DEVONthink is a very flexible application, appealing to a broad range of people and accommodating many different working styles. Since people use it in such diverse ways, it often leads people to believe there is a "steep learning curve" associated with it. The truth of the matter is DEVONthink is a powerful application built on simple, and often familiar components and concepts. Here we'll cover the basics.
At its core, DEVONthink is a multi-window, document-based application. Multi-window merely means you can have more than one window open. Document-based means it supports viewing, and in some cases editing, documents. Apple Notes is an example of a document-based application without multi-window support.
DEVONthink has two main window types: a main window (seen immediately when the software opens), and document windows. These windows are used in already familiar ways, supporting drag and drop, sorting on different attributes, full screen views, etc. Whether you are working (or playing) in DEVONthink, you will be using one or both window types.
DEVONthink supports different ways of viewing your items, e.g., in lists or as icons. You can show or hide many details in the window, allowing you to work in very simple or complex views of your data. Specifics about windows and their component panes and bars are discussed in more detail in the Windows and Inspectors chapters.
DEVONthink also has a powerful array of tools found in its menus. Many of these are also found in the contextual menus when Control-clicking items in the software. And to fine-tune some of the options, it also has extensive preferences.
Beyond the interface, DEVONthink has only a few core working components: databases and items. Items are comprised of two essential components: groups and documents.
Note: Throughout the documentation, we use item to represent both groups and documents. Things that only apply to one or the other will use the appropriate term.
Displayed as and shown only in the Navigate sidebar, databases are the fundamental unit in DEVONthink, filled with items. No matter if your content is grouped, ungrouped, or a mix, it is all housed in a database. You add, remove, organize, and search for files within DEVONthink, just as you've done in the Finder forever. Simple.
When you create a database, it is made as a self-contained package in the Finder. Packages are technically folders that are handled like single files by the Finder.
DEVONthink databases are not merely a series of files and folders in the Finder, but are isolated from each other and function a bit more like disks. When you plug in an external drive, it appears in the Finder's sidebar isolated from other disks, but still capable of moving and organizing data on it. In a similar fashion, open databases appear in DEVONthink's sidebar and behave in much the same way.
Global Inbox: Displayed as , when you launch DEVONthink, you will immediately see a database called Inbox. This is a special database and a core component of the software. As a core database, you can't delete or close it, as it provides an always open database for quickly storing unfiled or transient data.
Imagine you are reading about fission reactions and someone sends a link about a vacation place in Bali. You jump to the website and quickly clip a webarchive of the page. But instead of putting it in your research database, you add it to the Global Inbox and get back to work. You can go back later and read or sort things to other databases. If you are familiar with Getting Things Done you'll recognize the concept.
The Global Inbox is also special as it is the only database you can add a shortcut to in the Finder's sidebar. This allows you to save a file into the Global Inbox from other applications.
All databases also have an Inbox group with the same purpose as the Global Inbox. It just allows you to save unfiled data to a more specific database, as needed.
One of the two basic items are groups. No different than the folders and groups found in many other applications, they merely serve as ways to keep certain bits of data together. But within the DEVONthink groups are a few variations. They are all simple to recognize and understand, but they bear being introduced.
Ordinary Groups: Displayed as , these are analogous to folders in the Finder. Except for underlying technology, groups operate in the same fashion. Creating, adding and removing contents, and deleting are all essentially the same. Just as in the Finder, you can create subgroups to suit your needs.
Looking and behaving like folders you've used in the Finder, groups are the simplest way to segregate data. DEVONthink allows you to create deeply nested hierarchies or simple top level groups, whatever you need to keep things organized in a way that makes sense to you.
New empty groups can be made with the Data > New > Group command. Groups of selected items can be easily made and unmade via the Group Items and Ungroup Items commands in the Data menu. These commands are also in the contextual menu.
Groups are also the target of DEVONthink's classify function. The AI compares document contents and locations and offers suggestions for where items may best be filed. As documents are filed, manually or taking the AI's suggestions, it becomes more and more adept at helping you file more efficiently.
Group Tags: Displayed as , these are created and operate like ordinary groups, with one extra function: the name of a group tag is applied as a tag to its contents (sometimes referred to as "children"). By unchecking Exclude Groups from Tagging in a database's properties, any group you create will function this way. For individual groups, you have the option of choosing Exclude from Tagging from the contextual menu or Info inspector.
As you add items to a group tag, they are automatically tagged with the parent folders' name. Similarly, removing items from a group tag will remove the parent tags. Also, if you create sub-groups, these will also be created as group tags. This can be useful if you're using a group for staging purposes, e.g., a groups for unassigned, in progress, and done items. Moving files between these groups would change the tag to its current parent group.
Smart Groups: Displayed as , smart groups should be familiar to anyone using saved searches in the Finder. Similar to them, smart groups don't actually contain anything. They merely show you items matching the criteria you specify. Sometimes broadly used in situations where deeply nested groups are not used, you can create as many as you'd like no matter your approach.
These special groups allow you to create virtual groups based on any number of matching criteria. These can be simple, e.g., "all PDF files in a database", or complex, like "all unread documents with a specific color label added in the last week but excluding HTML files". If you like to use a looser filing method, using smart groups allows you to file your items with less concern about where they're located in the database. With smart groups you can also have items appear in more than one smart group without replicating or duplicating files explicitly. For example, a smart group could show items tagged with "taxes". You could then create another smart group with items tagged with "taxes","business", and "2018".
Local smart groups, i.e., ones applied to a specific database, can be created and edited via the Data > New > Smart Group command. You can also find this command in the contextual menu when Control-clicking in the item list. Smart groups can also be created when doing an Advanced search.
When you create a new database, DEVONthink automatically adds a few of predefined smart groups for your convenience:
Note: Smart groups filtering on dates or unread status are shown with special icons.
Smart Rules: Displayed as and found only in the Navigate sidebar, smart rules are a type of smart group with an extra function: they not only match items by the criteria you specify, they can also act on them. These actions can even trigger when certain events happen. For example, you could have a smart rule matching PDFs in the Global Inbox and have newly added PDFs be added to the Reading List.
The second basic item in DEVONthink are documents. No different than the Finder, documents are any files you add or create in your databases. Perhaps you are importing spreadsheets for work, or PDFs for your thesis. Maybe some photos from your vacation you want to link to in a Markdown document you're working on. They're all just documents.
DEVONthink supports adding many kinds of files to your databases, but note the type of file determines its usefulness in the database. For example, images can easily be added but searching for them is limited to searching by attributes like file type or filename. Remember DEVONthink excels at text-based operations, so files like rich text or PDFs are very well supported.
Note: More information on the types of files you can create or import can be found in the Documents chapter.
While not types of document per se, there are two variations on documents available to you: duplicates and replicants.
Duplicates: Displayed with to the right of a document's name or the name optionally shown in blue type, there are two ways to get a duplicate in your database. Firstly, just as you'd expect in the Finder, select a file and press ⌘D: a duplicate is made. Secondly, if DEVONthink examines the contents and determines it has another file with the same content, it will mark them as duplicates. Duplicates are separate files, and changes to the content of one should remove its duplicate status.
Replicants: Displayed with to the right of a document's name or the name optionally shown in red type, replicants are conceptually similar to aliases in the Finder or a second phone book entry for the very same person. Replicants are one file showing up in more than one location. However, they consume no more space than a single file. Since they are clones, changes made to any instance of a document apply to all instances. This makes them useful when you want to file a document in more than one location, but don't want to have to update each document individually. It can also be useful if you have larger files you want filed in more than one group. A 10 MB PDF, replicated in ten different groups, would only use 10 MB of space in the database.
There is also the possibility of having a document that is both replicated and a duplicate. This will display this icon to the right of the name:
It's important that you understand how replicants work before you begin making changes to documents. Any changes to a replicant are carried over to all replicants; as you might imagine, this means that you can to do some very powerful (and potentially negative) things with your database's contents via replicants. Duplicates, on the other hand, allow you to change the files without modifying the original document or group. Duplicates are less powerful than replicants, but no less important in the grand scheme of database organization.
On a technical side note, when you add an ordinary tag to a file, a replicant is made in the appropriate tag group.
Note: Replicants cannot be created in the same location as the originating file, nor can they be made across databases.
We hope this has given you some insight into the basics of DEVONthink. DEVONthink is deep and powerful, but understanding these basic concepts and seeing parts you are already familiar with will hopefully dispel some of the "fear" that it's complicated and hard to learn.
That being said, we also have more in-depth information for you. From simple overviews of menu commands to details in the appendix can be found in the remainder of this guide.
