I use and love both. I’m also massively into folders (beginning to think that people who have a ‘folders’ mindset can probably be dated fairly specifically to whenever folders was the only thing…).
Anyway – the way I think about this. DT could probably replace most of my Obsidian usage. There would be friction especially in terms of its markdown split window which in cannot get on with. I like the Obsidian md styling; overall app themes; workspaces (I know that DT has them, and I use them); and on the whole it’s a much faster experience. DT replicates most of this but also has a million other functions which can get in the way. Obsidian is leaner in this respect (especially if you use it mostly without the gazillion plugins, as I do).
But Obsidian could never replace DT for me because searching is so good. I have huge PDF libraries and searching within these is a superpower. Many online providers of electronic books in my field now offer these as single downloads, with one PDF file for each chapter within a folder. I’ve found it very powerful to just open the folder and start searching within this subset of folders. Smartgroups is another I couldn’t do without. Same for tags, which auto-populate some smart groups for me (especially when I am reading for particular projects: I tag everything in DT with that project tag, and so I have a bespoke folder containing only these resources). I’ve never investigate Obsidian as a DT replacement because why would I … I have DT!
I’ve tweaked my workflow a few months ago and it seems to work. I use DT for my archives and keeping paperless for personal records / bills etc.
For quick notes, I’m using Drafts. It can do markdown or just plain text. It’s available on my iPhone, iPad, and MacBook and my notes sync between them seamlessly. There is really no overhead since starting the app shows a blank page ready to go.
On my desktop, I have a ‘Send to DT’ processing action. So, during my review of Drafts notes, I can edit, refine, trash, or send them to DT. In DT, they can be put into the appropriate place - I’ve got a loose BASB organization. In DT, I have the ability to edit / link etc as I want.
I’ve tried using Obsidian and DT for taking the notes, but my DayTimer days of “There shall be one place” comes in and eliminates Obsidian. DTTG is a little too heavy weight and Drafts “Just Works”. I also like that I can drop pretty much any kind of content into DT and it will do the right thing. I can also send links, web archives etc from Safari to DT if I need to.
I really appreciate DT in that I can logically group my info as I want to and it manages the physical organization.
I just use DEVONthink 3. I do write outside it with Ulysses which I am very used to and I have a couple of writing programs including Mellel which I don’t use much. I use Bookends too but that is mainly so I have citations properly formatted.
I found my way of using DEVONthink 3 has gotten more and more idiosyncratic really and hard to convey. I am not so much a ‘folders person’ though. Far from it, I switch a lot to the Icon View, and put it to ‘large’: so I can literally see what I have in certain databases.
I don’t feel I need anything beyond DEVONthink 3 and a few, again idiosyncratic Keyboard Maestro tricks. I find the ‘smart rules’ in DEVONthink 3 more and more useful too: that is a recent development after years of use.
I still use Devonthink as a storage system, and won’t give it up anytime in the near future. But I find the sync pretty frustrating and not as pleasant an area to write/work in. Most of my research (particularly PDFs) get synced there, and I agree with the incredible search, so all Obsidian notes are indexed. But as I work consistently on a desktop, laptop, and tablet, I hate dealing with the sync issues of DTP. I keep Obsidian as a fairly clean writing environment (scaled back many plug-ins and don’t fiddle too much with it), and I like how light it is.
I meant to add a comment about this but needed to go check my workflow because i haven’t had any issues with those documents in Obsidian.
I don’t use Microsoft Office but I do use LibreOffice a lot for spreadsheets, .CSV files and some text files. So I just did a test. I put several of those files into my Obsidian vault in the folders where they would go. Within Obsidian on Mac I can just open those filed directly and it automatically opens up in LibreOffice for me. So can link the files and still have them in their “native” format. On iPad OS the files can’t be read but they show up. On iOS same thing. I only use Obsidian on iOS to capture and to check off tasks so that all works just fine. However, and this is an interesting item, for the .odf files on iPad there was an option to try to convert the .odf files to PDF and then open it which I didn’t test.
PDF files open up in Obsidian just fine on Mac or iPad. Didn’t try that on my phone either.
The only time I capture web pages is to read and annotate them. For that I use Readwise Reader and then the files are there. My annotations and notes are automatically synced to Obsidian and a link to the article is in the note. So from Obsidian I can get to the original article as well as see my notes and annotations. In fact I do a lot of linking into my reference folder where those annotations live within my Obsidian vault’s regular notes.
One thing I am finding out about Obsidian is that often when I think I’m missing feature X. It’s really already there in the core system or in the suite of plug-ins I have already decided I will use. It’s just that the terminology in the Obsidian sphere is slightly different so my searches for what I think the feature should be called do not always find it. It takes a bit more digging.
So far there is a lot more there than I ever expected. Even in the core system. For example: I need to do a simple timeline, Normally I’d do it in Aeon Timeline. But then it’s hard to link stuff from Obsidian into it, or at least it used to be. There is an upgrade but I haven’t bought it yet. So I thought well I’ll look at options within Obsidian. There are several timeline plug-ins but after reviewing them they are not being supported well. I found some on-line videos that suggested not using them for various reasons but the lack of development support was a big one. Then I discovered that you can do the same thing with a CSS snippet. Simple, works in any theme and is just a reformattting option that I can delete easily. Problem solved in an elegant way. And the code in the note is readable wihtout the CSS.
Now it did take a bit of time to locate and research and then learn about that option but now I have one more tool that I may be able to eliminate. At least i won’t be upgrading it anytime soon.
It would be sexier if it had folders. I’m coming around to the utility of filtered views, but my first instinct with any document is to file it somewhere in my jenga tower of folders.
Off topic, but I’m really taken with using Readwise Reader as a workspace for current projects. Everything I put there also resides in a repository on either my hard drive or an external drive, and so far I’ve been pretty disciplined about removing items I’m no longer working with to keep my RR workspace focussed and tidy.
I no longer use DT as a workspace, but it is still my repository for personal and professional administrative documents.
I prefer Obsidian for making and managing notes, which I index in DT.
I’ve moved all my media (pubs, PDFs, images, and videos) out of DT into Finder folders, which I also index in DT.
I prefer Readwise Reader for reading and annotation, especially because my highlights get ported into Obsidian automatically.
I use Notebooks as an “in process” workspace where I can chuck spreadsheets, Word documents, PDFs, images, etc that I need to have to hand when I’m working on a relatively self-contained administrative project. These files are also indexed in DT. Once the project is completed, I archive the relevant files in the appropriate DT database.
Yes to disliking alphabetizing notes. Most of the time, I want to sort folders and documents by recently-modified. Whatever folder I worked on yesterday, I’ll probably want to work on today.
You mean bookmarks?
I’ve made a note to google Lucene/Solr, Tika, and the other apps you cite. I have not heard of them.
I am one of those sad souls in constant search for the perfect notes app. I have indeed come back to DEVONthink after a 6-month dalliance with Logseq, sprinkled with some Agenda plus automations via @HeyScottyJ.
I like that with DEVONthink I have everything in one place - files, documents, references, notes, backlinks, etc. I know this can be done with other apps, but I like that it is all eminently visible in DEVONthink. The other apps feel like a black hole where I put things in, and hope that they will re-emerge in the future through serendipity.
DEVONthink has all the browsing and search features.
I’ve now tweaked the Daily Journal and combined it with some Keyboard Maestro so that daily logging is just a keystroke away. With the DEVONthink wiki linking working, plus it’s “See Also” stuff, I’m really enjoying having everything in one place.
Ironically, I am now using Obsidian as a sync service to Readwise, and having DEVONthink index the Obsidian files. I hope DEVONthink can somehow integrate a native sync in the future!
I forgot to comment on that yesterday. zettelkasten doesn’t work for me either, and it was just a pandemic fad for me (I had a sourdough starter too ). I just like to write notes of varying lengths about whatever I want.
I actually don’t use it so my answer is of limited use, but I thought I’d give it anyway. I use Mail, but don’t keep many emails in my email accounts now, just pending stuff. I have a folder in Mail (imaginatively titled “.For DT”) where I move things I want to archive (I mostly read email on iOS, when I can be bothered to do it at all… I hate Email). I am brutal about deleting what I don’t want to keep.
When I’m at my Mac sort of once a week or so, I drag and drop all the emails in the Mail DT folder into my email database on DT. They’re all viewable in there, but there’s a button to open in your default mail app if you need to (useful for resuming conversations).
I started doing this for two reasons, which at the time probably had equal weighting: I wanted to remove my emails from Google’s servers, and I wanted a much better search than Mail offers. Now it’s just part of my workflow, for me the search reason was a heck of a lot more useful than I’d realised. Mail’s search is just so frustrating, and sometimes doesn’t even surface what you need. That isn’t a problem in DT, with its super search powers and also its use of Boolean search operators (so handy when you’re searching for words you know occur a lot in your conversations!).
Mail learns from your behaviour, so nowadays my DT folder is often offered as the default folder option for emails that I always archive, which I like.
I convert a lot of stuff to PDF, but I’ve never felt the urge to do that with email.
Sorry, just read your comment in the NotePlan thread, and it occurs to me that I got sidetracked discussing the merits of an Obsidian-DT workflow and didn’t answer your actual question: how do you use DT?
The very short answer is it is basically my “operating system” in a very loose definition of the word. Nowadays nearly everything I store is kept in DT (with a couple of exceptions for things that live on iCloud, as I’ve mentioned, and things that remain in their app-specific folders. E.g. I keep most Numbers spreadsheets in iCloud’s Numbers folder).
I benefit from just having one rule (with exceptions): this file goes in DT. I don’t have to decide, and I can nearly always find stuff I need (there’s a caveat here as I still have some stuff floating in other systems because I’ve not got round to doing something about them. Like my big Apple Notes collection that really needs tidying up and filing properly as Markdown in DT).
I mentioned I use markdown just in DT’s editor. I also do most my PDF reading in DT. I have a Readwise Reader account and I want to read PDFs in there (especially with their new export function), but honestly the files are already in DT and I am lazy and most the time so far I cannot be bothered to move them to Reader just to start work. (I send PDFs to DT first, and have no desire to change that workflow as the whole point of saving a PDF is that I have a secure copy somewhere.)
The only big process that doesn’t start with DT for me is web reading. Most of that gets sent to Reader. If I then want to save a page, I print to PDF and file in DT. Sometimes I will print to PDF straight away before I’ve even read a page, because I know it’s going to be important and I want a copy (often if I do that I don’t send the page to Reader, and just read it as a PDF in DT instead).
One unexpected benefit of this system is how easy it is to feel secure, as a non-techy person (compared to the rest of folk on this forum!) who just wants to know nothing will be lost. Time Machine doesn’t give me that piece of mind (I still run it though), but once a week I verify all my databases to make sure everything is where DT expects it to be and in the right condition, and export a backup manually to an external harddrive (I’m sure I can automate that, but I don’t know how to and also I like the physicality of actually making a zipped backup of actual files like we did in the olden days). I know that if my computer gets eaten by a dinosaur tomorrow, all my files are safe, not trapped on a cloud somewhere, not subject to a sync glitch, etc., and there are no complicated steps for me to get them back (I’d just open the zipped archive and open the database and it would all be like it was). I find that security comforting!
This is a strategy that I miss from my Evernote days and is more powerful than it seems: there is no cognitive friction, everything is in the same place, just a search away.
Also, DEVONthink offers file management capabilities that are remarkably useful for organizing stuff. I wish the Finder, Eaglefiler or Notebooks had partial autocomplete features for opening folders or moving files, and only Obsidian comes close.
I consider myself an amateur in the use of DT and Obsidian, so I am not sure how useful my comments will be.
I was a long term user of Evernote to capture information of interest, but switched to Devonthink a couple of years ago when it was clear that Evernote was in terminal decline.
Devonthink is my “catch all” repository for anything on interest, with indexed links to folders in Dropbox and Obsidian. I use a lot of Smart Rules to remove blog post tags, for example, and replace them with my own. Apart from manual addition of material I use DEVONagent to add the results of specific web searches to DEVONthink.
I also use smart groups in DT to find articles relevant to my research. I will go through the most interesting, highlight them, summarise the highlights into a Markdown file, and add that to Obsidian.
In Obsidian, I add wiki links to find the connections between topics. Obsidian contains a subset of the information stored in Devonthink.
Finally, I try to extract and summarise the key points from the related articles in Obsidian. I am currently experimenting with different ways to store that information in Notes and Craft to begin with.
The above works for me, but it may not be an ideal or elegant solution.
In the last year I’ve moved back to using DT as my primary Second Brain. I tried to use Craft, but found it had many of the same limitations as Obsidian. I still use Craft a lot because I love working in it and I do some collaboration with others. Some docs I keep in Craft, but often export to DT.
In my opinion, DT can’t be beaten for its set of fantastic features not found in any other database. Great search (which was AI assisted before AI became the thing), built-in world-class OCR, easy organization, easily converts files from one type to another, great built-in web clipper with multiple save formats, and takes any kind of file (and displays it) I can throw at it.
One of the things I really appreciate about DV is that I don’t have to patch together a bunch of 3rd party plugins as in Obsidian (which may or may not be supported in the future) to have all these features. They are all a part of the DV app from the start and are easily accessed. It’s easy to use them, they’re integrated into the user AI, and I don’t have to piece together a baling wire contraption to have access to them.
I think you’re exactly on point with DT being able to have all types of files visible at all times. I’m not interested in a primary app that hides everything except one file format (like markdown) in attachments. To me, it’s a huge advantage to be able to throw any file format at DT, and it displays them all.
I get my Readwise highlights into DT by just doing an export from Readwise, then dragging it into the inbox. A little more hassle, but I don’t have to depend on another app. And, I can file the highlights where I want to in topical folders.
I have all the files in my knowledge base in the finder (and iCloud) which I save to my Mac and have several backups, then index those files in DT.
When I change something in the finder files, that change is reflected in DT. When I change something in DT, it gets reflected in my finder files. Using this approach, I’m not even dependent on the DT databases, although they get backed up also.
I get all the features and benefits of DT and still have all my individual files (in many different file formats) saved outside the DV system.
I’m coming around to the utility of filtered views, but my first instinct with any document is to file it somewhere in my jenga tower of folders.
). I just like to write notes of varying lengths about whatever I want.