DevonThink: a document solution I didn't know I needed

By Nuno, 1 April, 2024

Forum
macOS and Mac Apps

I started using this tool a few days ago because I needed a new toy to play with. But it very quicly stopped being just a toy. For the last few days I am migrating all my stuff from many other apps to DT because its just amazing and, more importantly it just works. The databases are easy to backup and move which is pretty important in my setup as I move between two countries on a regular basis. Searches are fast, and I mean it, corcondance mode helps in my dirty writing, and countless organizational tools make my huge amount of papers organized.
But what do I organize so eagerly?
1. My journal: I previously used Ulysses for this, but some accessibility quirks made me angry with this tool, plus the subscription. Eh, I have setapp but sometimes, just sometimes I have no Internet and grace periods of Setapp are nonexistent. The problem I had with Ulysses was that it required me to *think* of making a journal entry, whereas in DT I made a simple script, I press CTRL+E and I can just type away insults at whoever annoyed me. A nice advantage is that those are pure MD files, I can force them out of DT without DT itself if that makes sense. I also keep some kind of encyclopedia of people I have met (don't call me out but I love writing every fact about people I met). With DT's wiki features I see myself using that more. It will require huge amount of work to convert my current setup but it can definitely be done.
2. University notes: I study Chinese at the university. I record classes and transcribe them with Audio Hijack. DevonThink can play audio, DevonThink can add so called annotations co audio which are separate documents but linked to the audio. What does that mean? It means I can read my classes, and play a given fragment only when I actually need to hear. I don't get distracted by teacher's slow speech, I read fast and listen only when I forgot how to pronounce a word. How I did it I made a simple conversion script that converts the transcript made by. audio hijack into MD link that DT can recognize and play my audio in a given time. I don't have any idea about AI, but if GPT is as good as people say it should be able to do it pretty easily.
3. RPG planning: believe it or not, I am still working on my game. If I have time, I can convert my mess of TXTs, XLSXs and other data into DT. By combining Wiki features, custom metadata, crossreferences, concordance mode I can very easily have a grant perspective (pun intended, this tool aint worth your trouble though since its inaccessible) over my story, characters and balance. The thing I see it helping the most is the balance, since I can very easily see quests in a given chapter giving what rewards, then I can pretty easily foresee what level the player might reach upon reaching a given spot in the game.
I have to explore that use of DT further as it seems pretty niche and obscure (people on the forum didn't make such a topic before) but I am confident it can be done and it can help.
4. Paperwork: I have many invoices, serial numbers, contracts, acts and many other legal stuff. Everyone does but the problem with me is that I am helping some others with their paperwork. With advanced organization capability of DT I can very easily see which paper belongs to whom and whether I have already filled it, whether its a template that I can reuse over and over to ask my dear government for a piece of bread or whatever else that comes to mind. Another awesome thing is the automatic OCR feature, I have set up a simple smart rule which automatically OCRs every non-textual PDF, and since DT interfaces with Finereader's engine the results is very good, I would dare to say its better than the official Finereader for Mac, but that is subjective, might be inaccurate or accurate only in certain scenarios, be ware.
I have just wrote four things that came to mind as I still want this post to be of a reasonable length, but the tool has endless use cases. Its not cheap and its not for everyone, but if you want to try it it has a very fair trial. If you have any questions, let me know. Let's learn DEVON Think together!

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