Yet another DevonThink topic

I just had a rude reminder that the DT web clipper is absolutely horrible. At least on news articles, on iOS. I just tried clipping a few articles from the Wall Street Journal and lightreading.com; none of them successfully made it to DT.

Hmm thats weird, i never have any issue with the clipper. Have you discussed the issue on the DT forum?

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hm. Odd. There are links, but they are offset on the page seemingly at random. I hadn’t noticed this before, so thanks for the report. I’ll try to fix it and will let you know if I make progress.

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I have brought it up on the forum; the sense I get is they’re doing the best they can.

Do you specifically have no problem with the DTTG clipper, or the Mac clipper?

It was the mac clipper i referred to, i use ddtg much less but also cannot remember specific clipper issues with that. I’ll give it a bit of a go today to see if it has problems.

I seem to recall the Mac clipper is much better than the DTTG clipper. I’ll continue playing with both.

Yes, that is my largest DT database so far. Curated archive of the past 20+ years of email.

The failings of the DTTG share sheet “clipper” are why I’ve adopted the Shortcut discussed earlier (albeit note the discussion about the links being broken).

I will eagerly await the shareable version of your shortcut! And until then I will fiddle with the sharesheet and see if I can get it to work.

All of this, plus it is absolutely the best place to archive the email that you really, truly need to keep. DT is my container for everything related to a specific project or area of interest—notes, images, PDFs, spreadsheets, emails, videos, whatever—not to mention the repository for my personal and professional archives.

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I agree with DT being a sweet spot to store non-web accessible stuff (but keep it available across devices, even tho the iOS app is sorely in need of love/attention).

I’ll take issue with it needing to be a “huge volume,” though. Even web-accessible stuff can greatly benefit from additional context (e.g. notes, annotations, corrections, etc.) that’s not available when you just hit it via web search.

For work, I have several very small (5-6 items) collections (groups) of items in DT that are web accessible. However I need to frequently access one section of docs from Vendor A, some notes on past projects regarding that topic, and a section of Vendor B’s docs (and my note where I have a correction to part of that doc that they have never gotten around to updating online). DT is perfect for this. Some folks will just create a Word, Pages, Evernote and put all this in but I like the flexibility of being able to see the source documents when I need even more info or being able to reuse items in other groups in DT.

There have been a gazillion attempts with Chrome extensions to “markup the web.” I’ve never found one I’d trust or could stand using more than a couple minutes. Plus I don’t want to burn thru my battery in 15 mins, so I use Safari.

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Yes, I agree entirely. I’ve been using some databases with only 8-12 files for ebooks in which the individual chapters are in their own PDF. I could dump them all in a folder in the Finder but DT has the benefit of x-platform annotation and links.

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You could always use Federico Viticci‘s shortcut for clipping to Devon think. I’ve modified it so much to fit my particular Workflow, but I think his standard shortcut links below is very helpful for saving a variety of things into DEVONthink. It works very well.

https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/2039e10de0264b658cf0fabdcc1cc248

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Could you elaborate on your script that converts highlighted pdf sections into anki flashcards? I think this sounds AMAZING, and I would love to do something similar. Thanks!

I wrote one of the first posts on the MPU Discourse: DEVONthink: stuck at the bottom of the hill

I am still on DT and upgraded to DTP3 and I like the new version. However the the DTTG apps on iOs and iPadOS are in need of some love. They need to make their functions into parameters so they can be used with the new Shortcuts ecosystem. Then we can all whip up our own shortcuts quickly to connect the files to OmniFocus (or Things depending on what time of day) and Calendar.

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@derekvan, @MitchWagner et al.: damnit. It seems there’s a glitch in Shortcuts’ Make PDF action that literally moves hyperlinks around the page. I can’t fix the Shortcut ‘til that’s resolved.

I’ve reported it in the Feedback app. Fingers crossed.

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Huh. I seem to have lost my original DT scripts somehow—probably when I finally uninstalled DTPO just a few weeks ago. :cry:

Thankfully, I seem to be getting better at scripting over time! I had an older version of this script that worked on files on the file system. Adding the DEVONthink functionality to that previously took me forever, but I was able to do it in an hour this afternoon. Hurrah!

All of the instructions and associated files (I think) are written up here:


Let me know if it works and if you have any thoughts or feedback.

This works great, Ryan, and thanks for sending it along so quickly!

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Best comment in this thread… And so true. I tried Things for a year and the switch back is on!

My sentiments exactly (even down to the down to the Stockholm Syndrome). I have active Dt databases, but the shortcomings of the iPad version – and the lack of Mac App Store version – are keeping me in a limbo, where I’m not sure, whether I’ll be continuing to use Dt in the long run :confused:

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