I may not understand your question but I can index files, but I want notes consolidated to reduce scrolling and I want to be able with 3 clicks to export multiple notes as a single document.
Well, I was reacting to your need to duplicate files in your local iCloud folder somewhere else to enable indexing with DEVONthink. I guess if you use the āOptimise Mac Storageā option with iCloud that would be prudent, but otherwise not reqād. I donāt get all your stuff about minimising scrolling and clicks, but sounds like you are happy with the approach. Go for it.
@rms Sorry, I thought you were referring to Craft, not DT. As to DT, Iām not concerned about duplicating filesāthat is not the issue for me. What Iām trying to communicate is that if I only index files in DT (which was my previous practice) then to get new files to show up in that indexed database, I have to move the new file to the Finder location that is being indexed.
A key point is that I do not want a mix of native and indexed files in DT (this is not a matter of duplicating but a matter of mixed access format).
Accordingly, Iāve found that importing to DT, rather than indexing to DT, has several advantages based on my preferences:
- I donāt have to move files/documents to a specific Finder location to ensure they are indexed in DT.
- I only have one access formatāthe files are IN DT, not a mixture of both indexed and native.
- I can create DT rules that when a document is put in the DT inbox, it is tagged and moved to the correct folder/sub-folder in DT.
To further clarify, Iām NOT using Craft to store documents, my documents reside in DT (personal) or Google Drive (work). Craft is used exclusively for notes.
I hope that all makes sense. 
Very interesting example of a Craft use case ā¦ thanks!
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I think I have done well to stick with apps this year, but Iām saying that before I actually write out my list and compare. Hereās what I listed before:
Default Apps + Xcode, Graphic, Pixelmator, Logic, Final Cut, PDF Expert, BBedit.
Plus I keep going back to Fantasitcal, toyed with PDF Pen, and switched to Studio One.
So, significant changes/updates for me are:
- Logic is now officially relegated; I use Studio One and Iām sticking with it (I wobbled a bit because it is not optimised/fully stable on my M1, but Iām putting up with it). Studio One is a pleasure to use (M1 bugs excepted) and has Melodyne to make my dodgy vocals tolerable.
- PDF Pen is not needed for me as it doesnāt OCR Thai text, so I removed it to reduce my app count a tad. I use Preview to read PDFs, and PDF Expert for editing.
- Iāve given up Fantastical as it is costly and the default app is fine for my limited needs.
- The only major āchangeā for me really is Craft, but itās not really replacing anything. It has become the starting point for my Digital Garden, so itās a place for content creation that was never in my arsenal before. Granted, a couple of my items in Notes are moving over, but they are unrecognisable because I am taking time to flesh them out, to make structured pieces of writing rather than quick jottings.
- I plan to move from SketchUp Make to Blender when I next need to do some 3D modelling as I feel SketchUp Make is reaching the end of its (free) usefulness and I want to develop 3D skills better. This may or may not happen, depending on time commitments.
- I plan to move from Graphic to Affinity Designer, which seems better in many ways. Iām not sure if Graphic is really supported now, but I do make use of its dimension tools and I know how to do some simple scripts to create shortcuts that hide/show the layers I want in a drawing with 100 layers. Again, may get delayed.
I didnāt really talk about work-related things, which mostly involves using the Google Suite within Google Chrome (using this means I donāt need to sign in to Google in Safari). I have also used OneNote on and off for curriculum planning. Lots of things are in Google Sheets though, as I have a number of automations that make ordering equipment for lessons a breeze and lots of other things. So, changes for school:
- I spent a lot of time this year looking at various tools for presenting lessons online. I learned a lot, but ultimately I think the hours (days?) spent fiddling with OBS, Zoom, and ManyCam could have been better spent elsewhere.
My final workflow is to use OBS to switch between a desktop view, my iPad and a couple of cameras for live lessons. I feed the virtual cam from OBS to Zoom. - For demos in lessons I use an old Android phone with DroidCam and simply put that up on the board. Any meters, or oscilloscope even, just get placed in the cameraās view. Nothing fancy anymore.
- For pre-recorded lessons, I use Final Cut Pro to mix content from an Olympus OMD camera, audio recorded in Quicktime, and video from Explain EDU.
- Scripts for Lesson Videos are written in Craft rather than as notes in Google Slides. Whilst the old method served its purpose well in allowing me to write lots of lesson scripts quickly and efficiently, I feel I am now at a stage where I want to write them more creatively, and slide notes is just not the medium for that.
- Organisation and planning is also done in Craft rather than OneNote and Google Sheets. I have tried very hard to like and commit to OneNote, but I cannot do so for some reason. I am in love with Craft and I am creating schemes of work that have flow, connections, and tell a story.
I am still enjoying trying new apps, itās a fun thing to do, but Iām also really enjoying sticking to what I know and trying to focus less on the tech, and more on the creativity.
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You and me both! Part of my (our?) āproblemā is listening to MPU! 
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Do you use āsee alsoā with your notes? If so, how do you get the benefit of that without having your notes stored in DT?
I do but I cross link DT document links and Craft deeplinks. Works great! Craft is just better for note taking, IMO.
Do you export your notes from Craft to DevonThink so you can index and do āsee alsoā on the individual notes documents?
I write all of my notes in Craft exclusivelyāone place to write and find notes. Once the notes are no longer needed, e.g, the project is completeāIāll export them as PDFās and store them in DT.
For documents/tasks/emails needed for reference when in a Craft note, I copy and paste the needed link into Craftāthis makes it faster without the need to conduct a search or go to the other app to find what I need. I also create dashboards as I go so that over time I have far less copying/pasting to do.
For me, this is working extremely well. All four major productivity components are linked: Emails (Spark), Notes (Craft), Documents (DT/Google) and Project tasks (Things).
One of the nice things about this setup is that I can annotate, convert, replicate, duplicate, OCR, share, etc., any document in DT) and I can export my Craft notes in the most relevant format needed. This āfuture proofsā my notes and documents while eliminating the āclutterā of using markdown because one can write in markdown in Craft if desired (I no longer do) or export as a markdown file if needed.
If it isnāt obvious yet, Iām liking this system!
I am currently using Obsidian a ton, but there are aspects of it that are quite limiting and Craft solves many of those in clever (and to be honest, unique ways). For example, the entire concept of sub-pages and ācardsā and the way it does āoutliningā without actually looking like an outliner are brilliant designs that, to my knowledge, exist nowhere else currently. I also really like the fact that it has native apps across Appleās ecosystem, unlike Obsidian.
BUT Obsidian has a RICH base of plugins that Craft cannot match (and likely never will be able to). And even though Obsidian is Electron, itās one of the nicest Electron apps Iāve ever used. And because it uses plain old Markdown files that you can put anywhere, it plays extremely well with DT3, Noteplan, Drafts, or really ANYTHING else you want to use (except, of course, for apps like Craft that use proprietary storage).
Craft says its working on a local storage option. If that happens, I will try it again. I also need table support (not database tables, just normal tables).
EDIT:
Anyone know if Craft is more secure than Roam? I also have major concerns about using Craft for client data.
Looks like youāre not using āsee alsoā on the fly against notes then?
Do you use Daily Notes? After messing around with Obsidian and NotePlan Iāve become enamored of keeping daily notes, using a system very loosely based on Bullet Journaling? Just quick running notes throughout the day of things that happened, things I did, things Iāve worked on.
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Same. And another reason I am not yet into Craft is that it lacks the super-useful āUnlinked Mentionsā features of both Roam and Obsidian. I believe this is the flagship feature hereā¦backlinks are cool and all, but more and more apps have that, yet not nearly as many have the āunlinked mentionsā thing. And lest I forget, DT3 has probably one of the best versions of āunlinked mentionsā but you wouldnāt readily know it: itās a combination of See Also and the alias wiki linking function. Super powerful.
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Iām not sure, actually I am sure , what you mean by āsee also.ā I thought you were using that as a generic phrase. Is it something in Craft per se? I use @ and or [[ to create links or new docs routinely.
@JakeBernsteinWA I donāt know if Craft is more or less secure than Obsidian except that if all of your Obsidian files are local then that would be pretty secure.
I also like Obsidian but ultimately prefer the flexibility of Craft and I did not personally find the graph feature in Obsidian to be particularly helpful.
What are unlinked mentions and how do those work in DT?
āSee alsoā is a DevonThink feature. Itās in the same Information pane as auto-classify. It does a text analysis of your document and finds other, similar documents. People say itās great for finding connections between documentsāsort of an automated Zettelkasten.
Devon Technologies calls it AI, but folks say it isnāt really.
Itās as much āAIā as anything is right now, though one thatās not super sophisticated. OTOH, I am excited for what DEVONtechnologies will be able to do with the machine learning cores in M-series chips in the future!
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Oh yes, I recall now. For some reason I thought you were referring to that feature in Craftāand I couldnāt find it. LoL!
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I too was confused at first but Iāve learned to love them!
Well, after getting lots of advice (Thanks everyone!) and after a bit of struggling and testing, I believe I have completed the tweaks to my 2021 workflow. The thing that finally brought all of this together was insync, which after several days of testing is working flawlessly in syncing Google Suite to DEVONThink. And, notwithstanding my tweaking, I even managed to get a chapter written in my book this past week.
All in all, Iām pleased with where Iāve landed.
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