Okay friends. I’m still going back and forth about moving either to Devonthink or Keep It. One main question I have is this: What is the best way to get all of my documents out of either iCloud or Dropbox and into these other apps? I’m assuming I will have to download them to my local machine either way but is there a better way to batch this? Anyone have experience with this? Thanks in advance!
I just select import (or you can index) all of the iCloud folders I want in DT and its done. No downloading (except to DT) is needed.
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I moved all my Dropbox stuff into DevonThink by letting the client sync everything locally, then dragging the folders into the right database in DT. Then I uninstalled the DropBox client. I had about 20GB and a few million files, so DT took some time to work through it, but it wasn’t an issue. I had to do some OCR processing to get my search results to where I wanted them afterwards.
DEVONtechnologies does not recommend indexing files that are flagged in Dropbox Smart Sync as “Online Only”. Indexed files need to reside on the local drive (or an attached hard drive). So, if you have a cloud-only file that you want to add to DEVONthink on the desktop, whether by importing or indexing, then it must be downloaded first.
Using DT, there are 2 stages to think about. 1) getting the data into DT locally. 2) do you want any sync? which could be using icloud or dropbox as the backedn.
You can just drag files into KeepIt. If they’re not stored locally, KeepIt’s request to copy the files should instigate macOS (I’m assuming) or DropBox to download them. Once you’re happy KeepIt has them, you can remove from their original location.
Not arguing the point but I was referring to iCloud. And, I index all of my iCloud files from the finder app on my Mac. I have never had a problem. Again, I’m not arguing a point, merrly sharing my personal experience. 
When you index the files from iCloud, then accessing the file in DEVONthink will cause iCloud to download the files.
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