I am a hunter vs a farmer. I want to be able to just dump some information into my Notes app and know that I can find it again by searching without a great deal of effort.
I can always eventually find it in apple notes but are often takes a lot more effort than I would like.
Sometimes I create a note in the morning with a very specific title and then do a search later on end of the day and can’t find the note as search returns hundreds of notes.
I know you can create an index note and set up Smart folders that mitigate the time to find, but it also means more friction.
Almost invariably when I spend some time cleaning up my Mac and organizing files I stumble across really great Information that I captured but just got lost in the weeds. It’s like I can’t see the trees for the forest.
I have experimented with Devonthink, but Devonthink seems like a bit of a kluge and in the app, where you have to totally read the manual before even getting started might not be the one for me.
If I posted to Devonthink forums all of the problems that I’m having with Devonthink, it would probably take me two hours.
Then I would get to enjoy the snarky replies by their support engineers. I didn’t understand where they were coming from until I found out that it is a German based company.
I do dump everything important into Evernote in order to give me the best chance of finding it when push comes to shove.
If you were going to choose one tool that you recommend I give a try in the new year. What would it be?
Right now I’m leaning towards Notion. I just hope the juice is worth the squeeze.
I used Drafts extensively until the day I find that I need to attach photos into my notes. Then, I moved to Apple Notes and it’s great. The only problem is, I missed Drafts’ Quick Capture. So, I built this free app called Quick Scrap Note as the front end where anything important notes is then pushed into Apple Notes.
Create different databases for different areas of your life and start putting things like files, folders, notes, bookmarks in. You can just dump in the global inbox or database-specific inboxes and later move manually or set up rules to auto-file (I haven’t done this yet).
I have a daily note for each day always open in a separate window. Fn + D switches to DT, then if this window is not the active one, ⌘~, and begin typing away.
Plus one for for scrap notes. I find it really useful to dump notes in (long and short) then push them into Notes if I think it is worth it. Almost like like note taking triage system. Provide you a second ot two to ponder tags and titles.
Have you tried Obsidian? Sometimes it gets downvoted because people think it relies on too many plugins and is confusing, but actually that’s not how it needs to be. Plain vanilla Obsidian out of the box is great for note taking, and the “official” Obsidian web clipper (free on the App Store) is great for capture.
Though I suggested not using plugins (at least initially) there are two that help with note discovery: Various Complements, which suggests relevant notes to link to; and Strange New Worlds, which indicates for a term how many notes use that term. (I linked to their developers’ page, but these are actually installed from within Obsidian.)
If you just avoid the temptation to customize Obsidian you migh find it simple and useful.
I use a combination of DEVONthink and Apple Notes. I keep all my research files in DT. All other notes, e.g., project and meeting notes, travel information, and the like, go into Apple Notes. For quick capture, I use AN’s Quick Note feature. Global Key+Q opens a Quick Note where I can type, add a web link, copy/paste information, add multimedia, use the Apple Pencil, etc. I often add tags (#tag) so I can easily find a note or use one of the Smart Folders I’ve created.
I was a longtime DevonThink user for everything, but I’ve now switched to Apple Notes and iCloud and I’m much happier. I use Quick Notes by pressing Fn+Q (Mac) all the time for quick capture, and find the easy mixing of images, files and handwritten notes perfect - much better than my previous choice of Markdown.
The main reason I switched was syncing - I use an iPad most of the time and DevonThink to Go would take ages to update and sync my notes whenever I opened it, and if I had no network I couldn’t access new files. Now, I have all my important files stay downloaded in iCloud, they update in the background and I’ve never had to wait for syncing since.
I also find Spotlight has improved to the point where I don’t need the DT search anymore, which was my main reason for using that software.
I used Evernote for several years, much the same way as you. And all that data eventually ended up on Google Drive. It rarely takes me more than a couple of minutes to find what I need.
Just write notes, put notes into folders. Add tags to Taking it a step further, you can tag to notes, add links between notes.
My use of DevonThink is underwhelming. I am certainly not using anywhere near the breadth of powers that it has, but it gets the job done for me.
I find the search is more consistent than just using Finder. I also find that Devonthink’s “AI engine”- the old one, rounds up a lot of related files.
For less critical notes, I use Obsidian. I like the ability to create links and automated back links. With Just this tool, you can create some useful indexes.
I wonder if you would benefit from examining the Zettleklasten method ?
Have you considered Bear? (The link will take you directly to their help page on searching your notes.)
It’s a very nice note-taking app, especially if you’re comfortable using tags rather than folders to organize your notes. It’s got lots of genuinely useful features, including a web clipper and a document scanner, and will allow you to embed just about anything into a note. If Bear let me use folders and store my files in regular Finder folders like Obsidian, I’d probably be using it myself.
I’m a big fan of DEVONthink, but I’ll be the first to admit that 1) the learning curve is steep and 2) its UI doesn’t make it ideal as a workspace for extended reading and writing.
Until recently, I had a similar setup in DEVONthink with databases for each life domain. Following various suggestions to consolidate these, I now only have two databases with multiple subfolders. Since then, the sync process with DTTG has been working very quickly and accurately.
DEVONthink gurus: I am not a current user of DEVONthink. Is there still the problem where an app freeze, power failure, or some other sort of crash causes DEVONthink to warn you that a database is already open or that it was not closed correctly? The more databases I created the more it seemed I had that problem.
Fuzzy search of unstructured data is one thing that LLM technology should certianty excel at. I haven’t looked much into it because I’m locked in on Apple Notes, but since you’re starting from scratch, I wonder if there are AI-powered options out there for you?
Both MacSparky Field Guide and Take Control of DEVONthink suggest separate databases. No issues with syncing. I was using iCloud (CloudKit) earlier and just switched to local network (Bonjour) for sync between 2 Macs and iPhone.
The warning is not “a problem”. It’s an user-facing alert that something unexpected happened, whether it’s a crash or a force quit. Imagine someone borrowed your vehicle and every time they turned on the dome light, the dash lights dimmed and the car stalled. You’d certainly appreciate knowing about it so you could get it repaired. That’s the whole point of the warning dialog in DEVONthink.
Version 4 increases its health checks and provides statistics on the issue, e.g., Missing files: 3. It also does more repairing, where it’s possible.
