For my uses, DEVONthink is 100% research materials for my content creation work. Books, magazines, whitepapers, etc.
Notes in Craft are just for me, and cover all sorts of things from travel docs (haha), server configuration notes, reminders of certain Logic settings, etc.
@MacSparky , I am a music teacher and arranger, and I have an Alesis 49-key MIDI controller on my desk in my home office that is filled with Keyboard Maestro shortcuts. Almost all of my KM shortcuts are assigned to keys on the MIDI Keyboard, from window management to launching contextual workspaces. It is basically like a 49-key StreamDeck from the point of launching macros.
I have all of the macros triggered from a single macro group so whenever I dive into my music writing software or need to use the keyboard, I can just use the F19 key on my keyboard to toggle on and off the macro group, so I can use the keyboard to input or play music.
I have the macros in the âAlesis Controllerâ Macro Group, use âIf application is at frontâ so each key can be a different macro depending on the app.
I definitely agree @Justin_H about the nanoPad and nanoKey. I have on of those at my desk at work and have a few macros on that for when I donât have my home setup and just my laptop. At $49 the nanoPad would function great as a âStreamDeckâ like product (without the programmable button images, tho)
Doesnât DT and Drafts have the ability to create a URL with a UUID? Wouldnât a URL with a UUID, still work even if the file is moved/renamed.
Both Devonthink and Drafts prefer using UUID rather than paths (as Finder does for file:// links), so they donât break when moving.
Others, like Obsidian and Finder, prefer using absolute/relative paths to a file. Those will break if the file is moved or renamed because the previous path in the link will no longer point to the corresponding file.
A workaround is to use a third party app (such as Hook or Devonthink) that has the ability to create and monitor a database of files and use its own link to refer to the file on the system. That will require for the indexing part of the app to be running when file is moved or renamed.
Do you compartmentalize in such a way due to personal preference (one app for one area of work) or is there a specific practical reason which makes Craft/DT more suitable for one of the two use cases and vice versa?
Two thoughts:
Personal preference, but the Markdown support is more handy for work stuff, too.
Regarding Notes support for Hook: This was bugging me, so I looked into it further. Short version: Hook supports Notes in Mavericks and Big Sur, and has partial support for Notes in Catalina. More information:
Interestingly, Hook uses the note creation date and time as a unique identifier for each note, which is very clever indeed!
Awesome tip, Chris! However, you lost me on URL encoding the pathname before putting file:// in front of it. How do you do that?
So, start with the file path:
/Users/chris/Documents/Test File.txt
The problem here is that URLs canât have spaces in them. When I paste it into Things, it assumes that the space is the end of the URL and tries to link to a file named âTestâ instead of âTest File.txtâ:
We could just never use spaces in our file paths, but the Mac has supported spaces in file and folder names since time immemorial. Instead, we can get around this by URL encoding the path, replacing the space with %20. You could do this manually, but that would be a pain and weâd also have to replace any other characters that arenât valid in a URL. Instead, we can use URL encoding software to make all the necessary substitutions for us. If you want to play around with it, there are websites that will URL encode text for you. If this is something you want to make part of your workflow you probably want to script it (this can be done using the Filter action in Keyboard Maestro and setting it to âPercent Encode for URLâ).
This gives us:
%2FUsers%2Fchris%2FDocuments%2FTest%20File%2Etxt
In order to make Things or other programs that automatically convert URLs to links recognize this as a URL we need to put file:// in front of the URL-encoded path (just like URLs for websites have âhttp://â at the front).
file://%2FUsers%2Fchris%2FDocuments%2FTest%20File%2Etxt
Now when I paste this into Things it recognizes the whole string as a URL and doesnât stop at the space:
Note that when I hover over the link, Things automatically decodes the URL turning %2F into a slash and %20 into a space:
If I click the link it will open my Documents folder in a Finder window with Test File.txt selected. â-O will open it in whatever the default app is for that file type.
Great episode guys!
@MacSparky David, could you explain how your âminimize all windowsâ Keyboard Maestro macro works or what actions it uses? I canât find a way to minimize all in the âmanipulate a windowâ action. I was hoping it was a downloadable macro in the Keyboard Maestro Field Guide but couldnât find it.
Contextual Computing is an amazing concept, Iâm looking forward to more development of this!
@ismh86 I am now doing the same. Once I realized that I could import markdown files and could bulk export any notes from Craft in four formats if and when needed, I made Craft my default note taking application. It is also working well as a PKM app. While I like Obsidian, Iâm finding Craft more flexible and better suited to my needs. Very impressed so far and the developer, Viktor, has been helpful and responsive.
There is a minimize all command but tactically use the close specific app command. 
Fascinating episode as always. Just a quick note on how Iâm using MIDI triggers with BetterTouchTool, Keyboard Maestro, and HomeKit on my Mac.
A few of the knobs on my M-Audio keyboard typically go unused, so Iâve assigned BTT âValue Changedâ triggers - which run AppleScript to invoke Keyboard Maestro to send hotkeys to the âHomieâ (Menubar app) to control the brightness of the left and right desk lamps.
Homie (or HomeControl) allows you to assign individual hotkeys to Scenes - though HomeControl throws an alert if you send keystrokes faster than it can respond.
@MacSparky said he uses 1Password to generate fake UUIDs for notes.
I need to make UUIDs all the time for work. Fortunately Mac OS X ships with /usr/bin/uuidgen which can help with that.
To turbo charge this, just add a TextExpander snippet, and set the content to Shell Script:
#!/bin/bash
/user/bin/uuidgen
Saves me a lot of time!
Very cool. I didnât know about this either. Inspired by your Text Expander snippet, I made an Alfred Workflow to do the same thing. I put it here: https://github.com/ethanweed/Alfred-make-UUID
@Aaron_Antcliff Iâd love to see your workflow on this - Iâm still trying to get my head around just how to surface these connections effectively.
I use a TextExpander snipped to make Zettelkasten numbers as unique ids - YYYYMMDDHHMMSS
After some back and forth (since Catalinaâs Notes AppleScript brook), Hook [generates URLs for notes based on their date-time stamps]( Using Hook with Apple Notes â Hook). Apple doesnât directly expose the Notes URLs, but I am hopeful they will follow the trend towards exposing links in a helpful manner.
