Welcome to DEVONthink, a powerful assistant in your quest to organize many kinds of information. From recipes to your dissertation, hobbies to health, for work or home, DEVONthink can help you gather, organize, and connect your data. This manual will help get you familiarized with DEVONthink's concepts, interface, and options. We begin with simple overviews, move into descriptions of the essential elements, then conclude with the deepest details in the appendix.
This manual is meant as a handy reference, not as a series of mandates on how you must use it. DEVONthink can be used very simply or in very complex ways and each person brings their own personal approach to using it. With the flexibility and capabilities built-in, the possibilities are seemingly limitless. To that end, it's impossible for this guide to be exhaustive. But we strive to provide a guidebook of the core concepts, philosophy, and the controls of this application.
Conventions: To reduce redundancy and assist in connecting sections in this manual, we make use of links throughout the content. These links will help direct you from concept to concept, introduction to description, from general to specifics. As you read, you should notice certain typographical conventions.
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Interface Links: Underlined in blue with a bolder font, these are links to sections in the manual describing specific parts of the interface you'd interact with, e.g., the menu command
DEVONthink > About DEVONthink.
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Interface Elements: Presented emboldened in blue, these are also parts of the interface. But as there are often several references to the same elements in a section, for example, the Global Inbox, generally the first instance uses an interface link while subsequent mentions display as an interface element.
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Document Links: Underlined in blue with a lighter weight font, these are links to parts of the documentation covering more conceptual things. For example, automation is not something you click on in the interface. It is a broad concept but has a chapter dedicated to it.
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User Input and Paths: To set apart user input or choices, they are presented in a monospaced medium purple font. You will see this for script commands (get chat response for message), examples of search syntax (kind:any text:taxes), smart actions chosen (Scan Text), Markdown syntax (), etc. We also use this convention for file paths, e.g., the default directory for your databases is ~/Databases.
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Pro+ Features: There are some features only available in the Pro and Server editions of DEVONthink. As seen here, the text for these features will appear in blue or display a blue sidebar to the left of the section.
Style: Lastly, to aid in readability we try to use less formal language for some interface items. For example, we will use a shorted form like "the
Tags inspector" versus "the Tools > Inspectors > AI > Tags inspector", when possible. However, for certain items like multi-tabbed settings, we will typically include the parent setting's name, e.g., " the
General > Appearance settings" as the specific setting isn't immediately visible when opening DEVONthink's settings.
We hope our efforts in providing solid information and our mindfulness in trying to avoid information and link overload makes this an approachable, and possibly even enjoyable, resource for you.
Warmest Regards, The DEVONtechnologies Team
First and Last Steps
DEVONthink Simplified
Building Your Database
Tagging
AI Explained
AI in Practice
A Word About Backups
Tutorials, Tips, and More
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