4 ms·

I do all document management with an app called DEVONthink. I’ve been working with digital paper apps for years, and DEVONthink absolutely crushes everything el

by oskapt 8y ago

I do all document management with an app called DEVONthink. I’ve been working with digital paper apps for years, and DEVONthink absolutely crushes everything else. I put everything in it, and I sync it between devices using WebDAV via Seafile, which also works to get data offsite in case the house burns down. It’ll do encrypted databases, and it has mobile apps that work great. I scan documents directly into it, tag them, and sometimes link them from multiple folders, which Devon will do without copying them (or I can also copy them if I need to). It has fuzzy search capabilities and automatic OCR that is lightning fast. It’s one of a handful of apps that are always open on my desktop. Documents aren’t stuffed into some database, either. They’re indexed and stored in a folder hierarchy that you can still access. This makes it easy to search and find them with tools like Alfred or Quicksilver or Spotlight. You can open them directly using apps like Word, and Devon doesn’t care. Devon also has an inbox you can use with Finder, so when you drop a file into the folder, it automatically moves to an Inbox folder in Devon for you to process and move to a final destination within the app. It’s truly a fantastic piece of software.

TimMeade 8y ago
Excellent. Thanks. I have been looking for exactly this type of software. Trying it now!
beautifulfreak 8y ago
EasyFind by Devon is a great search app too, and it's free. https://www.devontechnologies.com/products/freeware.html https://www.devontechnologies.com/products/freeware.html
newscracker 8y ago
I never got the hang of Devonthink and couldn’t get into the habit of using it for all (or even most) files. How did you get started with it and what resources, if any, did you use? Do you always only index files (while they remain in whatever folders you have left them) or do you also import (copy into it) too?
- oskapt 8y ago
  I went through their whole tutorial video section on the site, and a complementary section on how other people use Devon (author, lawyer, some other types). It took me a couple of nights of watching videos before bed to get my head around it. Then I created some folders for large groups, like "Documents" at home or "Projects" for work, and broke it down from there. I don't have more than maybe 4 levels under anything, except where there are year/month breakdowns. AFAIK Devon doesn't work outside of its own folder/database. It doesn't index everything in my ~ for example. I create stuff in Devon or drag stuff into it from outside, holding down CMD so that it moves instead of copies. Within Devon I'll sometimes need something in two places (all receipts and tax-deductible receipts, for example), so I'll use Devon's "replicate" function to make a pointer to the same doc. For work stuff, I have templates (release_plan.md) that I'll "duplicate" to a new project. As long as they're the same, Devon has an icon that says so, but as soon as I edit one, they diverge into independent docs.
Nextgrid 8y ago
Just curious, what kind of documents you keep in there? I have thought about it and even have a scanner but the truth is I don't seem to have anything that's actually worth saving? I have maybe 20 documents that I actually need to keep and at that scale a simple folder full of PDFs works just fine.
- oskapt 8y ago
  Everything. I have databases for home and work. In the home database I have top-level folders for me and my wife (for personal stuff we each might store), documents, invoices and receipts. The Documents folder has all sorts of delineation - banking, animals (pet passports, vaccination history, etc), businesses, insurance, investing, legal, medical, peoperty, radio (N1GMA), taxes, vehicles, vendors, etc. I scan everything. Contracts, receipts for things I might want to return, receipts for tax deductions or expenses, manuals (usually a PDF download), bank statements, property documents, spreadsheets related to home projects, literally everything that exists on a piece of paper that might be valuable in the future. I'm from the US, live in Chile, and have residency in Chile and Panama. There are a lot of legal docs related to those processes that go into Devon. I own a business in Panama, so everything related to that is also stored in Devon. I travel, so if I'm in the US and need a document related to something from another country, I know that it's on my laptop or accessible from my phone via the sync. I also use Devon to rip web pages, either to save as a bookmark or as a one-page PDF, so when I find something useful for work or around any idea that interests me, I'll put it in Devon instead of a Chrome/Firefox/Safari bookmark. I never remember what's in the URL of a bookmark to search for it, but I do remember the content. I can search in Devon, find the PDF, and if necessary, click the link to go back to the webpage. I write content for part of my job, so I'll use Devon for brainstorming or outlines, all in Markdown. I've written a little snippet for Keyboard Maestro so the Cmd-N in Devon asks me what type of document I want to create (markdown, plain text, or rich text), and then it creates that in the folder. If I'm doing basic stuff, like taking notes for a meeting, I just work in raw markdown, but if I'm actually formatting something like a blog post, I'll click the "Open Externally" button to open it in Macdown. I'll make action items and after the meeting transfer them to Taskwarrior for execution. I don't need to remember what happened in every meeting - I just need to remember to read the notes. I'll collect images for blog posts and store the whole thing in a subfolder under Projects/Content/Blog/{article-slug} so that everything is nicely organized. I use the Search function for those "I know I saved something about {foo} a few weeks ago" moments. Otherwise, I jump right to the project I'm working on and am confident that everything related to it is within that folder. I've had too many times where I've gone looking for something that I saw on my desk a few months back, and it's gone. Invariably I'll have the receipts for every other thing _except_ the really expensive thing that just broke. With Devon I no longer have that problem. I'm pretty disciplined about scanning receipts every weekend, but I definitely have to stay on top of it for the system to really be effective.
BFLpL0QNek 8y ago
I found DevinThink at the end of last year and ended paying up for the full premium version for ocr when they had on a Christmas sale. Not sure why I never seen it before as it’s been around a very long time. I used Evernote extensively for notes + going paperless. I was never comfortable and know better than storing private documents such as bank statements in Evernote (someone else’s computer aka cloud) but it was convenient and worked well. I’m now slowly migrating Evernote content to Devonthink. It works extremely well, it is powerful and no subscription, it’s not cheap but as a dev I know development isn’t cheap and the price is justified for its functionality. Like you said you can get all the data you put in back out easily no lock in. Sure it’s not as shiny as newer hyped software but it works and is functional. I have some Hazel rules setup for example auto file downloaded statements. What WebDAV server are you using? I tried NGinx but had issues as NGinx doesn’t fully support WebDAV, it was just that I already had a NGinx server running. WSGIWebDav seemed to work ok testing but not set it up properly yet on my NAS, wasn’t sure about trying Apache. My idea is to use WebDAV with all access via VPN to get same sync functionality as Evernote. WebDAV for syncing completely makes sense and was another reason I purchased it.

by oskapt 8y ago

TimMeade 8y ago

Excellent. Thanks. I have been looking for exactly this type of software. Trying it now!

beautifulfreak 8y ago

EasyFind by Devon is a great search app too, and it's free. https://www.devontechnologies.com/products/freeware.html https://www.devontechnologies.com/products/freeware.html

newscracker 8y ago

I never got the hang of Devonthink and couldn’t get into the habit of using it for all (or even most) files. How did you get started with it and what resources, if any, did you use? Do you always only index files (while they remain in whatever folders you have left them) or do you also import (copy into it) too?

oskapt 8y ago
I went through their whole tutorial video section on the site, and a complementary section on how other people use Devon (author, lawyer, some other types). It took me a couple of nights of watching videos before bed to get my head around it. Then I created some folders for large groups, like "Documents" at home or "Projects" for work, and broke it down from there. I don't have more than maybe 4 levels under anything, except where there are year/month breakdowns. AFAIK Devon doesn't work outside of its own folder/database. It doesn't index everything in my ~ for example. I create stuff in Devon or drag stuff into it from outside, holding down CMD so that it moves instead of copies. Within Devon I'll sometimes need something in two places (all receipts and tax-deductible receipts, for example), so I'll use Devon's "replicate" function to make a pointer to the same doc. For work stuff, I have templates (release_plan.md) that I'll "duplicate" to a new project. As long as they're the same, Devon has an icon that says so, but as soon as I edit one, they diverge into independent docs.

Nextgrid 8y ago

Just curious, what kind of documents you keep in there? I have thought about it and even have a scanner but the truth is I don't seem to have anything that's actually worth saving? I have maybe 20 documents that I actually need to keep and at that scale a simple folder full of PDFs works just fine.

oskapt 8y ago
Everything. I have databases for home and work. In the home database I have top-level folders for me and my wife (for personal stuff we each might store), documents, invoices and receipts. The Documents folder has all sorts of delineation - banking, animals (pet passports, vaccination history, etc), businesses, insurance, investing, legal, medical, peoperty, radio (N1GMA), taxes, vehicles, vendors, etc. I scan everything. Contracts, receipts for things I might want to return, receipts for tax deductions or expenses, manuals (usually a PDF download), bank statements, property documents, spreadsheets related to home projects, literally everything that exists on a piece of paper that might be valuable in the future. I'm from the US, live in Chile, and have residency in Chile and Panama. There are a lot of legal docs related to those processes that go into Devon. I own a business in Panama, so everything related to that is also stored in Devon. I travel, so if I'm in the US and need a document related to something from another country, I know that it's on my laptop or accessible from my phone via the sync. I also use Devon to rip web pages, either to save as a bookmark or as a one-page PDF, so when I find something useful for work or around any idea that interests me, I'll put it in Devon instead of a Chrome/Firefox/Safari bookmark. I never remember what's in the URL of a bookmark to search for it, but I do remember the content. I can search in Devon, find the PDF, and if necessary, click the link to go back to the webpage. I write content for part of my job, so I'll use Devon for brainstorming or outlines, all in Markdown. I've written a little snippet for Keyboard Maestro so the Cmd-N in Devon asks me what type of document I want to create (markdown, plain text, or rich text), and then it creates that in the folder. If I'm doing basic stuff, like taking notes for a meeting, I just work in raw markdown, but if I'm actually formatting something like a blog post, I'll click the "Open Externally" button to open it in Macdown. I'll make action items and after the meeting transfer them to Taskwarrior for execution. I don't need to remember what happened in every meeting - I just need to remember to read the notes. I'll collect images for blog posts and store the whole thing in a subfolder under Projects/Content/Blog/{article-slug} so that everything is nicely organized. I use the Search function for those "I know I saved something about {foo} a few weeks ago" moments. Otherwise, I jump right to the project I'm working on and am confident that everything related to it is within that folder. I've had too many times where I've gone looking for something that I saw on my desk a few months back, and it's gone. Invariably I'll have the receipts for every other thing _except_ the really expensive thing that just broke. With Devon I no longer have that problem. I'm pretty disciplined about scanning receipts every weekend, but I definitely have to stay on top of it for the system to really be effective.

BFLpL0QNek 8y ago

I found DevinThink at the end of last year and ended paying up for the full premium version for ocr when they had on a Christmas sale. Not sure why I never seen it before as it’s been around a very long time. I used Evernote extensively for notes + going paperless. I was never comfortable and know better than storing private documents such as bank statements in Evernote (someone else’s computer aka cloud) but it was convenient and worked well. I’m now slowly migrating Evernote content to Devonthink. It works extremely well, it is powerful and no subscription, it’s not cheap but as a dev I know development isn’t cheap and the price is justified for its functionality. Like you said you can get all the data you put in back out easily no lock in. Sure it’s not as shiny as newer hyped software but it works and is functional. I have some Hazel rules setup for example auto file downloaded statements. What WebDAV server are you using? I tried NGinx but had issues as NGinx doesn’t fully support WebDAV, it was just that I already had a NGinx server running. WSGIWebDav seemed to work ok testing but not set it up properly yet on my NAS, wasn’t sure about trying Apache. My idea is to use WebDAV with all access via VPN to get same sync functionality as Evernote. WebDAV for syncing completely makes sense and was another reason I purchased it.