Explore DEVONthink’s Interface

Now that you know the basic concepts and terms that DEVONthink uses, it’s time to learn your way around. Because of the many ways DEVONthink can display your data and some of the unique tools it offers, you’ll be on a firmer footing if you take a few moments to read this chapter and learn how the interface is organized, where to find the things that you’ll use most often, and what some of the program’s icons and other controls do.

Support Assistant

The first time you launch DEVONthink, a window called the Support Assistant opens (Figure 2) to welcome you and offer a tour of the app as well as links to tips, tutorials, support, and other help.

Figure 2: The Support Assistant welcomes you with tips and tutorials.

The Support Assistant window appears every time you launch DEVONthink. To keep it from doing so, deselect the Show This Window When DEVONthink 3 Opens checkbox. (You can then display it manually, whenever you want, by choosing Help > Support Assistant.)

Although it may not be obvious at first glance, you can access lots of useful features from this window:

• Newsletter subscription: To subscribe to a free periodic newsletter with DEVONthink tips, enter your email address under “Newsletter.” Then click the blue checkmark icon to subscribe.

• Tip and extra of the day: The right side of the Welcome screen presents a random selection from the tips and extras, all of which are found elsewhere in the Support Assistant.

• Technical support: Click the Get Support link at the bottom of the window for shortcuts to the DEVONthink FAQ, user forum, and contact page, plus tools to retrieve a lost license (or buy a license if you’re still using the free trial), update your name or email address, and read the DEVONtechnologies blog.

• Extras: Click the Install Extras link at the bottom of the window to display a screen with extra AppleScripts and templates (beyond those installed automatically or via the Add-Ons window, discussed next); you can install any of these by clicking the Install button beneath it. (To remove an installed item, click Remove.) You can also check the “Install & update extras automatically” box at the bottom, which installs all the extras immediately and keeps them up to date automatically.

• Setup: Click the Setup link at the bottom of the window for a quick three-step overview of how to get started with DEVONthink—make a database, install add-ons, and customize. (Feel free to skip these; I cover all these things later in the book.)

• Tips and tutorials: Click the Tips & Tutorials link at the bottom of the window to show a selection of text-based tips (at the top) and step-by-step illustrated tutorials (at the bottom).

Tip: To return to the initial screen of the Support Assistant at any time, click the Welcome link at the bottom of the window.

Add-Ons

If you haven’t already installed the add-ons from within the Support Assistant, choose DEVONthink 3 > Install Add-Ons to display the Add-Ons window (Figure 3).

Figure 3: This window enables you to install useful add-ons with just a few clicks. (The “Install Avision ExactScan Support” checkbox appears only if you already have ExactScan installed.)

For now, I recommend leaving the default items selected, clicking Install, and following the prompts, because the additional tools will be useful to you. If you choose to skip this now, or omit any of the add-on options, you can always return to this window later. I describe each of these add-ons and how to use them later in this book.

Main Window

When you begin using DEVONthink, the main window looks something like Figure 4. This is where nearly all the action happens. Unlike DEVONthink 2, which had a great many windows, drawers, and floating palettes, DEVONthink 3 integrates almost everything into a single window, with sidebars, toolbars, and context-sensitive inspectors—much like Apple’s iWork apps.

Figure 4: The main window in DEVONthink looks something like this by default.

Because every aspect of the window is customizable, yours may look different from the one shown here. But let’s take a quick spin through the major parts of the default window. Figure 5 below shows the main window as it appears with most optional areas visible—but with no documents yet in DEVONthink. I explain each labeled area ahead.

Figure 5: The main parts of the DEVONthink window: ⓵ toolbar, ⓶ sidebar, ⓷ item list, ⓸ path bar, ⓹ information bar, ⓺ view/edit pane (or preview), ⓻ navigation bar, ⓼ tag bar, ⓽ inspectors.

Note: DEVONthink 3 supports Dark mode in macOS Mojave and later; you can enable this in System Preferences > General. (With Dark mode enabled on your Mac, documents in DEVONthink have a dark background and white text by default; to change this, go to DEVONthink 3 > Preferences > General > Appearance and uncheck “Use dark background for documents.”) In this book, however, all the images are shown using the Light appearance.

DEVONthink 2 offered six primary window configurations called views (Icon view, List view, Column view, Split view, Three Pane view, and Tag view), which arranged the main elements of the window in different combinations. It also offered Widescreen and two different Full Screen options for some of the above views. But DEVONthink 3 completely rethinks window configuration, offering a flexible set of controls to create almost any layout you may want, even if you get there in a slightly different way than before.

Although the preset views of yesteryear are gone, you can now selectively show or hide almost every part of the window, and choose a vertical or horizontal arrangement of the item list and view/edit pane. (And yes, the two Full Screen options are still there.) Keep reading in this chapter for further details.

Toolbar

The toolbar at the top (Figure 6) provides quick access to many commonly used DEVONthink features, such as showing or hiding parts of the window, marking and labeling documents, and searching. The contents of the toolbar change according to what (if anything) is currently selected.

Figure 6: Access frequently used commands via the toolbar (top: Big Sur; bottom: Catalina).

To learn what any control does, hover over it briefly with your pointer, and a pop-up tooltip tells you its function. If you want to rearrange the items on the toolbar, add new ones, or remove ones you don’t need, choose View > Customize Toolbar. Using the dialog that appears, drag icons onto or off of the toolbar, or drag them to other positions on the toolbar. You can also determine whether icons, labels, or both appear using the Show pop-up menu. Click Done when you’re finished modifying the toolbar.

Each control on the toolbar is accessible in at least one other way (such as a menu command or keyboard shortcut). So, if you prefer to hide the toolbar to give yourself more space, choose View > Hide Toolbar.

Sidebar

Along the left side of the window is the sidebar, which is shown in Figure 7. To be more precise, DEVONthink can show any of four different sidebars, depending on which icon is selected at top. The Navigate sidebar shown below is the default and most common one, but there’s also the Reading List sidebar, the Import sidebar, and the Extras sidebar, all discussed ahead.

Figure 7: The sidebar displays your favorites, inbox, open databases, and other frequently accessed items. Left: as it starts out, mostly empty; right: populated with some example items.

You can hide the sidebar by choosing View > Hide Sidebar; to display it again, choose View > Show Sidebar. If the sidebar is hidden, however, you won’t be able to see or access your global Inbox (see Inboxes), Trash, favorites, global smart groups, or global smart rules.

Navigate Sidebar

The “main” sidebar view, shown above in Figure 7, shows global items (such as the Inbox, tags, and Trash from your global database, plus smart groups and smart rules); it also displays your open and recent databases, and your favorite databases, documents, and groups (see All About Favorites). It’s handy to show this, for example, when you want to drag something from one database to another.

If you want to use the keyboard to move around within the Navigate sidebar, go to DEVONthink 3 > Preferences > General and select “Keyboard navigation” (in the Sidebar section). Having done that, you can do the following in the Navigate sidebar:

• Move up or down using ↑ or ↓.

• Expand or collapse a group using ← or →.

• Rename the selected item by pressing Return and typing a new name.

• Remove the selected item from the sidebar by pressing Delete or Backspace.

• Switch to the previous or next database with ⌘-Option-R and ⌘-Option-E, respectively.

Note: Starting with DEVONthink 3.5, you can select multiple groups, smart groups, and/or feeds in the sidebar at the same time and see their merged contents in the main view.

By default, DEVONthink unifies all your databases under the Open Databases heading, and it unifies all your inboxes (in much the same way as Apple Mail) under the Globals heading. However, if you prefer, you can keep databases and/or inboxes separate.

You can alter these settings in DEVONthink 3 > Preferences > General > General:

• With “Unify databases” checked (the default), each database along with its contents is an entry under Open Databases (Figure 8, left). If you uncheck “Unify databases,” only the database names are shown under Open Databases; select one to show its expanded contents under its own sidebar heading (Figure 8, right).

  

  Figure 8: The effect of having “Unify databases” on (left) and off (right). In the latter, the selected database, expanded under its own heading, has an asterisk (*) next to its name under Open Databases.

• With “Unify inboxes” checked (the default), each database’s inbox appears in the Inboxes group under Globals (Figure 10, left). If you uncheck “Unify inboxes,” only the Global Inbox appears under Globals, while each database’s inbox appears under that database’s name in the Open Databases section (Figure 10, right).

Figure 9: The effect of having “Unify inboxes” on (left) and off (right).

All About Favorites

The Favorites list at the top of the Navigate sidebar is for anything you want to be able to access quickly. To add a database, document, or group to the Favorites list, select it and choose Data > Add To > Favorites.

Apart from the sidebar, you can also access your favorites using the Go > Favorites submenu; they also appear in the Sorter and in various other locations (such as the Move To, Duplicate To, and Replicate To submenus). You can rename favorites in the sidebar; doing so affects only the favorite itself, not the original item.

Reading List Sidebar

New in DEVONthink 3 is the Reading List sidebar (Figure 10), which functions much like the Reading List in Safari and other browsers: it displays documents you’ve marked for later reading.

Figure 10: Documents to be read appear in the Reading List sidebar.

To add a document to the Reading List, select it and choose Data > Add To > Reading List (or the comparable commands on the Action menu or the contextual menu). The Reading List maintains its own read/unread status for each document, separate from the document’s main status. Documents are marked unread by default, but when you select one, its status changes to read. (If All is selected at the top of the list, it shows both read and unread items; click Unread to show only unread items.) To remove an item from your Reading List (without deleting it from your database), right-click (or Control-click) it and choose Remove Item from the contextual menu. You can rearrange the Reading List via drag and drop.

Import Sidebar

The Pro and Server versions of DEVONthink have an Import sidebar (Figure 11), which adds yet another way to import scanned documents and email messages. For more details, see Scan Documents and Add Email Messages, respectively.

Figure 11: The Import sidebar provides just one of several ways to import scanned documents and email messages.

Extras Sidebar

Also new in DEVONthink 3 is the Extras sidebar, which (like the Support Assistant window) provides access to useful, up-to-date content and tools from DEVONtechnologies, including scripts, templates, smart rules, tips, tricks, and news (Figure 12).

Figure 12: The Extras sidebar gives you another way to access the latest tools and info from DEVONtechnologies.

Item List

The item list, sometimes referred to as the view, is the portion of the window (labeled ⓷ in Figure 5) that lists your documents and groups—it’s the one part of the window that’s always present, though you can change its appearance at any time. As in the Finder, you can display the items in the list as Icons, List, or Columns, as well as using Cover Flow (which was present in older versions of macOS, before being replaced with Gallery view in Mojave). At your option, the item list may also be accompanied by the view/edit pane, sidebar, inspector, and other window elements.

You can switch item list views by using commands in the View portion of the View menu, or by clicking the icons on the information bar.

Note: As I describe DEVONthink 3’s views, I’ll also refer back to the views DEVONthink 2 used (some of which use the same names), in an effort to help you create a window layout that resembles what you may have used in the previous version.

Stepping Stone: Pick a Layout, Any Layout

DEVONthink tries to be helpful by providing many different ways to configure your window and view your data, but switching between layouts can be disorienting. Documents may disappear, sort order may change, and other display elements may rearrange themselves in an unfamiliar way. So most people tend to pick a collection of layout settings that works for them most of the time, and stick with it—switching only when a need arises.

I suggest trying out each view (and other layout options) with your own DEVONthink data as you read this chapter, and perhaps taking a few notes on which ones seemed most or least helpful for future reference. Given the way I use DEVONthink, I personally prefer to have the sidebar, inspector, and Standard view/edit pane visible, along with either List view or Column view.

View as Icons

Icon view (Figure 13), which displays large thumbnails of each document, is perhaps the least useful option. While in Icon view, you can use the slider on the information bar to adjust the size of the icons. You can also sort the icons in many ways (by name, kind, size, and so on) using the pop-up menu next to that slider.

Figure 13: Icon view shows resizable thumbnails of each item.

Tip: To approximate DEVONthink 2’s Icon view, enable the sidebar, set the View to “as Icons,” and set the preview to None.

In Icon view only, you can choose View > Show Details or View > Hide Details (⌘-Option-L) to toggle the display of additional details about each document (Figure 14), giving Icon view some of the additional benefits of List view.

Figure 14: Show extra info in Icon view with the Details command.

View as List

List view (Figure 15) provides more detail about each document, as well as a hierarchical view of all your groups. By default, List view shows Name, Modified (date and time), Kind, Size, and URL columns. To change which columns appear, choose a column name from the View > Columns submenu. As you might expect, you can sort by a column by clicking its name; reverse the sort order by clicking again; drag and drop to rearrange columns; and resize columns by clicking the border between two adjacent column headers and sliding the pointer left or right.

Figure 15: List view provides more (and configurable) detail about each item in your database, and lets you see the contents of groups at a glance.

Tip: To approximate DEVONthink 2’s List view, enable the sidebar, set the View to “as List,” and set the preview to None.

A Word About Sort Order

Each view can automatically sort its contents in a wide variety of ways (such as by Location, by Due Date, or by Word Count). If the view includes column headers, you can click a header to sort by that criterion, and click again to reverse the sort order. (Right-click or Control-click the column header to add or remove columns.)

To adjust the sort order for views without column headers, or using criteria not shown in a column, use the pop-up menu on the information bar next to the view icons (the menu’s name reflects the current sort order); choose Ascending or Descending from this menu to reverse the order. Alternatively, choose an item from the View > Sort submenu.

If you prefer to manually drag items into just the order you like, choose Unsorted.

View as Columns

Column view (Figure 16) lets you quickly navigate a deep hierarchy of groups without losing your place or running out of room on the screen.

Figure 16: Navigate complex hierarchies quickly in Column view.

Tip: To approximate DEVONthink 2’s Column view, enable the sidebar, set the View to “as Columns,” and set the preview to Standard.

As in the Finder, you can drag the dividers between columns to resize them individually, Option-drag them to change the width of all columns at once, or double-click a separator to auto-resize to the width of the longest name. You can also sort by any criterion you prefer. To change the sort criterion, choose a command from the View > Sort submenu; choose Ascending or Descending from this menu to reverse the sort order.

Tip: DEVONthink’s Column view (unlike the Finder’s) lets you sort each column by a different criterion if you like—for example, the first by name, the second by date modified, and the third by size. Click in a column and then choose a command from the View > Sort submenu to sort that column.

Tip: To approximate DEVONthink 2’s Split view, enable the sidebar, set the View to “as List,” and set the preview to Widescreen.

Missing Views

Although I’ve added notes about how to get DEVONthink 3 to approximate DEVONthink 2’s views, not everything can be mapped. For example, DEVONthink 3 has no exact equivalent to DEVONthink 2’s Three Pane view, which added a column between the sidebar and the item list/preview with a list of the selected database’s groups. That arrangement is largely unnecessary now that the sidebar shows each database’s groups, but if you want to approximate the old Three Pane view, see the DEVONtechnologies blog post How to Simulate Three Pane View.

There’s also no exact equivalent to DEVONthink 2’s Tag view, which showed an extra column on the right listing all the tags in the selected database. However, you can see tags for the selected document in numerous other ways:

• Tags appear in the Info inspector.

• You can display tags in a filter pane at the bottom of the Navigate sidebar by clicking the Tags icon.

• You can also display tags at the bottom of the view/edit pane by choosing View > Show Tags.

View as Cover Flow

Cover Flow (Figure 17) displays a large thumbnail of each document in the current group in a horizontally scrolling list; it’s useful primarily for graphics. The selected item (in the middle; a bit larger than the others) shows a tooltip with the document’s name and resolution; a full-size image appears in the view/edit pane.

Figure 17: Cover Flow shows previews of each document.

Identifying Unread, Duplicate, and Replicant Documents

DEVONthink uses styles, icons, and (optionally) colors to identify documents of certain kinds:

• Unread: When a document name appears in bold and has a bullet in the Flag column, it’s marked as unread.

• Duplicate: By default, duplicates have a special icon () next to their names. If you select “Mark duplicates and replicants in color” (DEVONthink 3 > Preferences > General), DEVONthink instead displays the name of each duplicate document in blue (omitting the icon). Note that duplicates can have different names from each other.

• Replicant: By default, each replicant appears with an icon () next to its name. If you select “Mark duplicates and replicants in color” (in DEVONthink 3 > Preferences > General), DEVONthink hides the icon and displays the name of each replicant in red (and italics). If you delete all but one replicant of a document, the remaining document’s icon disappears (or its name reverts to black, as the case may be).

These attributes may be combined; for example, an unread, duplicated document has both a boldface name and the appropriate duplicate icon (or a blue color). And, if you replicate a duplicate, each replicant gets an icon () indicating that dual status.

Path Bar

Immediately above the item list is a horizontal strip with two sections divided by a vertical line. The left-hand section is the path bar, which helps you navigate within your database. It shows the item currently selected in the sidebar and a “bread crumb” path of enclosing groups, if any. You can click any item in this path to jump to that group. There are also back and forward icons, which work just like the ones in a web browser for moving to previously viewed documents. (You can even click and hold one of the icons to see a list of earlier or later locations.)

Information Bar

Immediately to the right of the path bar is the information bar, which (as the name suggests) displays information about the currently selected item(s), such as the number of items in the current view and the number of items (if any) currently selected.

On the right side of the information bar is a pop-up menu to change the sort order (using any of dozens of pieces of metadata) and icons to switch between Icon, List, Column, and Cover Flow views.

View/Edit Pane

The view/edit pane (sometimes referred to as the preview) is the portion of the window (labeled ⓺ in Figure 5) that displays the contents of the selected document, if any. In most cases, it lets you edit it, too. Although you can double-click any document to open it in its own window if you prefer (or in an external app, depending on the setting of DEVONthink 3 > Preferences > General > “Double-click opens documents externally”), you can often do all your editing right in the view/edit pane. I discuss editing further (whether in the view/edit pane or otherwise) in Edit Documents in DEVONthink.

As in web browsers and most document-based apps in macOS, the view/edit pane can have multiple tabs, each one showing a different document. The tab bar is normally hidden if only one document is open; to display it all the time, go to Preferences > General and check “Always show tab bar.” Most controls for working with tabs (such as New Tab and Close Tab) are found on the Window menu. To open multiple documents, each in its own tab, hold down Option and choose Data > Open In Tabs (⌘-Option-O). (If the view/edit pane is not visible when you use this command, DEVONthink opens a separate document window, with each document in a different tab.)

Note: You can change the magnification of the view/edit pane by choosing View > Zoom > Zoom In or View > Zoom > Zoom Out (hold ⌘-Control and press + [plus] or – [minus], respectively).

Widescreen

The widescreen preview option (View > Widescreen or ⌘-7), positions the view/edit pane on the right side rather than at the bottom. This arrangement makes more efficient use of screen real estate on large monitors (especially widescreen monitors). Figure 18 shows a widescreen preview along with List view; compare with Figure 15, which shows the same thing with a standard preview.

Figure 18: With the widescreen option turned on (as shown here with List view), DEVONthink positions the view/edit pane on the right rather than at the bottom.

Tip: By default, if you’re using Column view, the widescreen preview shows only one column, but you can drag the divider between the item list and the view/edit pane left or right to change the size of the item list (and thus the number of columns shown).

Full Screen

If you find screen clutter distracting, you can use either of two Full Screen modes. First, you can opt for macOS-style Full Screen mode, which applies to the entire DEVONthink window; to enter this mode, choose View > Full Screen > Window (⌘-Control-F) or click the Full Screen icon in the upper-left corner of the window. To leave Full Screen mode, press Esc.

Alternatively, you can use DEVONthink’s document-specific Full Screen mode. When you choose View > Full Screen > Document (⌘-F7), the selected document fills your entire screen; in the case of plain text and rich text documents, your entire screen turns black by default while text becomes bright green (Figure 19). To leave Full Screen mode, press Esc.

Figure 19: For minimalist text editing, choose Full Screen mode.

To adjust Full Screen mode’s font, size, colors, and text width, go to DEVONthink 3 > Preferences > Editing and make changes in the Full Screen section.

Navigation Bar

At the top of the view/edit pane is a narrow strip of controls called the navigation bar (Figure 20; also labeled ⓻ in Figure 5). The selection of controls on the bar varies according to what type of document (if any) is selected and its current state.

Figure 20: The navigation bar as it appears for a PDF document.

In general, the navigation bar contains controls for (you guessed it) navigating within the view/edit pane, such as visiting the next or previous page within a web browser or PDF, as well as previous locations elsewhere in DEVONthink (using the same back and forward icons as on the path bar). One other control that appears consistently on the right side of the navigation bar is the Show Editing Bar icon, which replaces the contents of the navigation bar with controls appropriate for editing the document type selected (e.g., one set of controls for text, another for graphics, and yet another for PDFs). I say more about this later, in Edit Documents in DEVONthink.

Tag Bar

Any document in a database can have one or more tags to help associate it with related content. One way to see those tags is to use the tag bar (Figure 21), which is labeled ⓼ back in Figure 5 (see Tag Documents for more). Group tags (that is, tags representing group names) show extra tabs on the right side; ordinary, non-group tags do not.

Figure 21: The tag bar can appear at the bottom of the window to enable you to view and edit tags.

The tag bar can appear at the bottom of the view/edit pane, whenever the view/edit pane is visible. To toggle it on or off, choose View > Show Tags or View > Hide Tags (⌘-Control-Option-T), or click the Show/Hide Tags ( or ) icon on the toolbar.

Inspectors

Just as the sidebar pane appears on the left side of the window and may display any of several different sidebars, the inspector pane (labeled ⓽ in Figure 5) appears on the right side of the window and may display any of seven different inspectors, depending on which icon is selected at the top. From left to right, they’re the Info inspector, the Annotations & Reminders inspector, the Content inspector, the Document inspector, the Concordance inspector, the See Also & Classify inspector, and the Search inspector. (The currently selected icon appears in blue.) I describe each of these ahead.

Info Inspector

Besides listing statistics about the current document, this inspector lets you rename the document; exclude it from classification, search, See Also, and tagging; modify labels, tags, and Spotlight comments; see and navigate to duplicates and replicants; add aliases; and lock or unlock the document. I discuss many of these activities elsewhere.

DEVONthink Pro and Server expand the capabilities of the Info inspector by adding a Custom tab, where you can add any of numerous built-in or user-defined metadata types. To learn more about metadata generally and custom metadata specifically, refer to Work with Metadata, later in this book.

In case the inspector is hidden or displaying a different pane, you can also display the information from the Info inspector in a popover (Figure 22) if you select a document and choose Tools > Get Info (⌘-Shift-I) or click the Info icon on the toolbar.

Figure 22: The Info inspector lets you change numerous document characteristics.

Annotations & Reminders Inspector

New in DEVONthink 3, the Annotations & Reminders inspector (Figure 23) provides the tools to set reminders (including alarms) about the current document (see Use Reminders), view or add Finder comments, and add or edit annotations (separate files containing comments about this file; see Template).

Figure 23: The Annotations & Reminders inspector lets you set reminders and add comments and annotations.

Note: DEVONthink uses the word annotation in two senses. Annotation files are linked documents containing comments on other documents (the sense described here), while ordinary annotations (such as those you add to PDFs or graphics) appear within a document and can include notes, shapes, and other extra-textual additions.

Content Inspector

Also new in DEVONthink 3 is the Content inspector, which displays the table of contents for PDF, Markdown, and EPUB documents that include one; it also shows thumbnails for PDF documents (Figure 24). Both the table of contents and the thumbnails are live, so you can click an item to navigate to that point in the selected document.

Figure 24: If your document contains a table of contents, you can view it (and navigate using it) in the Content inspector.

Document Inspector

Another new element in DEVONthink 3 is the Document inspector (Figure 25), which shows and allows you to edit a wide variety of document-level metadata. The Properties tab includes items such as author, title, subject, and keywords; the Annotations tab shows highlights in RTF files and PDF annotations (not to be confused with DEVONthink’s annotation files), and the Links tab shows any hyperlinks found in PDF and RTF files, as well as in web archives and other web-based documents (outgoing links are found at the top under the Links heading, while incoming links are found at the bottom under the Incoming Links heading; see Work with Links and WikiLinks for more on using links).

Figure 25: The Document inspector shows document properties, PDF annotations (and rich text highlights), and links.

Concordance Inspector

Do you wonder if you’re overusing certain words, or are you curious about how often certain terms in a document occur relative to other terms? Select the document and choose Tools > Inspectors > Concordance > List or click the Concordance icon in the inspector. The Concordance inspector (Figure 26) lists every word in your document by frequency (number of occurrences).

Figure 26: The Concordance inspector shows all the words in your document, sorted by frequency.

I discuss the Concordance in more detail later, including how to use the feature across multiple documents—or even an entire database—and the new Cloud and Graph options (see Search Using the Concordance).

Note: The Concordance appears only in the Pro and Server versions of DEVONthink 3.

See Also & Classify Inspector

One of DEVONthink’s coolest and most powerful features is found in the See Also & Classify inspector. The See Also and Classify features use artificial intelligence to help you determine where a document should go and what other documents may be related to it.

To open this inspector (Figure 27), select a single document and then choose Tools > Inspectors > See Also & Classify (Control-S). The top half of the inspector lists groups that may be a good place to store the document. The bottom half lists other documents that have similar contents to the one you’ve selected. I discuss these features further in Classify Documents.

Figure 27: The See Also & Classify inspector helps you move documents to their proper home and find related documents.

Search Inspector

DEVONthink offers several ways of searching, but the Search inspector (Figure 28) is the place to go if you want to search and/or replace within the current document. Matches are listed at the bottom of the inspector and highlighted in the view/edit pane. To learn more about searching within a document, see Search Within a Document.

Figure 28: The Search inspector lets you do simple searches and replacements within the selected document.

Panels

A few windows in DEVONthink, called panels, look different from normal windows or popovers and provide extra info or special features. The following are the panels you’re likely to see most frequently.

Activity

On the Activity panel, you can follow the progress of tasks that take a while to complete. To display this panel if it’s not visible, choose Window > Activity (⌘-Option-A). Examples of what it may show:

• When you sync your database with another location (see Sync DEVONthink Databases), the Activity panel shows you the syncing progress. (If you’re syncing directly between two Macs, it appears on both.) Ordinarily it disappears when the sync is complete.

• In DEVONthink Pro or Server, when you choose Data > OCR > “to searchable PDF” (or configure the app to perform OCR automatically on newly scanned documents), the Activity panel appears, showing the progress of each document as it is recognized and any documents waiting for their turn.

Note: Another way to view current activity is to look at the bottom of the Navigate sidebar, where an Activity pane appears as needed, and disappears when there’s no further activity to report.

Download Manager

When you download a file from the web using the built-in web browser in DEVONthink Pro or Server, a Download Manager panel appears, much like the one in Safari or Firefox. It shows your current, pending, and recent downloads and lets you stop or redirect them.

To open this window, choose Window > Download Manager.

Log

The Log panel, which you can toggle by choosing Window > Log, lists errors and other status messages generated during DEVONthink’s normal activities. These may include notices that documents have been imported or exported, for example, or that the database has been converted from an older format.

Note: Starting in version 3.5, the log can also appear in a popover when you click the Log icon on the right side of the toolbar.

If you find the Log panel intrusive and want to prevent it from appearing unless you explicitly display it, uncheck the “Show log automatically” box in the lower-left corner of the Log panel. (DEVONthink ignores that setting if it needs to display information on a critical error.)

Document Windows

If your monitor is sufficiently large, you may find it comfortable to do all your viewing and editing right in the view/edit pane of DEVONthink’s main window. However, it’s often more convenient to view, edit, or create documents in their own windows, which also provide extra toolbar icons for your convenience.

Note: DEVONthink can edit many types of documents and can display the contents of even more types (see Edit Documents in DEVONthink). If you double-click a document DEVONthink can’t display, the document opens in its default application instead.

To open a document window, double-click any document (or choose a command from the Data > New submenu to create a new one from scratch). The appearance of the window and the controls available on the toolbar vary according to the type of document you’re editing. For example, Figure 29 shows the window for a rich text document.

Figure 29: When you open a document in its own window, you get more room to work—plus a separate (and customizable) toolbar.

Inboxes

The next-to-last item I want to introduce you to on this interface tour is the inbox, which as I’ve already mentioned is meant as a storage place for newly imported or indexed documents you haven’t yet sorted. In this respect it’s rather like the inbox in your email app. (Just as I recommend trying to keep one’s email inbox empty most of the time, I recommend the same for DEVONthink—the app is much more useful and effective when you group, or at least tag, each document.)

Because DEVONthink supports multiple databases, it has multiple inboxes, too—one for each database, plus a global Inbox (which is technically a separate database). Even if you’ve only ever created a single database, you still have two inboxes, because the global Inbox is always present. This fact can be either a blessing or a curse, depending on your point of view.

Your global Inbox appears at the top of the sidebar under Globals, which means that if your sidebar is hidden, you can’t access it. (Choose View > Navigate, click the Sidebar ( or ) icon on the toolbar, or press ⌘-Option-1 to display the sidebar.)

Note: It’s all too easy to throw a bunch of documents into your inbox and forget about them, but DEVONthink works better when documents are in groups. It’s also best to move items from your global Inbox into specific databases on a regular basis. You can learn about these tasks in the sidebar Stepping Stone: Get Stuff Out of Your Inbox(es).

So, when you import a new document, where does it go—the global Inbox or the one for a particular database? It depends primarily on your preferences, as I discuss later in Decide Where Your Documents Will Go.

DEVONthink in Other Applications

DEVONthink can change what you see in other applications by adding menu commands and other interface elements. A few examples:

• New Services menu commands (see Use the Services Menu)

• The Inbox that may appear in the sidebar of Finder windows and in Save dialogs (see Use the System-Wide Global Inbox)

• Extensions for Safari, Chrome, and Firefox (see Clip to DEVONthink Browser Extension), and browser bookmarklets (see Web Bookmarklets)

• New commands in Apple Mail (see Use the Mail Plugin)

Workspaces

Workspaces let you save arrangements of open databases, windows, documents, and tabs—plus the currently visible inspector, any selected sidebar filter, view selections, and advanced search options—and recall them instantly. If you rearrange items on your screen (or switch to a different workspace), you can return the display to its previous state with a single menu command.

Here’s what you can do with workspaces:

• Create a workspace: Choose Go > Add. Enter a name for your workspace and click OK.

• Restore an existing workspace: Choose Go > Name of Workspace. You can also press ⌘-Option-number, where the number corresponds to the order in which workspaces are listed at the bottom of the Go menu.

• Modify a workspace: To update an existing workspace to reflect the current arrangement of on-screen elements, choose Go > Update “Name of Workspace”.

• Edit a workspace: To edit a workspace’s name or order in the Go menu, or to delete it, choose Go > Edit. Then:

  • To rename a workspace, double-click its name, enter a new name, and press Return.

  • To rearrange workspaces, click and drag.

  • To delete a workspace, select it and click the minus button.