Have you come across Drafts? It’s intended for making quick notes, which are then routed to various apps according to criteria you set.
On the face of it, it will do what you want in steps 1. and 2. fairly easily.
Once you’ve set it up, you would
Create a new draft (from the control centre, or with a shortcut, or from the Home Screen, perhaps).
Type the title and text, with any tags.
Press a button to send it to a defined place in DTTG, where a note will be created with your title, text and tags.
Points:
the notes are written in Markdown, but the output (as in step 3) can be in RTF. I’m fairly sure it will cope with images, but have never done this myself. Don’t know about handwritten notes, though.
you have to specify your own action (step 3), but the Drafts website allows you to download and install ones that others have already created, and several meet your needs. I use a variant of Send MD to DEVONthink | Drafts Directory, which does step 3 for you.
Drafts Actions are very powerful and you can achieve some very complicated things, but they can also very simple, as in step 3, which just uses the built-in DTTG x-devonthink mechanism to create a new note. This is the same mechanism that similar Apple Shortcuts use to get stuff in DTTG: the difference being that Drafts provides a Markdown compliant editor and a lot of other features and more flexibility.
As for your final point, DTTG4 now has a ‘Recently Modified’ Smart Group, which may do what you want, perhaps?
Finally, you can add the ‘New Draft’ command to iOS26 Control Centre. Swipe down to get the control centre, then long press on a vacant space (it may take a couple of goes to do this – it’s a bit finicky) and then on Add a Control. Swipe down till get to Drafts and choose Drafts Control, then choose ‘New Draft’.
Thanks for that recommendation. Heard of Drafts but never took the time to review it. First impression while poking through its feature description, it seems that docs/notes are essentially stored in its inbox and can the be shared with other apps. That would create 2 sources of the document. Also, it is unclear if once stored in DT and edited in DT, drafts’ inbox is thereby updated also.
I feel strong about having 1 source of truth for notes and docs, for me that must always be DT.
Drafts seems to shine with a ton of automation functions, perhaps things can be done “my way” with it afterall. Thanks again for your reply and thoughful commentary.
I’ve tried scanning my own handwritten notes into Drafts without much success. It tries to parse them into text, but can’t really decipher my handwriting.
But you know what can? Gemini! I just did a test: I took a photo of a page of handwritten notes, shared it to the Gemini app on my phone, got a very good transcript, hit the copy button in Gemini, the paste button in Drafts, and there is was, ready to use. I don’t know if there’s a way to use the share sheet to get the transcript directly into Drafts without cutting and pasting—I tried, and the best I could do was get a link to my chat.
I use Drafts all the time to write notes and send them wherever they need to go. I simply installed the relevant actions from the Drafts Directory. I don’t store notes in Drafts, but I know there are people who do using the workspaces feature. I also use Drafts to scan text from printed sources and dump it into a new note.
I use Drafts as a way to get notes into my Sources of Truth: NotePlan for administrative notes and Obsidian for research and learning notes.
If you’re looking for an alternative to DT / DTTG, you might want to consider the Notebooks app. I used to use it all the time until I migrated to Obsidian. From time to time, I’m tempted to give it another try, because it is a dream to use on mobile, and I never had a problem with syncing.
Drafts doesn’t have to be a duplicate source. You can set Drafts to delete their version once it’s been sent to DTTG as part of the Action, if you prefer — it’s what I do.
If you do choose to keep copies in Drafts, then no, they are not kept in sync with the DTTG version, and there’s no need for it in your workflow. People do use Drafts for storing notes, but you and I don’t need to use it that way. We’re using it purely to create files quickly, not to edit them.
It’s really very flexible that way (and therefore can be a bit complex if your needs are complex), but your described workflow is one of its main strengths and is relatively simple to set up.
No worries nor offense taken and your thoughts are appreciated. We do listen and consider these things and have definitely made improvements in “note-taking” over the years. But needs and wants vary, and time and resources are finite, so there will always be someone disappointed.
We have plenty of people on both sides: some use third-party apps because it scratches a certain itch, others happily take notes in our apps. And don’t forget: I’m not just some corporate employee. I’m also a user just like the rest of you. I have tried all (or most) of the apps people compare us to and with very rare exceptions*, they don’t gain traction with me. I have written long and short form documents in DEVONthink for years, from support and training materials to the documentation (thousands of lines per document in some cases). And in my mind, these documents are going to be in a database of mine, so it just feels comfortable to create and work with the documents directly where they’ll live.
* For the curious - these are not daily drivers but bespoke apps I use as needed for very specific tasks:
I begrudgingly use VS Code for some training materials due to its decent live HTML preview.
I use the venerable BBEdit for specific tasks like examining the internals of PDFs or plist files (much lighter than opening XCode).
I use the amazing CotEditor for certain tasks, typically for some end-processing of documentation files.
I have some scratchpad things in Agenda and still swear by Apple’s Stickies.app.
PS: Long-press the app icon in the springboard and choose New Note…
Seriously, thank you for the thorough response. For me, shortcuts and messing around with a lot with tags and automation is more work than it is worth, mainly because automation and shortcuts are not my area of “expertise,” which is putting it mildly. I prefer a simple process so my focus is on the writing. As for my notes, I’m in pretty good shape. In the past, I’ve taken all my notes (which are well organized in Apple Notes) and then on a preset schedule, imported them into DEVONthink. I don’t know if using DT for taking my work related notes is going to work, I’m giving it a try.
Thanks, I was getting excited about trying it again but I think I will wait and take a go slow approach and try a narrow use case so I can explore it to see if I can get it working.
I wish that they would offer phone support like OmniFocus because there are several features that I still don’t understand that could be solved in 10 min call. Stupid things like if you delete all of the duplicates does it leave at least one copy of the file, the original? DTTG ended up creating 100’s of dups and I was not sure of how to clean them up.
I would be willing to pay for phone support. Could be a revenue stream.
May I ask more specifically how you use OmniOutliner in your writing process? Do you simply enter keywords for the text structure and perhaps rearrange them for a clearer organization? Or do you also write short drafts in OO that you then export to a writing program for further development?
I’m currently in the trial phase for OO6 and am not sure whether I can replace the block-based writing capabilities of Craft with it. However, I have the impression that the structure of an OO document forces me to think more carefully beforehand about the organization of my text and thus my message. In Craft, by contrast, I remain vague for longer and sometimes arrive at different destinations than I anticipated at the beginning.
This is primarily how I use OO. I also use OO to outline a series of talks, devotions, etc., over a year’s time. I prefer to think about a presentation or article over a period of time in an incremental fashion before I begin to write. I find an iterative approach to produce better results.
Below is a screenshot of my outline for a presentation to a national foundation on leadership transitions. Notice two things: 1) there are collapsible note fields (see arrow), where you can add text, which gets exported with the outline. These can become draft text in your article or presentation. 2) you can add columns for additional information, notes, etc., for reference.
There is also a sidebar that allows you to select a topic heading to focus exclusively on that topic, which is helpful in a long outline. Also, whatever is selected gets exported. If nothing is selected, the entire outline is exported.
That was more than helpful! I am very grateful to you for the very detailed assistance!
My texts also go through a metamorphosis, though they have to make do with less time given my remarkable ability to delay the inevitable…
Question - While the graph is gorgeous to see, can you give a practical example of how it is useful in actual application? That’s the part where I have always scratched my head.
Truthfully, it is so new, I don’t know yet. I do like it to help me see connections that are hard to see with just text. I’m hoping this will help me discover connections I’m missing. We shall “see,” pun intended.
Thanks but I made it fairly clear (I thought) I am not looking to replace DT … at all.
