Devonthink 4.0 Copernicus is officially out.
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Is it
Copper Nickus or Kuh Pur Ni Cus ? So many people pronounce it differently
Sticking to DT3, not upgrading. Still have lots of documents on DT, don’t need auditing, AI etc. New editor not impressive enough to justify changing to new licensing model. That just me.
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For me it’s always been kuh-puh-nuh-kuhs
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The star of the show is AI. It’s somewhat funny and depressing at the same time to consider that DEVONthink was an early adopter of classic AI techniques which provided a lot of smarts but then GPT came along and the word “AI” acquired a new meaning and became GenAI.
The advantage of DEVON is, well, it keeps all your docs and, to some point based in the “old” AI, also keeps some relationships between your docs so it’s in a unique position to be a better “chat with your docs” solution (ask questions, summarize, translate, whatnot over a document). The new GenAI-based feature set is not exactly mind bending but my feeling is that they are laying down the basic foundations to build from while keeping the UI simple enough. I am not sure if the new GenAI features will attract many new users, but for existing ones I believe this to be a valuable upgrade: you keep working as you did, plus you have some options to run GenAI models on top of your data without switching to another app.
I specially love that they are GenAI vendor neutral and do not forget to keep options for local models through not only one but three options (ollama, LMStudio, GPT4All) for us in restricted corporate environments.
There is still much to do, specially in terms of adding agentic capabilities through MCP, this will come along the line --not that I am claiming this prediction to be very spectacular: everyone will adopt MCP or will be left behind.
All in all, I think this is a first step in the right direction for DT.
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I expect I’ll upgrade. I like the pricing model—I believe it is fair and, in my estimation, is a good business model offering a “hybrid” approach to one-time purchase/subscription.
I’m hoping that DTTG4 is significantly improved.
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I’ve tried it out, and the only thing keeping me back right now is that I’ve been rejiggering my vaults (Obsidian and Devonthink) to try to have them work together while also both being synced between computers; and my brain thinks it’s a good thing to wait to upgrade (and confuse itself by new features etc.) until I have this system working correctly so I can use both Obsidian and Devonthink on both my computers and on my phone, and also be able to search the Obisidan files in Devonthink…
Right now the plan is a script that just one-way-syncs whatever is in my Obisidan Vault to my Devonthink vault, and then I’ll have that script run as a cronjob or whatever on both computers - I consider my phone more of a read-only device for this purpose…
Well… That was off topic, but at least writing my problem out gave me some insight, I think…
Thanks for Rubberducking for me, MPU! 
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Take Control Books has a free guide to version 4: Take Control of DEVONthink 4 – Take Control Books
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I may have missed it but I don’t see anything about the release of DTTG 4. Has it been released yet?
Watch DEVONtechnologies | DEVONthink To Go, document and information management for iPad and iPhone for any anouncements, or DEVONtechnologie’s blog at DEVONtechnologies | Devonian Times
I look forward to an updated DTTG as well; however, DT 3 was released in 2019, while DTTG 3 was released in 2021, so it may be some time for the next version of DTTG.
I believe DTTG 4 is in a private alpha/beta right now.
Thanks!!
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I was super excited that DT4 contained AI so I could ask questions about specific files and folders. I whipped out my credit card and bought the upgrade.
What I didn’t know was that you have to have an API Key from ChatGPT/Perplexity/Gemini, etc. to make the DT4 AI function work.
I have $20 subscriptions to ChatGPT and Perplexity. I also run my office using Google Suites (it’s paid subscription). None of those subscriptions appear to be enough to get the requisite API Key to make DT4 AI work. Rather, you need to pay one of those providers on a per coin basis for the API Key to work and the total cost will depend on how often you make your AI queries within DT4.
Perhaps I should have read the fine print but perhaps DT should have made it more clear that you will need to pay a third party to make DT4 AI work.
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I put £5 on the AI key for Chat GPT about 4 months ago. I use it every day. i have used about £1.25 so far…
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It is worth it for me. I have used Devonthink for over a decade and think I have only paid for it twice. I think they deserve another upgrade from me.
The new features are really great IMO. My favourite are being able to put groups in the sidebar, markdown changes where I can iuse it now as my dedicated markdown editor and the AI integration.
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Are you able to run a local LLM? LMStudio is pretty easy to use with DevonThink. That’d be free and let you do your queries offline, too.
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I don’t know how to do something like that. LOL It took me 30 minutes trying to figure out why the DT AI wasn’t working (it needed an API key) and another 30m to figure out I had to buy tokens.
Thanks for that! That’s the first cost estimate that I’ve seen!
I am puzzled what alternative you would suggest DevonTech do. They cannot operate at a financial loss.
Their options are:
(1) Make AI “free” and fund it through advertising or selling user data (Google does this - it is not Devontech’s style)
(2) Charge a monthly flat-rate subscription - not only is this not Devontech’s style, but inevitably if the subscription is flat-rate then some customers will pay too little and some will pay too much. Local-LLM users would incur no AI usage charges. Casual AI users may have $5 a month of AI usage. Regular profesional users may have hundreds of dollars per month of AI usage. There is no flat rate which would be feasible.
(3) Utilize an API so each user can set his own budget and use AI accordingly.
What else could Devontech do?
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