink To Go, and get a task with a link back to the item in DEVONthink.

This is important, because Things doesn’t support attachments. Since DEVONthink links work cross-platform, DEVONthink is a great candidate to use as your Things file system.

Why go to this trouble, instead of using an app like OmniFocus, which does support attachments? After a few years of using Omnifocus, I’ve been putting Things 3 through its paces. It doesn’t have quite the power and flexibility of OmniFocus, but I’ve been surprised to find it actually might fit my workflow better. I have many, many one-off tasks, as opposed to projects, and Things seems better suited to that. The visual representation of Today and Upcoming, as seen in Things, can be done in OmniFocus with some customization, but the visual representation of this in Things works with my brain a bit better.

As David Sparks, aka MacSparky, has mentioned, there is value to using a tool that gives “delight.” Right now, I’m finding that Things gives me delight in ways that OmniFocus doesn’t. It keeps me working toward getting my tasks done. We’ll see if that lasts after the newness of the app wears off.


DEVONthink 2.9.17 updates web interface and more →

From the DEVONtechnologies blog:

In addition, we’ve made PDF annotations and the text you’ve entered into PDF forms searchable, and we’ve added a convenient way for linking to other documents from plain text and Markdown documents via the contextual menu.

They’re calling this a maintenance update. If you check out the full post at the link, I’d call this a bit more than that. I’ve written frequently about DEVONthink here. Not only is it a great piece of software, but the developers are constantly refining it. There is a 150 hour trial of DEVONthink, so you have nothing to lose if you want to put it through its paces.


Put a DEVONthink Sorter in the Menu Bar With Dropzone

One of the tools included with all Mac versions of DEVONthink is the Sorter. The DEVONthink Sorter is an optional tool that hangs out at the side of your screen. You can drag files to it, and send them off to preconfigured locations within DEVONthink. I liked the functionality of the Sorter, but didn’t like it always hanging out at the edge of my screen, so I came up with an alternative that resides in my Mac’s menu bar.

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